Witnesses to disaster

IT WAS an extraordinary moment. Janet Evans flinched, grimaced and ran out of frame as the Centennial Park bomb exploded in the background. Her hapless interrogator was left standing there, microphone in hand, glassy smile in place, as if nothing had happened, but Evans was gone. It was either a sign of the superb reaction times of top class athletes, or another indication that American TV presenters take too many beta blockers.

A day and a half later, Bill O'Herlihy, John Treacy and Eamonn Coughlan were in the same predicament, stranded in the wake of that awful 5,000 metres final. "There's nothing I can say, Bill said, and indeed there are times in life when a commercial break is the best option.

But not even the commercials were immune from the repercussions of what was happening in Atlanta. As those "Michelle Smith anseo" ads continued to mushroom across the airwaves (Bord na Gaeilge must be hugging themselves), by Wednesday evening Heinz's "supporting Sonia all the way" advertisement had been stripped of music and movement just a freeze frame of the runner, with the slogan underneath grim solidarity replacing cheerful optimism. The 1,500 metres heat was painful, but somehow not as bad, except for that mercifully short track side interview with Tony O'Donoghue.

"It's just sport, nobody has died," said Sonia's dad, John, and of course he was right.

But the events of the last week served to illustrate the attractiveness of the Olympics to any kook, psycho or self serving bureaucrat who wants to make a name for himself. There are very few events where an exploding bomb can be guaranteed to he caught on several different cameras.

Sky News showed the footage over and over the huge video screen shuddering under the impact, the delayed reaction of the crowd, Evans's burst for freedom and then showed it all again.

By the middle of the week, everyone was getting ratty. We've seen that already, and it wasn't worth commentating on first time around," grumbled George Hamilton, as the Atlanta director cut away from the steeplechase to an action replay of the discus But the replay probably played well in Minsk and Vilnius it's the central paradox of the Olympics that this supposedly global event is filtered through a virulently nationalist prism. Given that neither the Irish nor the British were having a good week, the mood was always going to be downbeat. At least they weren't having the problems experienced by Eurosport in the kayak pairs the Antiguans turned out to be Moldovans at the end of the race. The sound of grinding teeth was clearly audible across the satellite feed.

Once the track and field were in full swing, it 5 obvious which was the winning team. In the gold medal position, Nike's funky retro kit for the American athletes was the most ubiquitous and best looking gear in the stadium. Adidas took silver by default with their unassuming variation on the three stripes theme. Sonia's favourite, the controversial Reebok strip, looked like it had been designed by an addled Mighty Morphin Power Ranger. Asics, sadly, was nowhere to be seen.

The depressing post debacle press conference which RTE broadcast live was in stark contrast with Michelle Smith's expert media handling the week before. Of course, Smith was a winner, which makes things a lot easier, but her control of the media was almost as impressive as her performance in the pool. It was difficult to imagine her letting herself be manoeuvred into the sort of shabby fiasco that occurred on Monday evening.

THERE'S a Europe wide drive to increase the amount of wide screen material broadcast over the next few years, so RTE gets the audiovisual equivalent of headage payments for each hour broadcast hence the Widescreen Olympics broadcast every morning. Sport is seen as an ideal subject for the new format after all, the vast majority of sports take place on a roughly horizontal plane. It's impossible, though, when watching these programmes, not to feel that instead of getting extra picture area, we're actually being robbed of the top and bottom of our screens.

From the evidence so far, it's the team sports such as soccer and hockey that gain most from the wider screen in the athletics there was little benefit visible. It's not enough, though, just to change the lens on the camera. Television sport has been around for almost half a century, and its grammar is firmly based on the almost square shape of the old cathode ray tube. It will need some imagination and innovation in the camera work and direction for the new format to take off.

