Exhausting job watching Comrades on telly

Various activities can earn you points which eventually equate to bigger discounts and cashback. In my case, through Discovery Vitality I can earn 300 points for completing a 5km Park Run, 600 points for a 50km cycling event and a maximum of 3 000 points for completing a 6km swimming event or 42km marathon.

But once a year, I have a massive gripe with these people, as they simply refuse to recognise the effort it takes to try and watch SABC’s broadcast of the Comrades Marathon. Being blessed with a DStv subscription and the luxury of SuperSport in my household, watching the amateur-like rubbish the public broadcaster dishes up on Comrades day is torture and therefore it should only be fair to earn 5 000 points for watching the race on TV.

How many people will tell you that they will traditionally only watch the race’s dramatic ending? It is reality TV at its best as one exhausted soul sneaks over the finish line as the last official finisher and the next runner collapses in agony after missing the cut-off by half-a-second.

But what do the clueless people I waste an annual R265 on a licence do at the 12 hour cut-off at the finish? The camera pans away from the frantic incoming athletes to the gentleman firing the gun, then cuts to an horizontal runner being attended to – heaven knows on which side of the finish line – and then we break for some ads. Absolutely disgusting. But by that advanced stage of the day, nothing they do should surprise you anymore.

Only an hour before, as the gun for the 11 hour (bronze) cut-off was fired, the clock on the screen showed 10:59:57. Did they not have almost 11 hours to realise that the official time and the one displayed onscreen are not in sync?

What should a mere three seconds mean anyway to an organisation that chops off crucial seconds to round off minutes to suit their on-screen graphic? Like the message that showed the gap between the leading two women as ‘‘5 minutes’’. Is that 5:01 or 5:58? In athletics, time is actually an exact science you know. It is also confusing when a commentator says: ‘‘the KZN guy (referring to the winner Bongmusa Mthembu) has broken away and opened up a gap on the Zimbabwean (runner-up Hatiwande Nyamande) who has not responded,’’ only for the two to run around a corner shoulder-to-shoulder moments later.

But the biggest joke still must surely be hiring two helicopters at over R10 000 per chopper per hour and then showing the commentator talking inside the cockpit. Can they not save at least some of my R265 and interview them on dry land?

When last did you watch a football match where they showed the commentators talking in their booths instead of the on-field action? Okay, if there is no incentive for sitting through all that, I demand Discovery sponsors my entry fee for Comrades 2018, because running it will definitely be less painful – and I’ll get some overdue points.