..fROM vALENCIA..

courtesy of sailinganarchy.com

World Of Wetass

AC Addiction

For years, sailors have bitched and moaned about the lack of sailing on television. And then when there was sailing on television, they whined about how bad the coverage was. Well, I think it is time to stop. Because much to my great surprise, the live semifinal coverage of the LV semifinals on Versus, at least to my eye, has been great sailing, and great TV. I tuned in, trying to block out the scary flashbacks of Dawn Riley on OLN in Auckland, and there was Craig Hummer (unfortunate name, unless your TV gig is in, err, porno) and Andy Green in the studio. And good ‘ol Tucker Thompson out on the water. And as the racing got started I started to hear commentary about starting tactics, who was in trouble, which side looked favored—in other words real racing commentary, not drivel about tacking and gibing for the NASCAR crowd. Green is a match racer and he knows his sh*t. And he isn’t pretending that there are a lot of sailing neophytes out there watching Versus (except when he and Tucker go out and pseudo-match race each other on old boats, which comes off as very lame). He’s talking to the hard-core racers, the sort of person who might tell his wife that they have to change the cable provider because there are better cooking shows on the system that also just happens to offer Versus (well, I did something almost like that). And they have lots of cameras on the boats, on the water, and in the air.

Okay, there were a few rough spots to start. Like when they cut from live pictures to Live Sailing during the pre-start. Err, I wondered in frustration, isn’t a virtual simulation what you watch when YOU DON’T ACTUALLY HAVE LIVE TV PICTURES? And don’t even get me started on the sheer, utter, pointlessness of the underwater fish cam. Apparently, they figured all this out pretty quickly because they stopped going to “the technology,” as they like to call it, so much, except when they wanted to check out the advantage line or fast-forward through a tacking or gybing duel (which is exactly why Live Sailing can be useful for television).

The result (which includes the excellent sailing conditions that have kicked in off Valencia), is the best sailing on TV experience I have seen so far. And if you have TIVO or a DVR you don’t even have to watch all Versus’ ads for penis enhancement and hair replacement products (makes you wonder what sort of research the ad agencies have done on sailors). So you are free to watch good match racing and wonder why it is that almost every time Torben Grael picks a side he is right, and almost every time the Oracle afterguard makes a choice it is, well, wrong. Or how Chris Dickson feels about getting his ass kicked by Jimmy Spithill in the pre-starts. Or how Larry feels about the prospect that he might not even get through the semis because his design team produced a faulty headsail track that gave China Team a win.

“Dammit, Larry, will you please let go of the wheel. I promise I’ll sail to the favored side this time…”

There is one thing that would really revolutionize the TV experience, though: forcing the afterguards to mike up and be live all during the race. I know all the reasons they don’t want to do that (and why right now the boats always just happen to be quiet when he mikes go live for a minute or two). I’m just saying that I want them to do that, and I’d love it if whoever the f*ck getsto make those decisions made it so for the next LV and Cup. Eavesdropping on Chris, Larry, Peter and Gavin (not to mention Torben, Terry, John C. and their gangs) would be incredible. Like Big Brother on a boat. That would really pull the viewers in.

Have A Wetass Weekend (if you can tear yourself away from the AC),

Tim Zimmermann

courtesy of sailinganarchy.com