Over the next two weeks the Canadian Sports Media Blog will feature sport-by-sport TV schedules for every Olympic sport that is broadcast live on Canada TV during the 2012 Olympic Games in London. I will post about two per night, so keep checking back to see the schedule for your favourite sport.
Equestrian has a very loyal fanbase in Canada, especially in Alberta, which is home to Spruce Meadows, a worldclass show jumping facility. CTV’s coverage of the sport in London reflects this as OLN will broadcast complete coverage of most of the equestrian sessions. In total around 46 hours of equestrian coverage will be broadcast by the Olympic Broadcast Consortium.
Canada’s medal chances in equestrian rely on our jumping team. Eric Lamaze is the defending Olympic individual champion, while the Canadian team won silver in 2008 in team jumping. However a lot has changed since 2008. Lamaze’s horse Hickstead tragically died last November following a competition in Verona. So far this season Lamaze has had mixed results on his new horse Derly Chin de Muze. Some things, however, rarely change. Ian Millar will make his 10th Olympic appearance, an Olympic record. He is now 65 years old. Lamaze, Millar and Jill Henselwood all return from Canada’s 2008 silver medal winning team, albeit with three different horses. Canada figures to have two medal chances in both individual and team jumping.
Canada also has an outside chance at contending in team eventing though. The Canadian team won the silver medal at the 2010 World Equestrian Games in that competition.
I have highlighted these three events in red in the broadcast schedule.
Jim Van Horne will make his sixth Olympic broadcasting appearance calling jumping for CTV. Van Horne called baseball and softball in Beijing for CBC. CTV’s jumping analyst is Nancy Wetmore, a veteran of CBC’s show jumping coverage.
Remember that this schedule is highly subject to change. Check back daily during The Games for an up-to-date broadcast schedule. All times are Atlantic Daylight Time, which is BST-4 and EDT+1.
Eventing
Monday 7/30, 8:30am-1:40pm on OLN – Cross Country
Tuesday 7/31, 6:30-9:10am on OLN – Team Jumping Final
Tuesday 7/31, 10:30-11:35am on OLN – Individual Jumping Final
Dressage
Thursday 8/2, 7:00-11:30am on OLN – Team Dressage (day 1)
Saturday 8/4, 6:30-10:15am on OLN – Team Dressage (day 2)
Tuesday 8/7, 6:00-11:45am on OLN – Team Dressage Final
Thursday 8/9, 8:30am-12:30pm on OLN – Individual Dressage Final
Show Jumping
Sunday 8/5, 7:00-10:30am on SN – Team Jumping (round 1)
Monday 8/6, 10:00am-1:00pm on TSN – Team Jumping Final
Wednesday 8/8, 8:00-9:30am on CTV – Individual Jumping Final (round A)
Wednesday 8/8, 10:45am-12:10pm on CTV – Individual Jumping Final (round B)
A Rouge Point 
Just a note on the equestrian coverage. According to the schedule on CTV Day two of Dressage Grand Prix is actually on August 3 and there is no coverage schedule on any of the channels. August 4 is scheduled for Individual show jumping.
Further changes to the equestrian coverage on TV. Now most of the equestrian events are on World Feed.
What is World feed and how does one get to view it?
On the CTV Olympics website, under Watch Now.
Would love to know too…tried to watch and there was just a blank screen via CTV.
I haven’t been able to find any equestrian coverage either … lots of beach vollyball though!!!
Should have been Ian Miller carrying the opening flag! 10 Olympic Games, a record no one else comes near. JMHO.
I agree. It is a record not only in equestrian, but in any desipline and should be honoured in this way.
Good point! Though Ian is Canadian and not British. Hey canada keep that in mind!
Nobody said Ian was British… And by “Olympic flag”, I think she meant Canadian flagbearer.
Yes I did … Thank you :o)
where is the tv coverage of EQUESTRIAN!!!! can’t find anything!!!
It is 10:13am and I am a Montrealer with Videotron cabel. I am on the OLN channel and there is no equestrian coverage. Why?
Last minute schedule change, it seems. See the main page of my blog for the most up-to-date schedules (I post them daily).
I have been scanning the channels since 3:00 am PST – no mention of equestrian. just when I thought we were getting somewhere with Olympic coverage, we are back to the dark ages. The Bold coverage of the Beijing games was wonderful – do you suppose we can thank our fearless Prime Minister’s cuts to CBC funding for this? I have this fear that the world still regards equestrian as an elite moneyed pastime – I know it from the inside and can assure you the eventing team in particular is only elite in the sense of being incredibly dedicated, hard-working, and talented – no less than in any other sport.
Has nothing to do with Harper whatsoever. CTV won rights to the Olympics way back in 2005. OLN is showing a fair amount of equestrian.
