Simon Speaks

Simon Reeve, as we speak, is on the Yum Cha daily Olympics discussion program. Cue shameless "Dancing with the Stars" references from Sonia Kruger.

Oh sweet Jesus, the panellists are stupid.


1. Simon had to explain that there are team AND individual events.
2. They thought AA came after EF.
3. They thought beam was done to music because you always hear floor music in the background
4. One co-host says "oh, watching that little girl crying was cruelty. They're pre-pubescent..." when they saw Dasha. Get some knowledge, idiot. I'm amazed Simon didn't mention Chusovitina there and then.

Yes, they had a montage-y bit at the start, most of it was gymnasts we didn't see yesterday. Jerks. One or two shots were of Dasha crying. God, my heart has dropped and I'm welling up again.

Simon talked about Dasha's injury, we saw a snippet of her beam. Her fall came on her side somi and she remounted very tenderly. She did a single layout dismount and went straight into Olivia's arms, bawling.

Simon talked up Georgia's and Shona's chances, and said the team went from miserable to happy when they learned that they had made the final. They were just confused at first because the scoreboard flashes in Chinese.

He also talked up the USA v China, Shawn v Nastia v the world AA battle. They also, for some reason, showed a Chinese gymnast stuffing a vault really badly. Don't know why. I am just frustrated that they had all this footage (Georgia's beam and floor, Dasha's beam etc) and they didn't show it!

But Simon didn't do a horrible job. He just needed to smack Sonia over the head each time she tried to shamelessly plug her own program and whenever anyone made a reference to the competitors being "little girls".

BRING BACK ROY AND HG, I SAY!


ETA: The women's qualification performance has been nominated as one of the day's/week's most memorable moments from the Games. Keep your eyes on Channel 7 to see the number you can ring or SMS to nominate them and win prizes!

The Age newspaper's online Olympics page has a photo gallery of the girls competing.