TELEVISION / Talking against the clock: Giles Smith on a week when the action moved faster than the brain

The weightlifter eased the bar to his chest, then thrust it upwards and locked tight. 'What an incredible jerk,' shouted David Vine, who is perhaps not enjoying the happiest Olympics of his career.

As the first week of the Games unfolded, Vine - competing solely in the weights section - appeared increasingly to be suffering from over-preparation. This year, he's added to his familiar repertoire of throaty growls the stagey guffaw of an unhinged Santa Claus. 'Ho ho ho,' he bellows, as yet another Bulgarian hoiks up a load 56 times their own bodyweight. Vine has also taken to interpreting the lifters' grunts as if they were some sort of heavily-cloaked Noh drama, unfathomable to all but the experts. 'Oh yes, he says; thank you very much, he says. You might as well give me the gold now.' In fact, what the lifter had said was 'Hnnnnghh, raaarghh,' and then 'Yeeerrrrghh,' which is pretty much the international language for intense effort followed by exhilaration. In this competition, commentary is excess weight.

Not all the events are so simply decoded, though. There will be plenty of viewers who, until these Olympics, thought Coxless Pairs were a kind of fruit, and the generous thing about Desmond Lynam (anchoring the coverage) is that he's not embarrassed about playing the stooge on our behalf. 'Let me get this straight,' he said to David Moorcroft, 'the pairs use one oar each, the sculls use two.' 'Triffic,' said Moorcroft, in a rare moment of eloquence. And on Friday, Des ran us through a few of the rules of baseball, pausing only to ask 'Am I boring you?' In a world where Vine-style, blind commitment is the norm, Des scores high points for appealing to the casual interest. He is the missing linkman.

Everyone else is going crackers. Explosions are this year's rhetorical device, on the track ('look at him explode off the blocks') and, most surreally, in the gym ('she's really going to have to explode off that horse'). 'Vaidianu has blown up,' announced David Coleman, as one of the runners dropped back. On Friday, the track events were a mess of false starts and nagging hindrances - the perfect context for Coleman.

In his hands, the simplest statistic becomes an exercise in long division. In the women's marathon, Arimori hit the front early. ('One of the new Japanese runners,' noted Brendan Foster, as if describing a personal computer.) 'Her debut time was one of the fastest . . .' said Coleman. 'Two 26 point, er . . . Two 26. One. Er . . .'

So, Linford Christie's big moment in the 100m loomed ominously. 'Christie,' said Coleman, 'knows how to organise himself for the big races.' But did Coleman? Christie finished in a blur of legs, Coleman in a blur of cliches ('the crowning moment to a glittering career'). They played the race again. 'These are pictures which will be shown a million times,' said Coleman. You assumed he meant in the course of history, but in fact he meant over the next half hour. By midnight on Saturday, you were familiar with every slow-motion billow of Christie's cheeks and every stiff syllable of Coleman's commentary. 'He put the Americans and the rest in their place.'

That little nationalist side- swipe joined a growing catalogue. Gerald Sinstadt, by the river after Britain's Coxless Pairs victory, referred to the 'suitably martial' music preceding the medal ceremony. Is this jingoism necessary? You could see why, in a race which included someone called M Mnawamnam, a commentator would want to back an athlete called Phyllis Smith. And during Britain's cycling triumph on Wednesday, it had indeed been heartening to see a British team-member who was on a bicycle, rather than on an illegal substance. But that was no excuse for the line 'I think he's going to find the Brit coming up his back axle even now,' which combined unbridled patiotism with an almost Vine-like disregard for words and their resonances beyond sport.

The problem with all this flag flying was that it created a disproportionate emphasis in a week in which, for the most part, your best bet of catching sight of a British athlete has been on a reverse camera angle. And that's about the only viewpoint Barcelona's excellent television technicians have not catered for.