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Twitter users blamed for road race coverage failure, even though London anticipated a problem
At the risk of being unpopular, Olympic head honchos have blamed the BBC's poor coverage of the men's road race on you, the Tweeter.
Of course, far be it to suggest that if London 2012 is 'the first social media Olympics' as has been said ad nauseam, then the various communications networks should be able to handle both social media and real-time statistics. That, as you heard, did not happen during either Olympic road race. The necessary visual aids for fans that make it humanly possible to figure out what is going on in a bike race with a 100-plus competitors dressed more or less identically crashed and weren't fixed for Sunday's women's race — "maps for spectators [were] unable to be projected on big screens and commentators [were] again forced to calculate split times themselves." There was mass confusion; for instance, on Saturday at least one major Canadian news portal reported Canada's Ryder Hesjedal had finished 41st instead of 63rd.
So rather than question the preparation or Olympic Broadcasting Service, which is (you guessed it) closely aligned with the IOC, the powers-that-be are basically saying: Hey, you with the iPhone, stop texting your Mum and your BFF so much.
Because of a glitch with GPS signals on Saturday during the men's cycling road race, broadcasters were unable to provide television viewers with much information about the location and timings of riders on the 155-mile course.
International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams says the Olympic Broadcasting Services service was jammed by "hundreds of thousands" of people sending texts, pictures and updates to social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.
Adams says "we should have foreseen that." (Associated Press)
Sorry to be snarkier than usual, but yes, it was anticipated. One is also reminded of how the Danny Boyle-directed Opening Ceremony on Friday also included a social media element. If it's a theme of the Games, people should be double-sure there will not be glitches. You know the British media will not let that slide (in homage to this Bruce Arthur column, all together now, "Still, though.")
Especially since London Mayor Boris Johnson knew it was coming. In this day and age, it goes against human nature for someone to think to herself/himself, "Self, maybe I should be the one to put my phone away." To be fair, this isn't an isolated incident. Even at a much smaller scale event such as hockey's MasterCard Memorial Cup or IIHF world under-20 hockey championship, it often takes a day or three for the tech-support folks to get everything ironed out with wireless Internet. Multiple that by the population of London and you have an idea of what the problem entails.
Mayor of London Boris Johnson warned last year the networks would face a "massive strain", with hundreds of thousands of spectators wanting to share a moment of victory or defeat with friends and family.
At the time he said a huge amount of work was being done to make sure there was enough coverage, and that mobile operators and infrastructure companies would "crack it" in time. (Reuters)
This might be confined to the events which are being held in more outlying areas.
Enough cable has been laid in the Olympic Park in east London to stretch between London and New York, suggesting that if there were any problems, they would be more likely to occur at venues outside the park.
Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Contact him at neatesager@yahoo.ca and follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.
