Bode Commentary on NBC

[Muleski]

I was impressed, but not at all surprised, by Bode's work on TV last season. He is a bright guy, and an incredible student of the sport. Amazingly detailed at most things, I am even MORE impressed with the past two days. I think he works really well with Steve Porino, who I assume people know was a WC DHer himself. Porino has really come into his own as a sports journalist. Really doing quality work. Great to see.

So, point one. Bode is more than the "Wild Man" and "Rebel" that many like to think he is. I always urge people not to assume they know any of these athletes based on what they see. I take that back. I think Ligety is pretty much the great guy you see on TV. You would probably like some more than you'd think and others less. People like Bode.

Point two. Bode does not sugar coat things. I have posted quite a bit about just how critical the right set up and the right skis are to the results. At times I think people feel it's BS. How many times did Bode mention it today? It was a point with almost every skier. He complimented many on their skiing and tactics and said their skis were not running fast. He pretty much told us that Kilde is not on fast DH skis, nor Paris. If he were sitting next to you he'd say "those skis suck." And for somebody who has sued Head, he was equally clear that they run exceptionally well. He also mentions "setup" a TON. He means boots, plates, bindings, and how they all work together.

Point three. Bode drills home some key things that worked well for him. One is the importance of a fast start. The Norwegians kill it. He called out Ganong and AW for being very slow out of the gate. He is great at talking about how to reasonable pinch off line and not be too round. Classic Bode.
And he knows who has touch and can glide. Nuances like that. I had never thought of AW's short, stout body as a hindrance at the start...and certainly not something as simple as the shorter length of his poles!

Four. Bode knows the hills, and the athletes. Well. It's as if he can rule out half of the top 30 based on the snow, and the hill. And that is how these guys and their coaches look at it. It's sometimes just the wrong hill. And the aggressive snow? Was problematic for a number of guys. Bode knew who before they skied.

Five. Experience really matters, and getting to know these hills is HUGE. You saw that with Ganong and Nyman today. This is all new to them. Val Gardena is going to feel like home to those guys. On this hill the 3-4 blind turns bothered those two. I think Bode used the term "butchered" with Nyman. And these are his friends....he is just brutally honest. The starts that the young guys are getting will pay big dividends down the road.

I was very impressed. Bode, should he want to, might have a nice career in this, in a number of sports. The guy is bright. And very articulate.

Very nice job by Porino, too! Nice job by NBC! Dream team!

Pretty clear to me that there is no comeback. Bode used past tense quite a bit. I want to check in with a couple of people next week, and I think I'll hear that Bode really seems to like this role.

All good, IMO.

 

[Levy1]

It was great commentary and a great race. Lines I couldn't see and mistakes I didn't notice were pointed out. It made it very exciting today.

 

[Dwight]

I rather enjoyed listening to him today. Good insights for those of us that are casual watchers.

 

[Steve]

I loved his analysis as well. My only gripe is that he used the word "mistake" a few times too many, but I guess that's what it's all about. He needs some synonyms to be a great color commentator.

Always was a fan and am glad to see him with this opportunity.

 

[Muleski]

I loved his analysis as well. My only gripe is that he used the word "mistake" a few times too many, but I guess that's what it's all about. He needs some synonyms to be a great color commentator.

Always was a fan and am glad to see him with this opportunity.

Good points. Bode is still very new to this, and I suspect that his "training" has been minimal. What he seems to bring to the table is his wealth of experience and knowledge and his honest, "unvarnished" dialog. I can't recall anybody on TV who has been close.

I really enjoy John McEnroe as a tennis commentator, and he was "brutal" and needed some sandpaper at the beginning! But very similar. He knows the drill.

Interesting comment about "mistakes." Good insight and observation. It never dawned on me, as in many decades of watching video with athletes and coaches the focus IS on errors/mistakes. Where did you not execute properly? Wrong line, wrong tactics? Pinch off too much line, overski {too round}? Too much sliding, too much hard edge? The focus is on what you did "wrong" to lose speed.

