Photography courtesy of Steve Schlanger
Broadcaster Steve Schlanger has called some of the biggest events in American sports: the Masters, college basketball, Major League Baseball, grand-slam tennis tournaments…
But none compare to the Olympic.
“The pageantry and atmosphere at the Olympics is unrivaled in sports,” says the St. Louis University High graduate. “It’s the biggest stage and boldest spectacle. I enjoy being part of something with such enormous scope and compelling stories.”
When the Sochi Olympics begin this week, with opening ceremonies on Friday, Schlanger will be there to call biathlon and skiing on NBC. It’s his second Olympics. At the 2012 London games, he did play-by-play for cycling, triathlon, swimming, and water polo.
We caught up with Schlanger a couple of days before he flew to Russia.
Describe your experience in London in 2012.
It was incredible. It was more than I anticipated. Just the sheer scope and the enormity of the spectacle is hard to comprehend until you get there. Nothing else really compares. To have something as unique and singular as the Olympics, and to be a part of that, is really special. The Olympics transcends sports in so many different ways.
Is there a moment from those games that stands out?
One was the men’s cycling road race, which I called, which was the first event on the very first day. It was a big event for NBC to kick off the Olympics. It was a six-hour show. They had over 2 million people out on the course. It was one of the biggest single crowds at any sporting event, really ever. We were stationed from our broadcast perspective right in front of Buckingham Palace, one of the iconic spots in London. That’s hard to beat.
You also called the triathlon.
In the men’s, you had two brothers who were both from Great Britain, and it was a country that hadn’t had a lot of success in triathlon before. The one pulled away to win the gold medal, and the crowd was going crazy there in Hyde Park. Then the women’s race came down to a neck-and-neck battle, which you hardly ever see in triathlon. They were sprinting for the finish, and it was a photo finish for a gold medal. That was very neat.
Did you get to attend any events as a fan?
I didn’t get much of a chance to be a tourist. But I did get a chance to go to the men’s gold medal soccer game at Wembley Stadium. That was as special and electric of an atmosphere for any single sporting event that I’ve ever been to as a spectator.
How do you prepare for the Olympics? Some of the sports you’re calling, like biathlon, which involves skiing and shooting, are pretty obscure.
In preparation, I did the Biathlon World Championships for NBC last year. It was a two-hour show we did from the Czech Republic. That got me familiar with the sport and some of the athletes. Beyond that, NBC has an extensive team of researchers and producers who do a lot of the heavy lifting ahead of time to provide information to us as the announcers. I’ll have all of the stories and the anecdotes on the athletes and the sport itself. I’ll be pretty well-versed by the time we hit the air.
With the difference in time zones, some things air after they actually happen.
These Olympic telecasts on NBC are unique in a way that we have to do them for a live audience, but we also have to be cognizant of the fact that some of it is going to be taped and aired at a different time, maybe in primetime. They’re going to pull portions of it. So part of it is just managing the broadcast as a play-by-play person.
One thing people love about the Olympics is the way NBC emphasizes the human side of the games. The personal stories make us care about sports that few people usually follow closely.
It’s a different audience than watches sports. This is a general-entertainment audience, the type of viewers who would watch sitcoms and dramas. They’re watching the Olympics, and they like those stories. They like the interesting human-nature aspect of how the athletes got there, what’s at stake for them personally, and everything that’s on the line. They’re not watching to see who’s going to come in eighth in the luge.
There has been a lot of concern about security in Sochi. Does that cast a cloud over the games?
I wouldn’t say it makes it less exciting. I think it makes it more anxious, just because you don’t know. Any Olympics has a feel unlike anything else and has a magical quality to it. This one, there’s just more of a nervousness and an anxiety from that security perspective. You just have to be a lot more careful. I won’t get a true sense of it until I arrive.
You’ve been busy lately.
I’ve done Olympic qualifying events in six different sports over the last few months for NBC. That’s on top of the typical college basketball and hockey games I also do for them. Between Halloween and Easter, I don’t have a single weekend off. Even when I get back from the Olympics, I have three basketball games that week I get back. It’s just nonstop.
Are there any under-the-radar athletes you’ve seen at those events worth watching in Sochi?
David Wise is a freeskier who I think has definite gold-medal potential. In freeskiing, which is a first-time Olympic sport in Sochi, the U.S. has the strongest nation, men and women, of any country. As far as biathlon, it’s interesting, the U.S. has its best chance in history to medal this year. They have never won an Olympic medal in biathlon. It’s the only winter Olympic sport the U.S. has never medaled in. One of the female biathletes, who earned a spot on the Olympic team, actually gave up her spot for her twin sister, who had not qualified.
Wow. How did she make that decision?
It was just that she knew how important it was to her. Her sister had been injured and was at a disadvantage and failed to qualify. It was just sisterly love, a selfless act.
