Page 142 - Sport Culture and the Media

TAKING US THROUGH IT || 123

national broadcasters, sports competitions between citizens, cities or teams
from the same country, commentators are usually expected to display at least
a notional impartiality, but when a readily recognizable ‘Other’ exists in the
shape of the representatives of other nation-states (or if covering a ‘hometown
team’), the broadcast commentator is licensed to dispense with any pretence of
objectivity.
McHoul (1997) notes, in reflecting (from the perspective of ethno-
methodology and conversational analysis) on the mode of address of sport’s
television, how the practice of ‘doing “we’s”’ (the selection and deployment of
a pronoun) implies significant types of relation between sportspeople, coaches,
officials, broadcasters and viewers. The example he uses from the 1988 Summer
Olympics in Seoul is not, strictly, of a television commentator but is, in fact,
of a swimming coach at the time who subsequently became a commentator.
Nonetheless, the mode of address and behaviour of Lawrie Lawrence are
much adopted by ‘live’ broadcast commentators in a state of high, patriotic
excitement. His antics are described by Miller (1990: 92) alongside those
of the Australian Channel Ten television commentator who, as Lawrence’s
‘coachee’ Duncan Armstrong won the 200 metres freestyle in world record time,
expostulated ‘Oh my God, Oh my God!’ in the manner of Meg Ryan in the
much imitated simulated orgasm scene from the film When Harry Met Sally.
In analysing who are the ‘we’ when Lawrence shouted, ‘We won! We won!’,
McHoul (1997) argues, following Sacks (1992), that there are two types of ‘we’
– a specific ‘list’ (say a named group of swimmers or runners) and a vaguer
‘category’ (say of men or women). How, he asks, can disparate individuals with
very different histories become ‘we’?

there’s always the possibility that nonswimmers such as coach, crew, and
even family can get, as it were, on the list. Or else there can be categorical
‘we’s’ available to team fans, or indeed (particularly in the case of the
Olympics) to any person with the same nationality as the swimmer.
(McHoul 1997: 319)
At rare dramatic moments there is an unforgettable coming together of live
TV sport event and its commentary, making it impossible to disentangle
what happened from what was said. The Australian sports commentator
Norman May (1984: 116), for example, describes his much replayed words in
the closing moments of the men’s 4 × 100 metres medley in the 1980 Moscow
Olympics, ‘5 metres, 4, 3, 2, 1 – Gold, Gold to Australia, Gold’, as ‘my best
known single commentary in 27 years as a broadcaster’. At such times, sports
commentator and audience also seem to become one, united in the ecstasy
of victory.
Live TV sports commentators, therefore, have highlights reels to match