Well, they did have the best of intentions. BBC Radio Five Live ran a 90 minute-long radio programme aimed at explaining away terms and jargon used in Olympic sports. If you’re quick, the programme survives online for the next 6 days or so and you can access it here. Steve Bunch joined Russell Fuller and another studio ‘expert’ to talk through the various sports we’ll see in London.
Sprint canoe’s turn comes at 1 hr 28 in this 1 hr 30 programme and the final seconds are – sadly – cut off. You do get to hear the commentators on the panel discussing (cue many sniggers) how one ‘catches crabs’ in rowing before they moved on to canoeing. They correctly identified ‘canoeists’ and ‘kayakers’ as ‘paddlers‘, and almost managed to explain the difference between canoes and kayaks.
But it was all undone rather spectacularly by their decision to invent another species of paddler altogether: canoer. Oh dear, oh dear.
(Thanks to Alex Kew for spotting this).
