NBC's 2010 Olympics: Off to a Tragic/Thrilling/Impressive Start

The opening weekend of NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games from Vancouver started tragically, ended thrillingly, and featured a lot of emotional and impressive moments in between. All in all, it was a strong start, establishing, once again, that the best - and worst - Olympic moments follow no set script...

Athletically, the best moment of the weekend came Sunday night, when Chinese pairs skaters Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo (shown above) -- the first to take the ice -- set a standard so amazing, no other duo that evening came close.

Patriotically, the best moment of the weekend also came Sunday night, when moguls skier Hannah Kearney, who had won the first gold medal for the U.S. at these winter games, was shown standing atop the podium as the national anthem played. Her run the night before, stealing the gold from Canadian favorite Jen Heil, was a riveting high-speed display of both athletic talent and raw exuberance.

The same was true of Canadian moguls skier Alexandre Bilodeau, who managed to gain instant superstar status by ending his country's streak of not winning a gold medal when hosting a Winter Olympics.

NBC had better televise Bilodeau's medal ceremony tonight, when "O Canada" gets to be played before the home nation. Listening to other anthems, and watching the nationalistic pride of athletes from other countries, is one of the best parts of these games -- and perhaps the truest example of the Olympic spirit.

Other athletic events covered provided drama of their own. The luge contests, after the death during a Friday training run of Georgia athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili, were invested with a tragic sense of almost palpable tension.

NBC, forced to shuffle the broadcast schedule when inclement weather postponed most alpine skiing events, did not hesitate in shining a prime-time spotlight on luge.

U.S. Short-track speedskater Apolo Anton Ohno, this time, was the beneficiary of a literally last-second slip by two competitors, which allowed him to reach the podium, and gain a silver medal, in his first final of 2010. Had that not happened, though, he had been outskated in that particular race by three other athletes -- something NBC, at times, seemed to downplay.

The network did not, however, downplay the luge-track tragedy, and opening the Olympics with it was the right way to go. And overall, my favorite contribution by an NBC broadcaster came Sunday night, when Bob Costas remarked on the post-interview massive kiss planted on Canada's gold-medal-winning Bilodeau by his girlfriend.

"Judging by the scene with Bilodeau immediately after Tina [Dixon]'s interview," Costas said wryly, "this is going to be a very good Valentine's Day for him all the way around."

As for the opening ceremony, it was most definitely a mixed bag. I loved K.D. Lang's version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," but the malfunctioning hydraulics at the end didn't help much. And the delay, in fact, resulted in the indoor Olympic torch (as opposed to the "real," permanent outdoor one lit a while later) being ignited four hours and 31 minutes into NBC's coverage -- seconds AFTER the opening-night coverage was scheduled to end.

And is it just me, or when anyone else saw that arctic bear constellation, rising from the ground during the opening ceremonies, did it bring to mind the giant Stay-Puft marshmallow man from Ghostbusters?