Andrea Kremer was thrust into the swimming world's spotlight last year as NBC/Universal's on-deck reporter for swimming & diving at the Beijing Olympics. A year later, she's back at the biggest meet of the year - 2009 World Championships in Rome.
Personally, I think she's ok on the sidelines at football, but her coverage of swimming has been abysmal. In Beijing, it was the same question over and over again to all the swimmers - "How does it feel..." - and that she was out of her element and had no idea what to ask - "Tell us about that swim." Rome was much of the same, though I will give her some credit that she did have some better material in Rome, but I feel like she was really reaching with a lot of her questions, and she visibly irked M.Phelps with repeated (read: nagging) suit, Biedermann and Cavic questioning.
Now you play NBC Sports Exec - Who do we bring in to replace her?
My pic - Summer Sanders had done (I thought) a real nice job asking some provocative questions as well as making some great on-the-spot observations while covering the Charlotte UltraSwim. With a household name like hers, why was she not kept around for Rome - if even only for the Universal Sports broadcasts? She's a woman, with experience, AND has first-hand knowledge!
Kremer is terrible - a borderline idiot. She has a script of questions to ask - and cannot seem to react or adjust to what the swimmers say.
But she doesn't say any dumb things like Rowdy said this weekend - "they keep going forward!"
Rowdy did move away from his old cliches. I heard Dan Hicks say "splash and dash" but did not hear Rowdy say it. And I didn't hear either of them say "swimming's decathlon" during the 400 IM's on Sunday. I thought Rowdy did a good job overall. Still not sure why he belittled the 50 stroke events though.
Kremer is terrible - a borderline idiot. She has a script of questions to ask - and cannot seem to react or adjust to what the swimmers say.
But she doesn't say any dumb things like Rowdy said this weekend - "they keep going forward!"
Rowdy did move away from his old cliches. I heard Dan Hicks say "splash and dash" but did not hear Rowdy say it. And I didn't hear either of them say "swimming's decathlon" during the 400 IM's on Sunday. I thought Rowdy did a good job overall. Still not sure why he belittled the 50 stroke events though.
