The biggest announcing flops?

Easy, that Willie Smith job that was in the 80s...

HORRIBLE!!!!

I bet it is on YouTube somewhere...

"Slingshot"

Billy Mills in the OLY 10K when the announcers didn't even know who he was...

Or, every time Carol Lewis opens her mouth.

Hoovis

El G. Olympic 1500 in 2004. For 3 laps the announcers say hes screwed himself over by letting it go out too slow.

The announcer during the '88 Olympic 800m announced that another Kenyan had won as opposed to Paul Ereng. He didn't notice his mistake until the unofficial results were put up on the scoreboard. Pretty bad mistake considering the stage. "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh! Folks, I announced that the wrong athlete won the 800 meters. It was actually Kenyan Paul Ereng!" It wasn't even that close. Oops!

Well they were only wrong by about an inch.

I'm pretty sure it was Charley Jones and he apologized profusely. I'd say any BryantGumbel announced NFL game gets the prize. He is awful and not a bad guy to watch fail.

I'm pretty sure the Willy Smith was the guy from the 1991 U.S. Championships. He was so flustered and nervous He basically just stopped and gave up.

I felt sorry for him. It wasn't even funny.

slaps wrote:

I'm pretty sure the Willy Smith was the guy from the 1991 U.S. Championships. He was so flustered and nervous He basically just stopped and gave up.

I felt sorry for him. It wasn't even funny.

That was awful. I remember that Craig Masback filled the breach as best he could, then they cut to a commercial. I think that after the commercial, Smith apologized, then did half decently the rest of the telecast. But it also was the end of his TV career.

One of the Winter Olympics in the 70s, they had a girl who was a medalist from one of the previous games in speedskating as part of the announcing team. I don't remember her name, but I've never seen anything worse. She'd get so excited during the races that she'd start yelling and spazzing out like a teenager watching someone she had a crush on at a high school game.

ummm, uhhh, errr, Melody ummm uhhh Fairchild and ummm uhhh- Bolder and ... uhhh, ummm Boulder err, uhhh, ummm

"Or, every time Carol Lewis opens her mouth."

-Amen

This was just from last year's Boston Marathon broadcast by Larry Rawson and Al Trautwig on OLN (now Versus network):

Incorrect graphic:

Total number of participants in various years:

"1976 - 38,708 participants (Bicentennial)."

Don't they mean 1996, the centennial running of Boston, not the bicentennial year of the U.S.?

They even did a flashback about 1996 later in the broadcast!

Misleading flashback about 1996:

Al Trautwig: "For 99 years only runners with strict qualifying times from sanctioned races could enter the event. But in 1996 the floodgates were opened for the special occasion. And nearly 40,000 runners covered every inch of the fabled streets."

This erroneously implies you didn't need a QT for 1996. Trust me. You did. I really wanted to be there. Yes, the floodgates were opened in the sense that they allowed 38,000, not merely 20,000. But still you needed a QT.

Incorrect story about Heartbreak Hill:

Larry Rawson butchered the famous story about Johnny Kelley and Tarzan Brown in 1936 on what became known as Heartbreak Hill.

Larry Rawson: "Johnny Kelley had the lead and Brown came up behind him and patted him on the duff as if it to say, Come on along. And it broke the spirit of Kelley and he couldn't go any faster and Kelley fell back and Tarzan went on to victory."

No, it was Tarzan Brown in the lead and Kelley came up behind him and patted Tarzan Brown on the back and that pat incensed Brown to pick up the pace and he then passed Kelley and went on to win the race. Kelley faded to fifth.

Wrong about the Red Sox game:

They even got the end of the Red Sox game wrong. Al Trautwig announced that David Ortiz just hit a HR to win the game. It was Mark Loretta for the Red Sox, 2-out 2-run walk-off home run. David Ortiz did hit 2 HR's but they were in the 1st and 6th innings.

Wrong about the American record at Boston:

Larry Rawson regarding Meb in the final stretches on Boylston street: "It is at least the fastest finish [of an American] in the Boston Marathon in 19 or 20 years."

Wouldn't he know that Bob Kempainen set the American course record at Boston in 1994 (12 years ago) in 2:08:47. That was a famous year because it was the "year of the tailwind" when Cosmos Ndeti set the overall CR (until Boston 2006) in 2:07:15. Shouldn't Larry remember this? Hasn't he been the so-called "voice of the Boston Marathon" since the 70s or 80s?

Wrong about Alan Culpepper:

At the end of the race when they finally showed Alan Culpepper, Brian Sell was clearly ahead of him. Meb was way ahead of Culpepper and two Kenyans had already finished, but Larry Rawson announced that Alan Culpepper "is fourth right now." It was nearly a full minute later before they were able to identify Brian Sell ahead of Culpepper.

Anachronistic ad:

After the men's race was completely over (at least ten minutes after Cheruiyot won), OLN was running an ad for the "encore presentation" of the Boston Marathon later in the day, but the ad featured Hailu Negussie of Ethiopia as the returning champ (who DNF'ed just after the halfway point) and Meb Kflezighi (who had just finished 3rd) having a great shot to win it all as an American. Why would they run an ad such as that at that point in the race when the race would already have been decided? It was stunningly anachronistic. Wouldn't they have a different ad ready to run at that point in the race?

Remember Marty Liquori during the 1988 Oly Trial 1500?

He was totally convinced that Tim Simpson took it out in 56 to help his former Indiana teammate Jim Spivey have a fast pace.

Except Simpson was about 6 years younger and ran at Michigan State.

Marty sometimes makes bold claims to knowing everyones best strategy except I think he stopped doing his homework on the sport some time around 1984.

I must agree with everyone that said Carol Lewis. No wonder T&F has such a hard time getting ratings.

Hear, hear. Good athlete, lousy announcer. And she must be 40+ years old now, she's not gettin' any better.

On a positive note, I generally enjoy Dwight Stones, despite an occasional note of "attitude." He usually has a clue.

Indoor World Championships 1997, 800m heats. Wilson Kipketer takes it out and Masback gives a very calm running commentary about how Kipketer is just relaxing through the heat with an almost automatic advancement. He keeps telling us that Kipketer is just doing what he has to, not working too hard, easing around the track. Whoops. 1:43.96. World record!

Why are people on this board so interested in the negative?