German sports coverage

I was sick at home yesterday. So, I spend the day lying on my sofa watching TV. I have two English-language stations, CNN and BBC - but one gets tired of watching the same news over and over and over again... Plenty of German language stations, so I settled on Eurosport.

It's funny to watch sports from a different point of view. First, the sports shown are totally different from US sports coverage. Obviously, no baseball, basketball or football. Lots of soccer, as one would expect. But also lots of track and field, swimming, and especially cycling. They had full coverage of the Tour of Belgium cycling race. Americans may laugh at cycling (in spite of Lance), but it does become enthralling after awhile. And next weekend, Eurosport will have full coverage of the Track and Field world championships in Helsinki, Finland. Now, I like that, because I've always loved sports like that - which never even make it onto ESPN2. Actually, my favorite, favorite, favorite obscure sport is a winter sport: ski jumping! I've seen those ski jumping hills in person, and let me tell you, they are no joke! So I'm mightily impressed by these guys who flings themselves down these hill at top speed, fly into the air, and manage to land on their feet. I'm not the only one. The fact that Sven Hannawald, the top German ski jumper, decided to retire was front page news here!

Of course, the other difference is the focus on German or German speaking (Swiss, Austrian) athletes. Whenever there is no German in the final or whatever of an event, the announcers always apologize - Schade, daß keine Deutsche-sprachige dabei ist. I noticed this most during the Tour de France. They barely even acknowledged Lance, but I learned way more about the T-mobile and Gerolsteiner teams, and Jan Ullrich (the star German racer), than I ever wanted to! I guess it's a humbling sort of shock to realize that not everyone is focused on Americans all the time. People know who Lance is, of course - but no one hear has ever heard of Joe Montana or even (gasp) Terrel Owens. Maybe Babe Ruth - then again, maybe not. And you have to head to the Czech Republic for anyone to care about ice hockey.

OK, enough sports babbling...