The World Cup is under way in South Africa. For a soccer fan, being able to watch 3 games played by the best teams in the world every day is a dream come true.
To me, what has been particularly interesting this time around is how the media has been pulling all the stops to show, communicate and broadcast the games – there’s TV, mobile, newspapers, radio, live commentary on blogs, Twitter and lots more.
It’s been really cool to see that visualizations have been used so widely, sometimes to illustrate an on-going game, sometimes to put results in perspective.
This one is from the New York Times, for a live game, Greece vs. Nigeria:
This visualization represents Brazil’s performance in World Cups:
There’s a lot more, for example here, here, and here, just to mention a few.
Aside from a few days taking a break from it all, the month of August has been all about hard work at Slife Labs, preparing Slife 2.0 for Windows and also an update to Slife Teams. But August has also been the month of the Olympics.
I have to say I am impressed by the NBC coverage of these Games. What’s on TV at prime time is not bad and they’ve even shortened the athlete’s personal lives (drama) segments. But what has been absolutely superb is NBC’s online presence. It’s possible to watch anything, live or recorded, from the comfort of your office chair. I am sure productivity all over the world has gone down this month.
So, congrats to NBC for pulling this one off, despite the monstrous demand. There are only two days of the Games left and by now, Michael Phelps must be heading back to his tank.
The event I am excited about the most though, is the very last one: the marathon. There are some incredible runners in Beijing and this is going to be fun to watch, despite the fact that the Olympic marathon seems more like a lottery than other big long-distance races.
It’s hard to believe, but the drug problems at the Tour de France continue. Today, one of the top contenders, Vinokourov, tested positive for a banned blood transfusion.
If you want to kill a sport, that’s how you do it – year after year of drug scandals. The way things are going, it’s not even about low spectator interest. It’s also about the teams. The bike teams won’t have a choice and will need to distance their brands from a drug-plagued sport. And without the teams, there’s no serious money and no professionalism.
Just think about. Imagine how awful things would look for the Discovery Team if one of its riders tested positive. This is what’s happening with Astana today. And they are pulling out from this year’s tour.
Pretty sad. Is there hope for cycling? Don’t these guys realize they are absolutely destroying the sport they are part of?
UPDATE: The story got much worse. This year’s Tour is falling apart.
