Former Singaporean national champion bashes Youth Olympic Games commentators

Hated the live commentary at the Youth Olympic Games? You're not alone.

Three time Singaporean national champion Alex Liang has written a letter to the Youth Olympic Games organizing committee to complain about the lack of gymnastics knowledge and overall poor word choice displayed by the two men who provided gymnastics commentary for the online webcast of the Games.

"It seemed that they had done a crash course on gymnastics terminology, possibly read up a few pages on the internet and were throwing completely random terms during the broadcast, trying to bluff their way through the event quite unconvincingly," Liang wrote. "They made a complete mockery of their jobs -- and this has made them the laughingstock in the gymnastics world."

Gymnastics fans generally don't like commentators, who tend to talk over floor music and make the same points over and over (how wide is the balance beam again?) but the Youth Olympic Games duo handled their jobs exceptionally badly. Among other faux pas:

-- No knowledge of the names of elements, even basic ones like a switch leap on balance beam

-- No knowledge of the difficulty value of elements, i.e. assuming that a stood up double twisting Yurchenko vault would score better than a stood up Amanar

-- Counting out the beats on floor exercise and saying obvious things like "the music changes" when the music changed

-- Taking little notice of seemingly small faults that are actually quite large faults, such as a gymnast putting her hands down after a tumbling pass ("Nice recovery!")

-- Generally incorrect statements, including mixing up countries gymnasts were from and the color of the medals they had already won

The names of the men, one of whom is from Singapore and the other from the U.S., are unknown. One of Liang's complaints is that the Singaporean commentator spoke badly pronounced English, at one point pronouncing the word "third" as "turd."

The American commentator, who identified himself as a cyclist, seemed to know very little about Singapore and incorrectly described it as situated off the east coast of Malaysia. Singapore is an island off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula.

The Youth Olympic Games organizing committee has come under fire on Facebook for allegedly inflating its initial budget, saying tickets to events were sold out despite spotty attendance at some venues, coercing Singaporean students to support the event and treating volunteers badly.

On the other hand, the Youth Olympics have been touted as a huge success by the International Olympic Committee. The Youth Olympic Games's official Youtube channel has already had almost three million views, more than the Vancouver Olympics, according to the IOC, and several countries have expressed interest in hosting a future Youth Olympic Games.

The first winter version of the Youth Olympic Games will take place in Innsburck, Austria in 2012, with the next summer Youth Olympics in Nanjing, China in 2014. Hopefully with better commentators.

Related: Read Alex Liang's letter of complaint on Facebook

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