The One Thing I Won't Miss
SUNDAY, AUGUST 29, 2004 8:12 PM
Oh, I've enjoyed the Olympics and because there wasn't much I was dying to see, I was able with very little effort to see what I wanted between NBC, CNBC, and Telemundo. I don't really think I watched anything on Bravo, MSNBC (do I even have that?), or USA. The primetime coverage until midnight thing made mornings at work a little tough, but I can live with that every four years or so. But the one thing that really drove me crazy was the instigatorial method of questioning many of the field commentators brought to the post-match interviews. Maybe this is how it has always has been and I've just waxed over reality with pleasant nostalgia. Especially in the track and field events, the post-victory/loss interviews seemed designed to get the athletes to say something mean or blame somebody for something or even talk about someone besides the person being interviewed. After the U.S. women were disqualified in the 4x100 relay, the questions they got were not just "what went wrong?" but more like "whose fault was it?" and they tried to stick with the "we win as a team, we lose as a team" party line. With the men's 4x100, the U.S. men, who won silver (disappointing for them, lots of other countries would have been ecstatic), the questions were the same, and the men mostly stuck to their lines, playing at being good sports and good teammates, but the commentator finally got Shawn Crawford to say in great irritation that he wasn't pleased with the result. When Hicham El Garroujj won his second gold he said he was happy, but also that his English wasn't good enough to really put it all in words, did there need to be a follow-up question of the substance, "you said you were happy, but how did it feel out there when you realized you won your second gold"? Because, um, he just said he was "happy" which describes how he "feels" and asking another complex questions when the limitations of explaining in his non-native tongue have already been noted is just silly. And after, the marathon, did the "marathon expert," who I think really underestimated the possible psychological and physical effects of Vanderlei de Lima getting attacked, really need to spend two of his three questions to Dan Browne on silver medalist teammate Meb Keflezighi? (The expert said the only way he thought the attack mattered was if there had been a sprint at the finish and de Lima's upbeat attitude as he entered the stadium for the last line and crossed the finish line showed he was okay. But perhaps de Lima was happy because he made it out of the attack relatively unharmed? Wasn't it hard for de Lima to find his pace again, perfected over the 20 or so preceding miles, after coming to a dead stop and being pushed into a crowd? Maybe de Lima was putting on a brave face for the crowd, "flying like a airplane" (which isn't him being goofy, it's a celebratory thing; watch a soccer player after a goal, expert). Maybe he was shaken after the incident which slowed him physically until he could block it out, if he ever did. My point, just because he kept running didn't mean he was fine. Kerri Strug's second vault wasn't borne of her ankle feeling hunky dory.) So many times I watched thinking, "Ugh! Why are you asking that?!" For all the talk about fair play and it's great to be an Olympian, there appeared to be a blunt need to make people who probably already felt bad know that everyone else thought they should feel bad too—wasting everyone's time.

p.s. I'm not going to miss Jimmy Roberts' pieces much either. Some are interesting and informative, but most of them are way too smarmy and saccharine for me.

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