Staffan Söderberg: The Listening Woman's Crumpet

When gymnastics as it appears in the Commonwealth Games and Olympics features on television here in Oz, we are treated to perspicacious, delightful, eloquent, insightful (apologies to Tim Minchin there) voice of WA's Liz Chetkovich, commentator to the stars. Usually accompanied by some ill-informed, more-comfortable-doing-boundary-riding-at-the-football jingoistic bozo, but nontheless an admirable job gets done.

When NCAA gymnastics is broadcast here on ESPN, we get the parochial yet enthusiastic tones of Amanda Borden.

When a World Championships filters through on cable months after the fact, with footage from internet streams, we're treated to the *extremely* excitable and borderline patronising audio feed of Bart Connor.

When World Cups/duel meets/memorial trophies/gala displays are shown on the sports channels here, we get the dulcet Scandinavian tones of Eurosport's Staffan Söderberg.

*heart goes pitter-patter*

Ah, Staffan. Staffy. The Staffmeister. Where do I begin?

For a few years, Foxtel broadcast international competitions accompanied by the commentary of some creaky-voiced Austro-Hungarian love monkey whose name I never quite caught. His voice was quite deep and he always suffixed routines with a perplexing upward-inflecting "Mmmm!?" as if to say, "well, what did you think of that?" though he never seemed to follow it up with any further comment. It was like 'Love Song Dedications' without 80's love ballads and ads for Dingley's bargain lingerie outlet...

Then came SS, whose competition commentary quietly announced itself at the ungodly hours Foxtel decides to air gymnastics. I thought to myself "either the usual guy got his plums seen to, or this is a totally different commentator". Well, suprise suprise, there was in fact a new guy on the scene. A new guy who also happened to be Swedish golden girl Veronica Wagner's coach so that's a damn good achievement too. Staffan, with his stilted English and mixed proverbs, found a place in my heart next to the one reserved solely for pierced unicycle riders, spritely university Arts students wearing corduroy vests, and Stephen Fry.

First off, the Swedish lilt is a cute one. He mixes his "y" and his "j" sounds, so as we watched Irina Krasnyanska mount the beam in Ghent, we learned that were in for a fantastic performance from this "wonderful Jew-krain-yan yimnast". He sometimes puts the emphasis on different parts of a word, so last year we saw "HAWlie Dykes" on the "UNNY-ven Bars" up against "Polina MEEller". And it's never out of place to here a drawn-out sentence with excessive pauses, like: "Ve now see the veemen MORCHing in for the............ BAHlance beam....raw-TAYSHion.... you see there are........EIGHT........girls compEEDing..."

However, I do adore the sing-song way he says "Oksana Chusovitina", it's so rhythmically perfect.

I like that he uses metaphors but can't always get them right - a gymnast who fell off pommel was described as having a "bad day on the office". I respect that he explains the code a little and highlights particular combinations and their alphabetical difficulty value. I admire that he is honest about the quality of what we're watching and being overtly grateful for a unique routine when one comes up. He was quite direct when describing the '07 Ostrava Cup beam final as "not very good", even acknowledging that the eventual winner had balance checks and wobbles.

I love that he makes jokes! As Philippe Rizzo mounted the high bar in Glasgow 2005, he was described as measuring "160[something] centimetres tall, 65 kilo's heavy... or should I say, 'light'!"

What a champ. We love you, Mr Söderberg, keep up the great work.

Staffy and Virre, flying the flag for Sweden