The ravening horde of Motty clones

Were sports commentators always as hysterical as they are these days? I'm sure it used to be that only very tense climactic moments would have a commentator screeching breathlessly: the final furlong or two of a close horse race for example.

Now in fast-moving sports like horse racing you can understand the necessity to babble at dozens of words per minute to keep up with the events as they unfold. But this seems to be the default setting for pretty much every sports commentator nowadays. (Possibly not golf, or bowling.)

And why the obsession with ridiculous statistics and beyond-pedantic levels of precision? In sports where the difference between competitors might be some fragment of a split second then fair enough, e.g. formula one racing, cross country skiing, the 100m hurdles. But yesterday the kids were watching the umpteenth World's Strongest Man competition (an edited highlights package I believe). The commentator did not shut the fuck up for even a half-second and there would be one or more stupidly precise statistics in every breath e.g. "he's held that car over his head for 21.07 seconds and that's going to be a tall order for the home fan's favourite to beat...".

Seriously: if two large Scandinavians can both hold a car off the ground at knee-height for approximately 21 seconds then for god's sake let them share the first place for the round! (Yes: every single never-ending sentence had one or more mentions of the competitor's nationality, usually with a handy cliche appended e.g. "hard-working Scot", "plucky Swede", "titanic Finn".)

Games consoles these days offer a very wide range of sports simulations and each of these come with a commentary track so that if you feel inclined you can hear Ally McCoist or Alan Hansen or some other muppet of that ilk tut-tutting about "a shocking game for the 'keeper..." and three hundred other stock phrases strung together by some mumpty algorithm in the software. Telling the difference between these simulated commentaries and the "real" thing grows increasingly difficult; not because the games are becoming more sophisticated but because the commentators themselves are so robotic.

Before I leave the subject of World's Strongest Man I'd like to sgguest this become the latest format to be repurposed as a celebrity version. I missed the latest outback show in which Jordan apparently ate Skippy the bush kangaroo's brains on toast but Joe Pasquale lugging a tractor tyre around Sittingbourne Greyhound Track would be one for the Sky Plus box and no mistake.