If you need one reason why the Winter Olympics are superior to the Summer Games, you need only remind yourself of that miserable, angry hedgehog who calls the diving competition. I still have no idea what her name is, and frankly I don’t care because that would likely only angry up my blood even further. You know who I’m talking about. She’s the one that no matter how perfect a dive looks, she’ll find something miniscule to needle about it and project much lower scores than the diver will actually receive.

So when I make the following comparison, please don’t take it as a knock against the generally pleasant ski jumping announcer. He’s basically fine. But watching ski jumping is exactly the same as watching diving in the summer.

As Lady E and I watched ski jumping in its various forms this weekend, during one particular jump I said without thinking, “Oh, that looked good.” I paused. I thought about that. And then I said, “How did that look good? How did that look any different from the previous 60 jumps you’ve mindlessly watched for the last two hours? What the Christ are you talking about?”

I had no idea, and still don’t. Your gut tells you a jump looked good, and you say so. A thousand tiny things all happen at once essentially invisible to the naked eye, yet you judge it to the best of your Neanderthal ability. The only thing you have to go off of that’s concrete is where they land. Wherever they hit in relation to the second line is all you can really judge while the rest of the technical elements remain a mystery. Close to that line = good. Far from that line = bad. How is style awarded on a ski jump? And why? Shouldn’t distance be the only thing that matters? Can you imagine if they judged long jump in a track and field competition this way? How strange would that be?

If you change a few words of the above paragraph, you’re basically judging diving. When the shrew commentator bewails a diver’s lack of pointed toes or poor pike position, you don’t know what the hell she’s talking about until the super slo-mo. All you know is how much splash they make on their entry. Small splash = good. Big splash = bad. Everything else is basically a mystery.

But whereas the summer games feature one of the most wildly unlikable television personalities anywhere, ski jump features odd-looking competitors with delightfully foreign sounding names like Gregor, Janne, and, uhhh, Peter with an announcer who explains in an upbeat manner what the competitors are trying to do, rather than flagellating them for what they did wrong.

I vote he learns diving and replaces that other bitch. We could spark a whole new love of diving in America. Who’s with me?

edagger@crujonessociety.com