I am aware that I am the only one on Usenet who watches this stuff.

A number of years ago when NBC wanted to expand Olympics coverage, it
established a new satellite channel called Olympics Channel and cable
companies distributed it thanks to must carry/retransmission consent
negotiations. This was established between Olympics. It carried sports
typical of the summer Olympics like gymnastics and swimming for athletes
on the international track. It was generally Team USA competitions but
there were a handful of foreign athletic competitions.

As we know, satellite as redistributed by cable is dead and NBC is
cutting costs. The channel will go dark at the end of Septmeber. But
it's essentially dark already nothing but reruns. It didn't cover a
major USA women's gymnastics competition in August. That was on NBC and
CNBC.

I have no idea who bought the satellite time or if NBC is just hanging
on to it. Probably not 'cuz that's expensive.

Women's gymnastics is a strange sport. I have no idea how it works but
girls in junior high and high school who are seen as top athletes are
either put on an international track, in which case they train to join
Team USA or at least to be eligible to use Team USA training facilities
while competing in qualifying events, or they are put on track hoping to
get selected for one of the elite college programs. Oklahoma University
is an example of a top college program.

Over the years it's been a fairly strict dichotomy. In USA international
track events, you get very young girls. A handful stick with it till
their mid 20s but the sport is so hard on your body that it's unlikely.

The national teams can send young girls to international events.

The elite gymnasts who competed internationally almost never entered
college programs or didn't attend college while they were still able to
compete internationally.

College gymnasts almost never qualified for national teams and therefore
couldn't compete internationally. But then, they are older and at a
disadvantage to a few of the younger girls.

It's something to do with how light weight the younger girls are and how
they can be taught to flip higher and specialize in a specific apparatus
even if they can't compete in all around competition. It's really not
good for growing bodies and they can burn out early.

In the last five years, this strict dichotemy has lessened. A few women
who competed internationally would enter college programs and compete at
the college level. But I can't think of anyone who entered a college
program first and then got diverted to the international track.

I was watching the senior Women's U.S. Classic, which is early in the season.
This one's kind of fun because the women try out newly learned skills in
competition that they are hoping to perfect in time for contests later
in the season. This was held at the end of July.

The two top performers who were far better than anyone else were Leanne
Wong, a Chinese ethnic, and Shilese Jones, black. The two women are so
elite that the competition was between which one made the least costly
mistake early in season. Wong got into trouble on parallel bars,
falling, and Jones fell twice on the balance beam. Jones made the
costlier error and came in second.

But they were both phenomenal.

I just want to point out that Wong is coached by a husband and wife. The
husband is also a Chinese ethnic and the wife was born in Armenia and
trained in the Soviet system, got treated rather poorly, and eventually
came to the United States.

Jones is coached by a white man. She's on the Florida Gators right now
but this would have been her coach from Ascend Gymnastics, not college.

Any number of the white athletes were coached by black women and others.

Just eyeballing the sidelines, it's kind of rare that the athlete and
coach were the same race, and the much older white female coaches
probably came out of central Europe or were even Russian and wouldn't
have shared any common experiences with young girls born in the United
States.

And yet, despite ethnic and racial differences, it all works.

I'm so fed up with that endless refrain "I didn't seen anyone who looked
like me while I was growing up." In elite athletics, it doesn't make a
damn bit of difference.