rf_fozzy wrote:We missed the whole of the early starters (and would have done even if the cameras were working at the start) from the women's race because (understandably) they were talking about the men's race still. A bigger gap between M&W finals needs to be allowed for that if it's going to be televised.
I suspect this is deliberate. As a general rule, the first ten or so starters are unlikely to be challenging for medal positions and there is less value (for a hypothetical neutral spectator) in following them through the first part of their course.
I do agree that the sprint coverage can feel pretty relentless. Two-minute (or even 90-second) start intervals would probably help, but at the cost of either reducing the number of competitors in the finals (unlikely to be acceptable to the IOF) or extending the total run time (unlikely to be acceptable to the broadcasters in those countries where it is being shown on live TV).
That said, it's unreasonable to expect too much in-play analysis during a sprint race from the commentary team, who do a great job of keeping up with what is happening on screen but who are likely to have their hands full as a result.
What we probably need is a model similar to that used for TV and radio coverage in many other sports, where you have commentators who provide the narrative, and separate analysts/summarisers who have the luxury of not having to talk all the time and therefore have their hands free to to play around with the GPS, spot interesting things and feed them in at appropriate points.
One thing the coverage does need to get better at is getting information out both to the commentary teams and to spectators on what is happening with disqualifications/mispunches/protests/appeals. This can be a bit of a black box at the moment: the audience is told that someone has been disqualified but not why, or that the medal ceremony is delayed because of a protest, but not who is protesting or what they are protesting about.