Alpine Skiing begins...

...and gets screwed over by NBC. Much like track & field in the Summer Olympics, alpine skiing is caught in the middle by NBC's coverage of the Olympics.

Sports that are far less popular on television receive nearly complete coverage on the NBC daytime broadcasts. This afternoon, both the women's and men's cross-country races were shown live by NBC during the afternoon coverage. All the major contenders were shown and viewers were able to see the race develop and get a full flavor of the competition.

This evening, the men's downhill, once the premiere event of the Winter Olympics, was horned in to the opening of the coverage in order for NBC to get to a polar bear feature. That's right, a polar bear feature! Only six runs were shown, and one of those was a DNF by Canadian Robbie Dixon. None of the other Canadians were feature, including Erik Guay who finished fifth or Manuel Osborne-Paradis, a pre-race favorite. We saw American Steve Nyman who finished 20th, but not the other two Americans, nor fourth place finisher Mario Schreiber. We didn't see Michael Walchhoffer, Werner Heel or Carlo Janka. But we did see the polar bears.

NBC could have shown the men's downhill live this afternoon at 1:30, the coverage began at 1:00. But since alpine is a "marquee" event, it gets embargoed to prime time....sort of. NBC does this to track & field in the summer games as well. Remember Bryan Clay's decathlon gold medal? No? Maybe because it was shown after midnight EST, about half a day after it acutally happened.

More coverage of the Winter Olympics than ever before, right? Well, tell me then why does the men's downhill get shown less than ever before. I have records for the 1984-1998 Games, before NBC got the contract.

1984 ABC - 11 downhill runs
1988 ABC - 10
1992 CBS - 11
1994 CBS - 11
1998 CBS - 17
2010 NBC - 6

Six bloody runs! An absolute disgrace, and a slap in the face of one of the premiere events of the Winter Olympics. God knows how they will handle the men's 500 meter speed skating later tonight. Oh, by the way, they could have shown that live at 8:30.