During weightlifting, I heard the commentators talk about kilograms only (frequently using the widely-known slang term "kilos") much more often than kilograms and pounds or pounds only.
It's not track and field, but NBC archery coverage shows the wind speed in metres per second. It's encouraging to hear the swimming commentators accepting and using metric only, even when *estimating* distances—that is, saying things like "... the last few metres!". This is in stark contrast to what I witnessed, about a year ago, while watching a rugby match with English commentators. One of the men said something similar to "He was only a couple of yards away from the 22 m line... !" That made no sense to me. What annoys me is NBC's on-screen graphics. They make great use of small caps, which in itself is fine, usually helping to differentiate the first name and last name of the athletes (especially the case with the Chinese), but they also use small caps to improperly format unit symbols rather than using lowercase and a space between the quantity and symbol. Occasionally, if a title is in all caps, they will unfortunately capitalize the unit symbol. So, on the network, one may see graphics that read: "WOMEN'S 10000M" instead of "WOMEN'S 10 000 m" "MEN'S 100M BUTTERFLY" instead of "MEN'S 100 m BUTTERFLY" "SNATCH: 1̶2̶5̶K̶G̶" instead of "SNATCH: 1̶2̶5̶ ̶k̶g̶" "2.0 "2.0 M/S" instead of m/s" "500M" instead of "500 m" It's a relatively minor problem, and I am glad they are using metric, but it's still an incorrect practice. On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 3:55 PM, John M. Steele <[email protected]>wrote: > True, when the distance is the name of description of the event, > (swimming, diving, track, rowing, weight categories as in judo) there seems > to be little interest in using Customary. One exception to that is long > road races (marathon, bicycling, etc). > > However, in field events, the distance is the performance measure and > (generally) different for each athlete. US Track & Field gives priorities > to Customary reporting of field events (although it encourages dual if time > permits). Weightlifting recommends the weight be reporting in both pounds > and kilograms (I'm not sure which is accurate, I assume the kilograms). > > --- On *Fri, 8/3/12, [email protected] <[email protected]>* wrote: > > > From: [email protected] <[email protected]> > Subject: [USMA:51815] Re: NBC Olympic Track & Field Coverage (Field) > To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> > Cc: "Valerie Antoine" <[email protected]> > Date: Friday, August 3, 2012, 3:28 PM > > > Apparently, the practice differs according to the sport. In swimming and > diving, I have heard nothing but metric. In weightlifting, the weight > categories were given only in kilograms, and the weights lifted primarily > in kilograms, with a few inch-pound conversions thrown in. > > ============ > On Fri, 3 Aug 2012, John M. Steele wrote: > > > So far, NBC has only broadcast part of one field event in their coverage > today; the qualifying round > > of men's shot put. > > > > As expected, the announcers have avoided telling us the true performance > and settled for the > > approximate conversion to feet and inches, in spite of lines on the > field being marked in metric. > > Very confusing, as always. > > > > Oddly, the NBC website gives only official results in metric: > > Overal schedule: > http://www.nbcolympics.com/track-and-field/results-schedules/index.html > > Shotput: > http://www.nbcolympics.com/track-and-field/event/men-shot-put/phase=atm051900/index.html > > > > Just as an example, the performance of Reese Hoffa (winner in group B) > was broadcast as 70-01, but > > his measured performance is 21.36 m. > > > > Hey NBC, the Olympics is totally metric, the athlete's performance IS > the story, hence important to > > the story, so it's OK to report metric. Please tell us the athlete's > true (measured) performance > > first, then throw in a conversion if you are really convinced you need > to. > > -- *Zach Rodriguez* http://twitter.com/#!/metricamerica http://twitter.com/#!/zachrodriguez