I do think that he also pointed out what almost everything racer did well. Mentioned teams, and also some manufacturers. Very candid.

His honestly speaking of some guys skiing quite well, but finishing way out because of equipment problems, and mentioning that some had experienced long equipment/setup problems {for years} was very candid.

It points out just how much these guys, their techs, and coaches really know about what is going on. The issue of average/good/great skis is well known.

So when Bode worked himself into a position to sign a contract with Head to have the best support and fastest skis on tour, it made a huge differnce. He has lived it.

Others, in my experience never talk on TV about it. Everybody on the WC talks about it. When Bode and Maier were both with Atomic, following Eberharter's retirement, the conversation about which of them would get his tech and more importantly his skis, was discussed by the free ski world. SE's skis were widely believed to be the fastest on the WC.

Bode's pretty darn good, and can only get better if it's important to him.....as long as he is the 100% genuine real deal!

I really enjoyed it.

 

[Rudi Riet]

Thank you, Señor Mule, for that spot-on summary of Bode as color commentator.

The matchup of him and Porino is what I've longed for in U.S. skiing (and pro cycling, TBH) coverage for years: explaining the sport as it is, no sugar coating, no "dumbing down" the analysis and commentary because the bean counters say "it'll confuse the viewers." Any programming director who goes that route, yet leaves so-called "egghead" commentary on U.S. football, baseball, basketball, et al, is calling a double standard. Viewers aren't dumb, and they'll learn as they go - as many U.S. youth did learning about special teams in football, the "suicide squeeze" in baseball, or the pick-and-roll in basketball.

Bode is blunt and candid, and paired with Porino it works amazingly well. Both of them are students of the sport, and were in the game fairly recently (Porino) and very recently (Bode). Not to take anything away from Doug Lewis, but he sometimes oversimplifies because that's just who he is (and he also coaches really young kids during the season, so sometimes the "break it down into simple terms" habit is the de facto - it works well for the youngsters, but adults can navigate more complex terms). Tood Brooker is as removed from the sport at Lewis (both were on the World Cup in the 1980s, two generations of ski technology ago). Steve Schlanger is an "everyman" sports reporter in the model of Al Trautwig who needs a deft color commentator to really call the sport properly.

And I think pairing Bode with Schlanger would be like pairing a fluffy bunny with a starving wolf - a really bad mismatch.

And that's where Porino shines with Bode. He's more media savvy and knows how to take the edge off of a really biting comment without watering down the core message of things. It's an art he's learned in the pro cycling world, where anybody who has watched NBC's coverage of the Tour de France knows that SP is often embedded in the péloton, where he has to decipher a lot of info from team directors in cars, often having to do on-the-fly translation from French or German to English, figuring out more vernacular terminology for somewhat amorphous descriptions. He is a "sports whisperer," very laudable.

Bode is a walking, talking, skiing encyclopedia. If he doesn't get bored watching the races in tiny little video screens (they do their commentary from NBC Universal's studio in Centennial, Colorado, save for when the races are in North America), I can see him becoming a multi-era asset to the media side of the sport in the same way that Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen have become in cycling.*

If NBC can keep this pairing together for the season, kudos to them!

* - To be honest, I think it's time for Liggett to retire from cycling commentary and hand over the reins to a younger host like Christian Vande Velde. Liggett makes too many poor calls of late and seems to phone in his quips and comments more often than not - part of why I tend to gravitate toward EuroSport's cycling coverage, as they have more recent alumni of the sport calling the races. And their skiing commentators are top notch, as well.

 

[Muleski]

Great post ^^^^^, Rudi!
Really well articulated. Great insight.
Completely agree re the pairing and re the TDF. Loved Phil Ligget "some years" ago!

 

[Erik Timmerman]

In light of the whole Bomber situation, it was funny to hear him talking about his experience of racing DH on K2 skis.

 

[Muleski]

In light of the whole Bomber situation, it was funny to hear him talking about his experience of racing DH on K2 skis.

