No, please please please don't.
Ian 'the gaffer' Woods ... nightmare!
Gaffe after gaffe... constantly miscalls the race/gets names wrong/etc etc.
Posey, co-commentating, constantly needing to correct him.
Although tbf, on his lonesome, he does sometimes correct himself on realizing the errors.
Patrick and Mike make an equal number of gaffes.
Patrick and Mike miscall the race frequently, usually because Mike is busy actually trying to do his job and then misses what happens on the screen and can't correct Patrick when he is inventing what he wants to be happening or knows nothing about anybody outside the top 10-15 names.
Patrick and Mike constantly get names wrong, especially Patrick.
Frequently Patrick will make some preposterous suggestion, or realise he has nothing to say and ask a truly anodyne question, and Mike will invariably say "I was just thinking the same thing, Patrick" and try to fabricate some kind of narrative around it.
Patrick and Mike are also biased to a completely unprofessional level, root primarily for the overdog (as long as that overdog is American or Norwegian), constantly bring up their favourites even if they have long since retired or are in a completely different sport from the one they're trying to commentate on at that moment in time.
Mike is at least capable of reading a timing screen and once in a while will disagree with Patrick when Patrick invariably insists that the sport is infinitely better when things are mass start and made shorter because it makes his job easier not to have to try to learn anything about the early starters on the XC or the people who are doing well from late starts in the biathlon time trial events, and will often completely ignore some of the biggest stories of the day like that to talk about somebody he
does know about so that he doesn't have to expose that he doesn't know anything about the people he's watching.
Ian and Posey just watch the race and talk about what's happening. Sometimes not very competently, but at least they're talking about what's happening and not just inventing a spurious reason to ignore a career best performance or a breakthrough top 5 from a less well-known athlete to talk about how Petter Northug would have done it if he had only been 25 again and how much more exciting he made the sport because 50k races went down to the last few seconds and if only they made those races shorter so more sprinters had a chance, more people would enjoy distance races, or how the Lithuanian man skiing to 15th in a biathlon Individual after hitting 20/20 must have been inspired by Jessie Diggins because he skied hard to the line.
Patrick Winterton is worse at commentating wintersports than Carlton Kirby is at commentating cycling. Hell, he's worse at commentating wintersports than Carlton Kirby is at commentating wintersports, I've heard Carlton call speedskating and while it was terrible and he had absolutely no idea what was going on, at least it was enthusiastic.
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