Mike-Happy Sportsmen

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 556, 17 February 1950, Page 10

Mike-Happy Sportsmen

OMEONE once protlaimed that of games suitable for broadcasting, bridge was possibly one; poker was certainly not. At the time I agreed; but after listening to the commentaries on the swimming events on the first night of the Empire Games, I begin to wonder if any game-even poker, even chessis an unsuitable subject for broadcast in the mouth of the chosen mike-happy broadcaster. On Saturday night the commentators (especially the Australian one) at the Olympic Pool on that busy Newmarket corner in Auckland, gave their listeners a thorough-going waterside decimated-second thrashing-splash-ing account of the races. I am sure it would be possible to broadcast such events without a hint’ of water, cold and churned, and with scarcely a hint of cheering crowds; so ‘that the cosy listeners in the south, close-curtained against | the advancing cold front, might picture an asphalt tennis court or séme such absurdity, until a chance glance at "the printed programme reminded them that these were swithming taces. No such absurdity was possible that Saturday / night.

The details were multitudinous, filling in the pauses between heats: the colours of swim-suits, bathing caps, national em-blems-and the positions on the swimsuits of those emblems; the habits of the contestants, two in the water "warmingup," one still in her track-suit ("you call them -sweat-suits, we call them track-suits, comes to the same thing"), another still in her dressing-gown, another taking off her shoes and socks (they all wear shoes, must keép the feet warm, no good going in the water with cold feet), the chaperones there with their charges, but the chaperones like to be called manageresses; the lights on the | water,sthe 55 yards of milky turquoiseblue water; the competitor from Ceylon very tall, about 6ft. 2in.; the roar of applause as each competitor is introduced; and then the get on your marks, ready, the gun--and the SPLASH. The good start, the six laries with ‘the nameg rattling out of that man’s mouth as sharp as the crackle of pine cones ripening on a hot day, the ohe swimmer drawing half a yard, a yard ahéad, the almost simultaneous touch-he couldn’t pick it for the churn of the water-the leader now a yard clear, down to the twenty-five, and there’s the New Zeéalander gaining, yés, catching South Africa, the New Zealander is leading, ‘she’s goirig to WIN! * It is a scream of gefiius with which he greets that win. How many brilliant actors can do it? One in a hundred, perhaps. But the sports commentators will | scream a horse home in the cup,.they will scream a rowing eight across the line, or.a three-quarter to a touch-down, or a cyclist to a wheel-rim win---Satur-day after Saturday they do it, pouring out words frorh mouths that never sound | too dry or too wet, in voices that never

sound husky or hoarse-except with excitement, justified and expected excite-ment-and without one slip or fluff or gabble of meaningless sound. Whether you like it or not, whether this is your partitular radio food or poison, the sports broadcasts ‘have, as the swimming commentator said of a young competitor, "come good"; the sports commentators are right at home with their medium, thike-happy and

word-perfect:

J.E.

B.