I was cracking up, as I remember his being given the "strong advice" that he needed a serious "real" ski company as he began to race speed at the WC level, hence his move to Fischer at the end of the season.
And I was chuckling thinking about Bomber, as he basically came out and said that Kilde's biggest issue was his Atomic set up!
I was very pleased that today he discussed his career in past tense.

I did not realize that he and Porino did this remotely. Very interesting. Even more impressive. I had heard from some folks that he was really excited about doing this at BOP, so I naively assumed they'd travel. l

Yeah 9 plus seconds out on K2? Bomber? Think we'll never know!

 

[Jack skis]

I'd like to put in a few words about Doug Lewis working on the WC TV coverage. He does know the sport and his enthusiasm when commenting on races makes watching fun for me. Porino and Lewis interjecting an "OH!", or Whoa!" when something untoward happens on course conveys the excitement of live ski racing. Lewis and Porino together have a flair that that other combinations lack. Porino and Miller are good, even excellent, but I didn't hear much excitement from Bode. However, he sure knows what's going on during a ski race. The combination of Porino or Lewis with other "sports" guys who know little about ski racing, but who read statistics, ask questions like "does she know she's .06 being Gut at this point?", or as one did already this season ask, "What's the ideal weight for a slalom racer?" is sorta sad. I guess the network has guys they need to keep working even if skiing isn't one of their interests. Whatever, I'm just really glad the racing is available for the watching.

 

[Levy1]

I'd like to put in a few words about Doug Lewis working on the WC TV coverage. He does know the sport and his enthusiasm when commenting on races makes watching fun for me. Porino and Lewis interjecting an "OH!", or Whoa!" when something untoward happens on course conveys the excitement of live ski racing. Lewis and Porino together have a flair that that other combinations lack. Porino and Miller are good, even excellent, but I didn't hear much excitement from Bode. However, he sure knows what's going on during a ski race. The combination of Porino or Lewis with other "sports" guys who know little about ski racing, but who read statistics, ask questions like "does she know she's .06 being Gut at this point?", or as one did already this season ask, "What's the ideal weight for a slalom racer?" is sorta sad. I guess the network has guys they need to keep working even if skiing isn't one of their interests. Whatever, I'm just really glad the racing is available for the watching.

I didnt miss any excitement from Bodie, I was glued to his voice about equipment, lines,round turns, and starts. In addition his approximation of how much time was lost in a mistake was really noteworthy to me.

 

[Kyle]

I would echo the positive comments on Bode's work with Porino on today's downhill. Bode was able to make interesting and insightful comments without resorting to the sort of hyperbole that pervades in sports commentary and telecasting. I couldn't stop thinking that Bode's insight and bluntness were very similar to Johnny Miller's golf commentary. Like Miller, I suspect some of the more thinned skinned competitors will not always be a big fan of his style.

 

[Chris Walker]

Personally I also love Bode's commentary. I know many people, and probably especially the people the networks are trying to reach, namely casual fans who aren't really into the "inside baseball" of the World Cup, are looking for a commentator to be more enthusiastic or emotional or whatever, but Bode's business-like approach works far better for me. It's really unbelievable how well he knows the strengths, weaknesses and tendencies of each athlete and as he drones on I pick up a wealth of knowledge that is really interesting to me.

Another thing I noticed and I don't know if a detailed analysis would back it up, but it seems Bode really outperforms every commentator I've seen on judging in real time how fast the run we are watching is. It has always seemed to me when watching ski racing that no matter who was commentating, they would say something like "oh, and look how much snow he is spraying, this is going to cost a lot of time" and inevitably at the next split they'd have picked up half a second, or conversely, "these are some really clean fast turns, I'm sure she'll have made up time at the next interval," only to see the opposite when the interval comes up on the screen. When Bode would predict the next interval, it seemed like he pretty much always had it nailed.

 

[Frankly]

He's been the best commentator ever, if NBC ever listens to viewers just give him and Porino a (small) boatload of money and let them build the audience.