Dear AP Editor: I have been enjoying the AP's "Spotlight on:" feature, written by Janet Hamlin and Peter Santilli, in my local paper. These have been providing us with very succinct descriptions of each sport. They accurately portray the sports in the terms used by the officials and announcers, enabling me to better understand each sport and thus to enjoy it more fully.
The only glitch in them, until today, was that the elevations of the venues have been given in feet instead of meters, so I ignore that part. The newer topo charts use meters, by the way. Today's feature was totally trashed by an awkward conversion of the luge track length to feet. I have taken the trouble to look up the Olympic rules and find that the track length for men is to be a minimum of 1000 m and a maximum of 1300 m. Your feature stated the length was "4,318 feet". Yuchh! Not only is that an ugly number, according to my calculations it is about 16 m too long. You also stated that luge speeds could reach "90 mph" instead of reporting this in kilometers per hour (km/h). It's time for AP to shed their perception of American sports enthusiasts as stereotypical "dumb jocks" and to make sure that their reporting is accurate. The Olympics Games are metric, which befits their international status. So please stick to metric and quit "dumbing down" your newspaper feeds. That way you would be following the guidance in your own AP Stylebook. James R. Frysinger
