TV : Meager Serving on ESPN’s Platter

For television viewers, the U.S. Olympic Festival hasn’t been much of a feast. The ESPN servings have been pretty skimpy.

Every day there is a lot going on, but little is making it on the air.

Sunday night, during a two-hour telecast, basically only two sports were covered--figure skating and boxing.

By the way, who came up with that combination? Figure skating and boxing go together about as well as ice cream and ketchup.

Anyway, the figure-skating coverage consisted of only the three top women’s singles finishers, the ice dancing winners and the one high-profile male competitor, Todd Eldredge.

There were 12 boxing matches Sunday, but only two were shown during the two-hour daytime coverage. Three more were shown at night.

On the night program, there was time for only one feature, a nicely done piece on Bobby Douglas, the wrestling coach at Arizona State. Yet nearly seven minutes were devoted to a discussion of a new computerized scoring system in boxing.

Results in swimming, canoeing and kayaking, shooting, basketball and synchronized swimming were given, but no highlights were shown. Other sports were ignored. Swimming was covered Monday night, however.

There are two ways to look at ESPN’s Olympic Festival coverage: (1) There isn’t enough of it, or (2) There is too much, considering the apparent lack of interest.

There have been some exciting moments and some emotional ones.

If you haven’t been watching, you might try it. You might even like it.

A high point was Sunday night when 13-year-old Nicole Bobek cried after being told she had won the figure skating competition.

Said commentator Peter Carruthers to Bobek: “How would you like to be the 1991 Olympic Festival champion? . . . Well, you are.”

Chided announcing partner Tim Brando: “Peter has suddenly become Bob Barker on the ‘Price is Right.’ ”

Some of the announcing has been good, some amateurish. The competitors are supposed to be amateurs; the announcers are supposed to be professionals.

Host Barry Tompkins hit a low point Sunday night after partner Sharlene Hawkes read the shooting results.

Hawkes reported that Connie Petracek of Nashville, Tenn., won a gold medal in women’s sport pistol and Petracek’s daughter, Christine, finished seventh. Hawkes added that a feature on the two would be shown later.

Tompkins, attempting humor, said: “Boy, you don’t want to get in any arguments in the Petracek household.” Then pointing his finger as if shooting, he added: “Watta ya mean by that?”

Sorry, Barry, bad taste.

As for Hawkes, she missed the mark with this comment about shooters: “There are a lot of terrific athletes today.”

Come on, does pulling a trigger really take athletic skill?

The boxing finals, probably the most significant event of the Festival, will be held tonight at the Forum.

However, the finals won’t be shown on ESPN until Thursday night.

Baseball takes precedence. ESPN has a doubleheader tonight and a single game Wednesday night.

The thinking at ESPN is that Thursday is the network’s regular boxing night anyway, although that’s professional boxing.

Tompkins usually handles boxing blow by blow for ESPN, but since he is serving as the Festival host, Al Bernstein moved over from his commentating role and made the transition pretty well.

But the camera work on boxing, surprisingly, has been shabby at times. It’s pretty hard to mess up camera work on boxing. Yet a replay of a first-round punch by light-heavyweight Richard Bonds on Denard Trapp failed to show the punch. “You’ll have to trust us on that one,” Bernstein said.

Also, commentator Sugar Ray Leonard seemed impressed by light-welterweight Therron Millett’s backward somersault, but it took a while before viewers got to see it.

Millett also did the splits. “Did you ever do that?” Bernstein asked Leonard. “My shorts were too tight,” Leonard said.

One more thing: Bernstein has a bad habit of referring to the Festival as the “Fest.” Well, at least he’s not calling it the “Feast.” That, it isn’t. Not on ESPN, anyway.