Zero out of ten for snowboard slopestyle debut

Someone get me a beta blocker I just tried (and failed) to watch the debut of snowboard slopestyle at the Sochi Olympics on Network Ten. I was looking to cheer on our Aussie contender Scotty James but our national Australian Olympic broadcaster wouldn’t let me.

I tried to play nicely, I really did. First we called for the return of Roy & HG. Then I posted an Aussie Olympic TV Guide outlining how to watch the Olympics on Ten, ONE, Tenplay and their Ten Sochi App. I even did the time conversions for local Australian time and listed which athletes would be competing where.

Then I tried to tune in.

Clearly someone at Ten forgot to read the Olympic schedule. You’d think after forking out $20million for the broadcast rights for just Sochi (after Nine and Seven both declined the $120 million asking price for rights to both Sochi and Rio) they might have picked up an Olympic event calendar.

Because the snowboard slopestyle event debuted today, February 6, with Scotty James and Torah Bright competing for Australia. But the smart phone and tablet app has all week listed February 7 as the launch of the Olympic Games and the start of Ten’s live broadcast.

First mistake, the official events started today. Snowboard slopestyle and moguls qualifiers with three of our female athletes, Britt Cox, Taylah O’Neill and Nicole Parks.

A mad social media scramble of passionate snow sports loving Aussies trying to find where, when and how to watch it began this week as would be viewers searched frantically for a Ten TV Guide. There wasn’t one. So they hounded ten on both their Facebook and Twitter pages. It wasn’t pretty.

But credit where credit is due Ten did get back to me on twitter today to inform me the live stream would be on the app and live on the Sochi 2 channel in time for the snowboard slopestyle today. Good save. Ten are traditionally good at responding to social media, always have been.

But it wasn’t on the app on my iPhone at all. Yes it was set up on tenplay.com.au/sport/sochi-2014 on my laptop but it wasn’t live on there either.

Why? Because the live stream didn’t work, instead I consistently got this.

This is where the beta blockers come in, or a Xanax or even a brown paper bag to breathe into.

Personal family reasons prevented me from accepting the press accreditation I was offered by the AOC. Which is why we have 2GB Deputy News Director Natalie Peters exclusively filing for us as well as some guest bloggers we will reveal along the way.

You see, I’m not in Sochi. Just like Roy & HG, Alissa Camplin and Steve Quartermain I am reporting on the Olympics from Australia (with excellent global sources in Sochi) and I wanted, no I needed, to see our first snowboard slopestyle male Olympian live. 

I wanted to jump out of my chair and shout at the screen, pump my fist in the air and go Aussie go. I wanted to feel the athletes glory and their pain.

Because I am a little over all the negativity in the lead up to the games. Yes I’ve written about Putin’s human rights disasters and I’ve had fun with the journalists tweeting the hotel disasters but it is time for the games to begin, literally, and like the rest of Australia’s snowsports lovers I want to get in the Olympic spirit with the first event of Sochi 2014 not just offer more negative talk.

Instead I was reduced to trying to negotiate dodgy live streams from highly illegal feeds that had better luck than our national Sochi Olympic broadcaster had. Yes, I realise this is a first world problem.

Today Ten claimed technical difficulties and I feel for them, I really do, but Scotty James brother and wax technician, Tim James, watching from Australia claimed something else on twitter.

Maybe the bargain $20million price tag came with faulty feeds? If so I hope they kept their receipt but good luck getting that back out of Putin.

In other news, Scotty took a fall on the slopestyle first run I missed while hyperventilating in the corner. I found that out on twitter. Scotty didn’t qualify straight through to finals but he does have another chance to get there in the semi finals on Saturday.

Let’s hope Scotty’s nuts have recovered by then as per his tweet below but for now, Torah’s up next and Ten has just informed us live streaming is alive and working on the newly uploaded app (which is already having technical difficulties) and on tenplay for tonight.

If it works they go from zero to hero for Torah fans who were tricked into watching the cricket on Ten’s Big Bash.

(update: I am now happily ensconced watching the women take on the course that Shaun White was afraid of, live and streaming on tenplay, first world crisis avoided).

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