Follow the Olympics Without a TV
I couldn’t have been more excited for the Olympics to start last week, but I seemed to have forgotten that catching all the action would require me to spend hours camped out in front of the TV—not exactly my cup of tea. I knew there had to be alternative ways to stay on top of my favorite events, like swimming and gymnastics, via my laptop and mobile phone.
I spent last weekend with friends who don’t subscribe to cable, which forced me to fiddle around with ways to follow the games without being sucked into the sofa. Here’s what worked—and didn’t.
Streaming Video
Sad news for anybody who’s canceled a cable subscription in favor of watching everything on Hulu: It turns out that there’s no good place to watch live, streaming video (or full event recaps) of the Olympics without a cable, satellite, or telco TV subscription that includes MSNBC or CNBC. If you are connected to one of these, you can access streaming video and full recaps of all events via NBC’s Live Extra channel.
Video Highlights
If you’re not dead set on seeing an event live, check out nbcolympics.com/video and click on Highlights to watch events’ key moments, like Lochte taking gold in the 400 IM. There are currently more than 250 videos available.
Apps
NBC Olympics (free) and London 2012 Olympics Results (free) are equally user-friendly options for quick check-ins on schedules, results, athlete bios, and medal counts.
Social Media
The Facebook Olympics hub puts pages for your favorite athletes, teams, and sports all in one place. “Like” what interests you and your newsfeed will quickly fill up with the latest from London. (Seriously, there are a lot of updates, so choose wisely.)
To follow along via Twitter, start with @London2012. There you’ll find a sidebar that lists sport-specific feeds, like @L2012Diving and @L2012Volleyball. Also check out the Fox Sports Social Media Hub for a running list of tweets from your favorite Olympians.
Fan Guides
ESPN Summer Olympics is a bit dorky, but totally addicting. If you have a question about anything Olympics-related, like “What events make up the Modern Pentathlon?” you can probably find the answer here. Clicking on “Fan Guide” under a specific sport takes you to a quick rundown of its events, formats, milestones, and athletes to watch. Infographics and videos further demonstrate the basics, like the difference between the four swimming strokes or the various components of a bow and arrow.
If you want to zero in on just the news pertaining to your favorite athlete, check out Fox Sports' London 2012 Athletes page. There you can read up on career highlights and verify stats like hometown, age, and height (yep, Lochte is indeed 6'2").
How are you following the Olympics? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
—Hollis Templeton is an associate editor at Fitbie
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