Marlowe spent the weekend of July 13 celebrating the fortieth anniversary of his gold medal win in Olympic indoor volleyball in 1984, and he’s about to jet to Paris for the Olympic Games as a broadcaster with NBC. Marlowe will be helming the play-by-play for beach volleyball for the seventh time, and it will be his tenth as a broadcaster.
“The thing that I'm looking forward to most is a return to the Olympics joy that I have had in most of my previous journeys,” he says. “Last time around, because the Olympics were delayed and the fact that they did not allow fans and there was a general pall over the games because of COVID, it was not as much fun."
The empty arena made for a more difficult broadcast, but Marlowe isn't worried this time. The beach volleyball venue has been built right underneath the Eiffel Tower, so he expects the arena will be packed and wonderful.
Before his ten Olympics as a broadcaster, Marlowe was the captain of the 1984 Olympic men’s indoor volleyball team. After he stopped playing, he was one of three people interviewed to join the indoor volleyball broadcast team for the 1988 games, and won out; he joined former football player Bob Trumpy, who did the play-by-play at the time.
“I was a novice broadcaster and he was an excellent one, but I had to help him with the volleyball and it seemed to work out well,” Marlowe says. “The United States men went on to win the gold medal, so it was quite a thrill.”
Marlowe switched to play-by-play in 1992 and was joined by his Olympic teammate Paul Sunderland as an analyst, who will call indoor volleyball this year. Marlowe then switched to doing play-by-play for beach volleyball in 2000, and has done so ever since. He says the smaller amount of players in a beach game, with just two to a team compared to twelve, means he can tell more stories and spend less time identifying who is doing what.
“We don't have time to do a two- or three-minute special on each player or each team, so it has to be incorporated in your play-by-play,” Marlowe says. “If I'm talking about Nikola Jokic, for example, I can talk about his journey from being a not-too-highly-thought-of giant, to a well-conditioned athlete, to a draft pick, to an all-star, to an all-pro, to the best player in the world and you do that in the course of the match.”
The Nuggets' game announcer for Altitude TV since 2004, Marlowe has been present for Jokic's entire story with the team. In 2023, he was honored with the 2023 Colorado Sportscaster of the Year award.Paris est un terrain de jeu et la tour Eiffel en est l’actrice principale sur le terrain de beach-volley 🏐
— Paris 2024 (@Paris2024) July 12, 2024
Venez assister à une épreuve des Jeux Olympiques devant la vue la plus iconique de Paris ✨ pic.twitter.com/FWkr2Ezjeu
In contrast to when he's broadcasting Nuggets games for local fans, Marlowe tries to be more even-handed in his announcing of the Olympics for a global audience. He only uses the word “we” about Team USA if he’s talking about his own 1984 squad; otherwise, he uses official names and tries to know as much about members of the other teams as he does about the Americans.
“Celebrate the joy of the play, and not just when it's the United States,” is the directive, he says. “You've got a lot of people watching. It's not all Americans.”
Though he “pours his heart and soul into the Nuggets,” some of his best experiences as a broadcaster have come during the Olympics. One such time was the 2008 Olympic gold medal match in Beijing between Americans Kerri Walsh Jennings and Misty May-Treanor and the top Chinese team at the time, made up of Tian Jia and Wang Jie.
Right before they were set to go on, the broadcast team got a call telling them the entire match would be aired consecutively without commercial breaks.
“We did 55 minutes of women's beach volleyball with no interruptions of commercials or promos or ads,” Marlowe recalls. “That included a five-minute injury timeout for the Chinese when the one woman was actually faking an injury to slow down the momentum of Misty and Kerri. To do that in that setting, to know that America is hanging on to every word and every play and the gold medal is at stake. …Fans are going nuts. It was one of the great experiences of my broadcasting career.”
However, that’s not a typical experience, he admits. While Walsh Jennings and May-Treanor were household names back then, fewer people know about the athletes competing in 2024. Marlowe says he prepares for the Olympics by learning athlete names and double-checking the pronunciation guide because “there’s nothing that makes people madder than if you’re pronouncing their names incorrectly.”
Expectations for the Paris Olympics
The longtime sports commentator encourages anyone tuning in to check out Team USA versus Team Serbia in men’s basketball, as he expects the scrappy “team-oriented” Serbians led by Jokic to make it a real contest. Marlowe is excited to reunite with May-Treanor on the beach volleyball broadcast, as well. The multi-gold-medal-winner will join the broadcast team for the first time this year.
Kevin Wong will be in the booth with Marlowe as an analyst for the fourth time, while former beach volleyball player and gold medalist Dain Blanton will work as a reporter for the beach volleyball broadcast.
“It'll kind of be like when I'm working with Scott Hastings and Katie Winge on Denver Nuggets broadcast,” Marlowe says of the addition of May-Treanor in the booth. “I'll probably talk a little bit less than I normally do, and be more like a traffic cop.”
On the American beach volleyball side, Marlowe believes the two women’s teams have shots at medaling, particularly the top team, which he thinks could easily win gold.
Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes are the top American team this year and are ranked in the top three worldwide. The second American women’s pair is Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss, who Marlowe says has an amazing story of competing in a sport that favors height at only five feet, six inches.
“She is a magician,” Marlowe says of Nuss. “She is one of the most fantastic athletes and players. …I asked her in an interview, ‘Does anybody ever say anything about you being too short to win a medal?’ She goes, ‘Not to my face they don't.’ She's just a gnarly dude.”
While the men’s teams aren’t as highly rated, Marlowe thinks they could be dark horses in this year’s games. Andy Benesh and Miles Partain are the first pair and have high potential despite slumping lately, according to Marlowe.
Casual fans may recognize the name of former NBA player Chase Budinger, who now plays beach volleyball and will head to Paris to represent the United States with his partner Miles Evans.
“If he can win a medal, that would be quite the story,” Marlowe says of Budinger.
Marlowe is well aware of how special the Olympics are across the world, and he thinks beach volleyball will shine in 2024.
“It's a unique venue and it's going to be one that is shown a lot,” he says. “The Olympic beach volleyball venue usually has a kind of a rock-and-roll, fun, happening vibe. …Snoop Dogg, who was part of the NBC Olympic Trials coverage, wants to come out to beach volleyball because he thinks it's kind of his vibe.”
Even if Snoop Dogg doesn’t show up, Marlowe is ready for beach volleyball to produce plenty of smoke on TV this summer.
