I am headdesking myself for finding about this after so many of the gymnastics events are over. But I found the optimal solution to watching the BBC Olympics coverage: use
Tunlr. There are no apps to install, no ads to look at, and it works on almost any platform! Just go to the site and follow
the guide. A note about the guide: I'm on a Mac, and when I followed the guide, I saw they wanted me to restart the computer after inputting the IP addresses. I was like LOL wut, I shouldn't need to do that. And indeed, I did not. I went to
Tunlr's status check page, where everything was green. I went to
BBC's Olympics page, and I could watch anything I wanted immediately.
So again, if you use Tunlr,
you very likely do not need to restart your computer. Just visit the
status check page after you put in their DNS address.
Another important note, although Tunlr reminds you of this,
remember to change your DNS address back after you watch the broadcasts. This way you won't unduly cog up the tubes and machines of this free service. You may want to write/type it down before changing it to the Tunlr DNS to make sure you don't lose it.
Edited to add a
troubleshooting tip: If you visited the BBC live player site before you are using the Tunlr DNS, the BBC site may refuse to feed you its delicious video even after you switched on the Tunlr DNS. If that happens, just close the BBC window, quit the browser completely and restart it, and it should work.
Further edited to add: If you missed any of the BBC's excellent coverage, you can use Tunlr to watch
archives of its Olympics broadcast.
Further further edited to add
another troubleshooting tip: I just had BBC rudely tell me they won't let me play an archive video because I'm not in teh UK even though I turned Tunlr on and restarted my browser. I managed to fix that by going to Firefox preferences, click on the Advanced button on the right, then the Network part in the bar, and the "Clear Now" button under Cached Web Content. Then I restarted Firefox and loaded the BBC webpage completely fresh, et voila, the video showed up. I'm not sure what the equivalent procedure is on other machines and setups. If someone has that problem, too, I will try to google a solution if you ask.