Some barely-organized thoughts on the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro so far:
* I love races. There's no sporting event I'd rather watch than a head-to-head race, in almost any discipline: running, swimming, cycling ... it's the purest form of sport.
* Holy cow, Olympic cycling. Both the men's and women's road races were as dramatic as you could ask for, including steep climbs, technical descents, frightening crashes, and last-second sprints to victory. The women's event was particularly dramatic. Race leader Annemiek van Vleuten suffered the worst-looking crash I've ever seen, a crash that led many observers to fear for her life. Van Vleuten survived with a severe concussion and three small spinal fractures, none of which should threaten her mobility. The crash left American Mara Abbott in the lead, a position she held until the final 150 meters — only about one-tenth of one percent of the race — when she was caught by a trio of chasers, including van Vleuten's countrywoman Anna van der Breggen, who took gold. Less than 10 seconds became the difference between Abbott winning gold and missing the medals entirely. It was heartbreaking, but it was also one of the most compelling finishes you could ever hope to see.
* It's a shame most of us only pay attention to competitive swimming once every four years. The pool produces some of our greatest Olympic stars, from Katie Ledecky to Michael Phelps, and it's awfully compelling viewing. I wish NBC did a better job, though, of showing more athletes. Not highlighting them, just showing them. Something about seeing the athletes before the event begins makes the events more compelling. We got those views sometimes, but not as consistently as probably should have been the case.
* The women's 800-meter freestyle is a great example of what I hate about NBC's Olympic coverage. Katie Ledecky swam an amazing race. She's on a different level than anyone else in that event. But in an event dominated by Ledecky, the drama was about the silver and bronze medals. When Ledecky touched the wall, NBC cut away from the rest of the race, other than a split second when second and third place touched, though the swimmers' names were never mentioned or shown on screen.
NBC's Olympic coverage is clearly not orchestrated by sports fans. Rather, it's dictated by television producers, to the exclusion of sports fans. The focus is on the stories, not the events. In the 800 free, the story was Ledecky. She held up her end of the bargain, winning easily and setting a world record. But that allowed NBC to focus on the athlete rather than the race. It's an attitude that infuriates serious sports fans, and many casual fans as well.
I think Olympic coverage is at its best when the stories fall apart, or weren't there to begin with. Sometimes a favored athlete falls short of expectations, preferably in a preliminary round, forcing the network to cover the event itself. Or better yet, there is no story beyond the event itself. The Olympics are compelling enough to stand on their own, even for casual viewers. Everyone understands the significance of a competition that's only held once every four years. Last winter in Sochi, I loved the cross country skiing, a race with no American contenders, in which there was no agenda, just an honestly-presented race. That's all I ask for: show the event and showcase the athletes, without an agenda. Let the event tell the story.
* I've written in the past that I don't think gymnastics is a sport, but no event in the Summer Games is less of a sport than synchronized anything. While synchronized diving was on NBC on the first Monday night of the Games, I flipped away to HBO to watch Real Sports' devastating exposé on IOC corruption and the ways that hosting the Olympics exacerbates and facilitates the abuses of repressive governments — whether it's thousands Brazilians forced from their homes, Russians whipped into a patriotic fervor and manipulated into supporting Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, or water athletes at risk from untreated sewage in the waters surrounding Rio.
* The IOC investigation is mandatory watching for anyone who wants to speak intelligently about the significance of the Olympic Games. If you didn't cancel your HBO subscription after Game of Thrones ended, you can catch the program when it re-airs tonight (Tuesday, August 16) at 11 pm Eastern.
* It is jarring to watch the Real Sports' feature and then switch directly to the Olympics themselves, featuring official (NBC telecast) and unofficial (enthusiastic commercials) praise for the Olympics and the host city.
* This is the least excited I have ever been about track and field. I'm not sure why. I love races. More to the point, I love track. I was an all-conference hurdler in high school, and I've always been interested in those events. Until this year. I think the sprints, especially those under 200 meters, are over too quickly for my taste. There's not enough time for any drama to build before the race is over.
* I find it odd that the Olympic sports most popular in North America — basketball, golf, soccer, tennis — receive such modest coverage during the Olympics. You have to go out of your way to find those events. I get that NBC doesn't want to blow its entire primetime coverage on a single match, but it's a shame.
It's strange, too. We spend three weeks out of every four years ignoring soccer and tennis to pay attention to swimming, gymnastics, and track. For the next 205 weeks, we'll ignore swimming, gymnastics, and track to pay attention to sports like soccer and tennis. Do the Olympics underrate popular sports, or does the rest of the sports calendar underrate our interest in sports like swimming? I suspect the latter, but it's hard to tell, and the coverage is sort of a mystery to me.
* I don't know anyone who likes the way NBC blocks its TV coverage into four hours of unrelated events. Maybe it's to discourage DVR users? It's not viewer-friendly.
* The weirdest sport in the Summer Games, other than synchronized swimming (which isn't a sport), is Modern Pentathlon. It includes five competitions — running, swimming, equestrian, fencing, and shooting — that represent skills required for a "modern" soldier 100 years ago.
* I grew up in Maryland, so I'll end this column with a shout-out to my home state's sick dominance of this year's games: Forget Team USA: Team Maryland is dominating the Olympics.
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