12/6/2023 0 Comments Agony of defeat ski jump![]() In a lot of ways, the stumble looks much worse than it actually was, with his skis plowing into the crowd and the fall decking him, hard. ![]() However, the only thing that most people remember about the incident is his fall, which happened essentially because the snow made the ramp slicker than he was anticipating. A 22-year-old competitor from Slovenia, he was one of many people who jumped that day. Though he didn’t know it at the time, the event would come to change Vinko Bogataj’s life. On March 21, 1970, ABC Sports brought the world the International Ski Flying Championship from the German city of Oberstdorf, an event that took place two weeks earlier. Watch on YouTube The agony of defeat: Why Vinko Bogataj became an unlikely pop culture icon Now, let’s talk about Vinko Bogataj falling down. By 1998, Wide World of Sports was a thing of the past.Īnyway, enough about why Wide World of Sports is one of the greatest television shows in history if you weren’t aware, now you are. If you want to watch a soap box derby race in 2018, you just have to turn on ESPN8, The Ocho. And at the same time, Disney’s eventual ownership of both ESPN and ABC soon had the effect of completely downplaying ABC’s own sports coverage. As I know from first-hand experience due to the fact that Andrew Egan’s breakdown of professional cornhole drives impressive search traffic every time ESPN features the sport on the air, obscure sporting events are still a thing.īut cable, YouTube, and (more recently) dedicated over-the-top online channels have made it possible for even the most obscure of sports leagues to receive a sizable amount of notice. It wasn’t due to a fading interest in obscure sports. Unfortunately, television’s evolution made the show quickly fall out of date. And as a result, it stayed on the air for 37 seasons, an impressive amount of time for a single show. It wasn’t like the sporting events it highlighted ever aired live. The show, due to its anthology nature and focus on sports that didn’t have players with $30 million contracts, didn’t cost very much to make. Wide World, which highlighted a diverse number of sports just like the Olympics proper, showed that part of what made television great was the sheer diversity of subject matter. And Summer Olympics events these days cost even more.) For this year’s, Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, NBC paid $963 million. Two decades later, ABC paid $91.5 million for the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo. (As a highlight of just how valuable sports became thanks to the influence of ABC and Arledge, the network paid less than $600,000 for the rights to air the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria-an amount that, even considering inflation, is a steal at less than $5 million. Wide World, first aired in 1961, was one part of ABC’s multi-tier strategy to do sports well-one that also included Monday Night Football, of course, and once involved the Olympics as well. “I was always fascinated by sports, and I thought that it was one of those things that television ought to be able to do very well but wasn't doing well at the time,” he explained in a 1992 Los Angeles Times interview. The legendary producer Roone Arledge, who helped foster the idea behind Wide World of Sports (though it was created by his boss, Edgar Scherick) and later helped turn Peter Jennings into an iconic anchor, came to ABC at a time before sports had earned its place at the television table. But it also found plenty of room for rattlesnake hunts, soap box derby races, table tennis ( In North Korea! In 1979!), and weightlifting. It also brought mainstream fame to once-obscure sports, like auto racing. ![]() Wide World played a key role in bringing important sporting events to screens around the country, including Muhammad Ali’s most iconic boxing matches and the debut pro game of soon-to-be NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In the decades before massive sponsorships and shoe deals, ABC gave an array of athletic endeavors the kind of appreciative spirit that was rare on television at the time. It effectively took the National Geographic approach to televised sports. The show’s time-delayed format allowed ABC the opportunity to show off a wide array of culture, an impressive feat for a broadcast television show in the U.S.
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