In the gym, the child women completed their competitions in front of ecstatic crowds. Here was cultural difference writ large the American contestants were smothered in hugs and kisses by their adoring mentors. By contrast, the Eastern Europeans just as small and just as frail looking were ignored by their grim looking coaches when they returned from their routines. Tender, loving care is obviously not high on the agenda in the former Soviet Union, as evidenced also by True Stories Experiment Of The Cross, a documentary shot in the Almaty juvenile labour camp in Kazakhstan. The title referred to the attempt by one young inmate to get himself hospitalised by swallowing a cross made of barbed wire instead of lodging in this stomach as planned, the cross stuck in his oesophagus, requiring a horrendous operation. Other strategies were even more outlandish "If you catch and kill a sparrow, and rub its gall bladder under your eyes, you can blind yourself," advised one emaciated teenager, while another suggested collecting fingernail clippings and smoking them in a cigarette to contract TB.

The camp guards were content to let order be administered by the "barons", tough prisoners who held sway with threats and violence. At the other end of the scale were the "shit birds", the weakest youths, who dressed in rags, starved, and were sexually abused.

Taras Popov, the psychiatric doctor who made Experiment Of The Cross, was arrested and sacked from his job when this deeply disturbing film was shown in Russia last year. Amnesty International has now begun an investigation of juvenile labour camps such as Almaty of which there are more than 40 scattered around the former Soviet Union. Popov's film was harrowing, but you longed for more sense of context. "You may think this is unusual, but it's just like this outside I'm better off in here," said one inmate.

FROM the bleak steppes of Kazakhstan to the bleak state of marriage in Britain, which has est divorce rate of any country in Europe. Both BBC 2 and Channel 4 took the opportunity of Charles and Diana's 15th wedding anniversary to broadcast programmes about marriages in Britain. The BBC took the lazy option with the sort of programme you feel you've seen before, even if you haven't. The Mating Game followed four couples who wed in 1995 through the nuptials and the first few months of marriage. The idea is that, like the children in Michael Apted's 7up, we will follow their lives together over the coming years, but they could have picked a more inspiring bunch.

Katy and Alex, an actress and assistant director, gave the lie to all that guff about theatrical people being interesting, while Mark and Lin were just depressing.

The main, nasty pleasure of these things lies in spotting the surefire disaster, and the marriage of Steve and Anita was plainly a Very Bad Idea. Steve was a Premier League yob, who didn't like the estate he'd grown up on because bit's full of Pakis now, inn it?" Anita, who always seemed to be ironing, claimed to have a ferocious temper, but we never saw it, although we saw plenty of Steve telling her to "leave me alone, you stupid cow". They admitted to giving each other the odd whack. "If she hits me, I'll hit her back," explained Steve. Yeah, right

Channel 4's offering, The State of Marriage, was more wide ranging and revealing, interviewing couples who had got hitched in the same year as Charles and Di. "Quite frankly, if you've got to work bloody hard at it . . . it ain't worth having," said one protagonist, cheerfully upending the greatest matrimonial cliche of them all.

CHRISTINA Hance has made her living from Princess Diana over the last 10 years, since she won a look alike competition on TVam In The Day That Changed My Life, she talked about her peculiar existence, in which reality and fantasy seem to blur into a bizarre alternative universe.

All of the people interviewed about Christina seemed conscious of yet unable to break away from, her parallel identity. "She gained in confidence so she didn't need me quite as much. We slowly grew apart," said her ex-boyfriend, using the language of the TV mini series to explain their relationship. We saw Christina signing autographs for tourists (what's the point?) and discovered that at one stage the tabloids signed her up for a Dial-a-Di service (her Estuary English can't have been very convincing).

The strangest participant, though, was Jeanette Charles, the pre-eminent look alike Queen for many years. Sitting in a royal looking drawing room, the ersatz mother in law (a much better doppelganger than poor Christina) expressed exactly the same kind of mild distaste that you would have expected from the real thing. "When she first started, she was a little embarrassed, a little uncouth. If you're going to do a part, you have to think that it's real life." Ms Charles has experienced all the ups and downs of royalty, and the difficulties of protocol. "There is a vulgar element, abroad in particular. I myself was approached to be urinated on. Of course, I refused."

HRH must know how she felt.