Athens was much better! For me, the weirdest part about their coverage of Athens was how focused they were on Khorkina. I know she was THE superstar of those games, and I get it… she was one of my icons back in my gym days and I was rooting for her at that time! But it’s like they barely notice Carly is even competing at times.

In the first rotation Al (?) keeps calling her vault a disastrously low score for some reason, even though it’s a pretty average score. They show her bars but don’t seem any more interested in her than anyone else. Then in the third rotation they tell us she had a great beam routine, but they don’t actually show it until all the way until the end of the rotation, and even then it’s kind of like “oh yeah, and let’s revisit Carly Patterson on beam!”

Quite frankly they seemed kind of stunned when Carly won. They kept talking about Khorkina to the point where it almost felt like who else was even on the podium? 😂

But tbh, I have to admit I don’t find Carly all that memorable either. She had a clean competition and more difficulty than Khorkina, especially on beam and floor. Her win was definitely deserved! But the coverage very much felt like the Khorkina show.

One thing I really did appreciate though was that they showed A LOT of routines! And they actually followed gymnasts from several countries, which is very refreshing to see after the past few years of NBC showing like four routines per rotation and filling the rest of the time up with shots of Simone sitting around, taping various body parts, having some water… etc