So far OLN has shown absolutely no equestrian. They were supposed to show it yesterday, and instead we got “Storage Hunters.” They were supposed to show it today, and instead they showed men’s soccer (football.) I have little faith that their next scheduled equestrian event will be shown.
I received an email from CTV saying equestrian coverage for Saturday and Sunday had been removed from the schedule late last week. I have received lots of emails about changes to the Olympic TV schedules in the past few days, but none of them mention removing equestrian coverage tomorrow. Restore your faith any?
No, it does not. The TV schedule and the OLN website said that the events were being shown, and if you were able to get an email “late last week” about the removal of the events then obviously this was not a last-minute thing and could have been mentioned on the OLN website and the information could have been provided to the cable companies when they were preparing the schedules. It appears to me from what has happened so far that CTV just plain doesn’t give a rat’s ass about equestrian events or their fans.
Thursday evening is last minute when the schedule had been set for weeks beforehand (and had been public for about 2 weeks). OLN is a poorly run channel, I wouldn’t put much trust in their website.
Let me rephrase this. Everytime CTV makes a change to their schedule I get an email. I haven’t got an email about OLN removing tomorrow’s equestrian from their schedule. Doesn’t mean I won’t get one, but does mean that as of this second it is still on the schedule.
Not sure where you all were looking. I watched Cross Country and stadium jumping on OLN exactly when they were scheduled, no problem. The times given were Atlantic time. This morning started at 6:30.
Is there going to be ANY coverage at all of the equestrian events? Watching them through World Feed (assuming it works) from two in the morning from eight in the morning, and then going to work at nine, is not really my cup of tea. Alternately, is there a way to view World Feed events *after* they’ve been shown live? Like other than at two in the morning?
Yes. As of now OLN is still scheduled to show the eventing beginning with the cross country event on Monday, as well as the entire dressage competition. Sportsnet, TSN and CTV are showing the jumping competition. Of course, this could change.
I think the world feed events are available on-demand on the video section of CTVOlympics.ca. Might be a bit hard to find though with so many events.
I looked through the CTV Olympic website and I couldn’t find anything about on-demand. Unfortunately when you click “equestrian” it just takes you to a page marked “other events”, which is not very helpful. In fact, the entire website is very confusing, but I’ll keep hunting.
I looked for dressage on OLN’s schedule, but it’s also confusing because Shaw Cable says “Storage Hunters” is on all day tomorrow, while OLN’s website claims they’ll be showing the dressage tomorrow. OLN claimed they’d be showing the dressage today as well, but instead they showed a “Storage Hunters” marathon.
NBC will apparently show the individual jumping finals, according to Yahoo!Sports.
See above for the updated schedule. OLN isn’t showing equestrian tomorrow, but will begin on Monday morning. Seems they removed this weekend’s coverage from their schedule for some reason.
NBC is also showing the jumping final, but not anywhere near as much coverage as CTV is showing.
How do I see this morning’s events and tomorrow morning’s events? I haven’t had much luck with the on-demand thing on CTV’s website. Also, how do we know for sure that OLN won’t drop the rest of the Olympic coverage? They said they were going to show the dressage today and tomorrow, and then they dropped it suddenly, so how do we know they won’t do it again?
We don’t ..but if they do…I for one will cancel my subscription and NEVER watch their channel again.
To view events after they’ve been shown live:
• Go to ctvolympics.ca
• Mouse over “Sports” on the menu bar and select your sport (equestrian)
• Scroll down.
• Below the “Live Now” box, you will see another box (with a red bar at the top) that has 3 tabs that say: “Equestrian”, “Modern Pentathlon”, and “Weightlifting”
• Make sure you are on the Equestrian tab
• To view events from today, click on “28 Day 1”, just below the red top-bar
• You will see a list of events. Click on “Results” for the event you want to watch
• Just above, the results table, you will see “Full Event Replay”. Click it.
• Ta-dah.
Awesome, thanks!
I found the dressage on the CTV site, but there was no commentary. All there was, was a horse and rider going around the field but no explanation of what they were doing. The explanation was: “Our TV coverage has live commentary but out online content does not.” I found this very frustrating as I know little about the sport of dressage and would have liked to have an understanding of what the riders were doing, what they were being scored on, what the judges were looking for, etc., and know whether each person was doing well or not.
They can’t really provide commentary for every event happening at the Olympics. I’m sure there are people watching fencing and sailing thinking the same thing.
This is all very frustrating. At least I found this site and now realise it’s not a case of my being too stoopid to find the coverage.
I will keep checking back here. Surely SOMEONE will cover eventing cross country tomorrow. But I no longer have any confidence equestrian sport fans will receive the coverage they should have.
