Reduced Kona 2011 Coverage on NBC (Page 4)

I also enjoyed this year's coverage. Yes - its absolutely formulaic but still fun to watch.  It was fun to watch Crowie and Chrissie win again. Crowie gives off a quiet humility mixed with laser like focus and Chrissie seems to emit pure joy as she goes about doing what she loves most (or crushing other racer's  hopes and dreams if you are a cynic).

I enjoyed it.

But, not as much as I have in previous years.  I really really like the stories, and there just didn't seem to be that many of them this year...that was the biggest dissapointment for me.

However, the lady that trained while doing Chemo, win she finished, really got me choked up.

The lady that lost all that weight, that really hit home as well.  I'm hoping to follow in her footsteps.

All in all it was a good show, just not a great one like years past have been.

I enjoyed the program, though not as much as in previous years mainly because most of the human interest stories were really skimmed over and didn't go into any depth.

I thought the story on the woman going through chemo was touching and told well, and the double amputee inspirational (didn't he DNF last year?)

However, they should have shown more about Tara Costa (most viewers don't know that she's a BL), should have shown more coverage of Decatur217 (hardly saw his kids or training).  I still don't know why they featured the restaurant owner.  They pretended to feature the race car driver, but other than a few seconds of car shots and a few seconds of interviews the really didn't.  I would have preferred that they dropped the restaurant guy and race car guy to develop the stories on the others.

I really didn't like the following of the older fellows collapsing at the end of the course.  It might be inspirational to some, but it reminds me of where I'll be one day.  If I'm featured at Kona, I don't want it to be for suffering at 17 hours....

Brian   

I forgot one element that changed. Something that was part of the 2010 broadcast that was suspiciously absent from the 2011.

A commercial for the 5150 series.

Sorry, had to mention it.

I’ve been waiting to enter the Kona lottery until I was confident of finishing strong.  Now that they started the general lottery legacy entry program in 2012 I guess the time has come to start entering.   They say odds are <2% of getting selected on a single entry.  The new program multiplies your entry by the number of years you have entered thereby increasing your odds each year.  Doing the math my odds jump to 5% when I enter the 50 AG, 15% at 55 AG, 20% at 60 AG….50% at the 80 AG.  Unless the other AGers slow down faster than I this looks like my best odds of ever getting to Kona!

I looked out the window at a cold 25 degree frosty morning, entered the Kona lottery, laced up my running shoes and headed out the door.  Burr!

I enjoyed watching the live coverage on race day immensely....it made me want to go out and train.  Yesterday only made me want to buy a Ford Explorer.

I may be in the minority, but I like most of the NBC broadcast. I know that as a "real triathlete" that's not cool, but I like the music and the announcer's voice.

The amount of slow mo was ridiculous, thought.

(and I've only seen about half of it -- it's been a busy weekend!)

Even shortened, your feature was inspirational and had some very nice footage of the kids you are working with. Great job!!

Then you will just LOVE this year's broadcast, Fred

Whatever.  I enjoyed watching it.  It's entertainment, and I think NBC does a good job (although it did seem a bit disjointed).

Being at IM Coz didn't really make me want to do another IM.  Watching Kona does.

Nobody cares but us.  When you go to work tommorrow ask some of your co-workers if they saw the Kona race Saturday.....and prepare for blank stares. 

On another note, IMO, covering old guys wrecking is stupid. 

I actually thought the video quality was amazing.  Yes, they can speed it up several frames per second.  Looked good on a big TV.  As always, there wasn't enough actual race coverage, but that's why I park myself in front of the computer for 8+hrs on race day.

Can't say that I mind the feel good stories.  Hard to dislike the double amputee or colon cancer story.  They are truly inspirational.  But, would you have let that old doctor fellow continue racing if you were RD and saw him fall like 12 times? 

I do mind that commercials took up 40% of the broadcast.

If you consider the fact that they needed to compress this to 1.5 hours, they did a very good job. I would have like to have seen more, maybe something about the equipment, but I doubt that would have mass appeal. The human interest stories were very good and inspirational. How could you not root for the cancer survivors or the double amputee? I didn't need to see that guy falling down so many times. When he fell against the barrier and it cracked, I thought that was a bit too much and didn't say anything positive about the sport.

I will say it is pretty awesome to watch when on the trainer! Except too many commercials that need to be edited out.

I couldn't disagree more.  I watch these guys at twice my age, struggling, going down, getting back up and refusing to quit for no other reason than to complete their race - they're not in it for anything else except themselves.  Made me stop and think about my lack of motivation lately and the fact I've been shrugging off workouts for no other reason than "I'm tierd".

If those 80 year old's can HTFU, then so can I.

It was a good show overall, not as good as some years, however.

Music was GREAT, really added to the show.

Slow-mo a tad over-done but there's more drama to that than regular speed for some reason, and that show is all about drama.

They did show all those old guys finishing so it didn't look too much like exploitation watching them fall and run in those utterly painful looking postures. When they asked the one guy why he does this and he replied, after a poignant delay, "That's a good question", I laughed my off.

It's unfortunate they couldn't have had a little more about the missed-by-four-second lady than the end, it would have made you feel more for her.

They tried to do A LOT and it felt like they glossed over so much in order to put in to many snippets, many of the stories didn't get much attention.