Why are you all so surprised at CTV ‘s unhappiness about covering any horse sports. CBC covers Spruce Meadows, now does it not. During Spruce Meadows there is not much coverage of results during sports/news broadcasts. Or does CBC have something to say about that? Copyright or something?
I just checked in Calgary, Shaw Cable’s on-screen TV Guide, it appears that CTV will broadcast Cross Country tomorrow evening after early news broadcast. Along with coverage of a lot of other events. How much Equestrian in that jumble????? Shaw has no listing for Tues. or later. The local Sun Newspaper prints a TV Guide, it writes OLN will broadcast Cross Country, Mon. morning, 5:30 MDT. I don’t know if that is national or not.
I just buzzed through OLN’s programming for the next 12 days and found every Equestrian event that I want to see. They also have a ton of other stuff that doesn’t interest me, but is looks like they’re going heavy on the Equestrian events. Yay!!!
When I look at the OLN website, they list a lot of equestrian coverage for the next few days, but when I look at my program guide on my tv (Montreal, Videotron), it lists rowing and tennis. I am hoping their website is correct and my tv listing is wrong. Do you know if CTV will cover any tomorrow? OLN was great for the Cross Country today. Thanks.
Who are the commentators for the cross country on OLN ?
I didn’t see it, but I believe Nancy Wetmore was one of them. Not sure who else.
The other commentator is a rather inept British woman with the first name Cara/Kara.
I’m in Calgary & OLN is showing full coverage for the Equestrian events.
I believe the other commentator is Cara Whitham , an extremely experienced dressage judge who has served on many judging panels in international competitions.
Found online:
“Cara is an FEI 5* licensed judge for Dressage and Eventing, and on the FEI list of approved Dressage Technical Delegates.
Her officiating includes Badminton, Burghley, Luhmuhlen, Chantilly, Lexington, Aachen, Frankfurt, Saumur & Olympia, and many CCIs & CDIs around the world.”
Oops, sorry! Really!!
Makes sense. I think she was part of CBC’s coverage in 2008 as well.
Cara is lovely! She has a beautiful way of describing what’s going on and I could listen to her for hours!
I find Nancy Wetmore rather annoying as she keeps interrupting Cara, and of the two of them, I’d much rather hear what Cara has to say. It also doesn’t help that she does embarrassing things like commenting on the orange (non-existant) cheering section for Denmark (I think) and then telling us she had it confused with Holland. I found her commentating clumsy, nasal, and annoying. I wish she would stop interrupting Cara and let her talk…
Lisa
I totally agree with you about Nancy!
Cara Whitham may be an expert in the sport but some of her commentary is indeed inept. At the very least, as a Briton, she should know better than to persistently refer to Great Britain as “England”.
She also refers to the horses as having “toes.” “Oh, the horse hit the rail with his big toe on his hind foot.” Seriously?
I am totally appalled at the coverage of our beloved equestrian sport – I have been watching the Olympics since 1976 and have been disappointed every time. I agree that Ian Millar should of been our flag barer as he is an Icon! OLN has “half decent” coverage (if you’re ok getting up at 5:30 am) but CTV/CBC/BBC are very disappointing. It seems beach volleyball & little bikini’s are more important-there are many stations that can offer this type of crap! Can anyone tell me where is Ian and Eric? no one has mentioned anything about them…are they even competing?
You call beach volleyball crap, I call it a great sport. All a matter of opinion. The whole “beach volleyball/bikini” connection gets very tiresome as a fan of the sport.
Eric and Ian are competing next week. I’m sure they will get mentioned lots once the jumping event begins.
BTW, OLN is re-broadcasting equestrian in primetime many nights at 7:00pm ET. Fans of that sport aren’t the only ones who have to wake up early. As a rowing fan I love getting up and watching some of it before I go to work.
No rerun of Dressage in Calgary, today. Shaw’s on screen TV Guide reads that it is being broadcast, what I saw was rough water canoeing, whatever the proper name is. Sorry, I’ve never even heard of this event before.
Equestrian events are my main interest in the Olympic Games! Can’t even find a Canadian TV schedule! So disappointing.
What is going on with OLN??? They have no jumping scheduled anymore for Sunday or Monday (Aug 5th & 6th)!!!!!! I’m sure we could do without a few dozen episodes of “storage wars” and broadcast all the equestrian events as they occur. All I ask is 3 or 4 hours at 6am. PVR is a great invention.
It’s on Sportsnet tomorrow and TSN on Monday.
Trying to watch the kur and listen to their musical arrangement but the performance is all but ruined by the constant dribble of the commentators! Am I alone on this ?
Didn’t watch it; but I can believe it.