Sprinting Toward The Finish

The Olympic coverage gets track-heavy as the Games near their end.

On Friday, I watched even less than I watched on Thursday. It's almost become the Rockwood Olympic Non-Watch. But I did catch some bits and pieces.

* The men's 4x100m relay is fascinating to me because some team always bungles the baton pass. This year it was the British. In Beijing four years ago, it was the United States. You wouldn't think it would be that hard to hand off a stick, but every Olympics someone misses it, so it must not be as easy as you'd think.

* Dwight Stone will be presenting his edited field report on the men's pole vault tonight. Dwight is my favorite Olympic commentator. It's a shame he only gets to talk in snippets while Tom Hammond gets to blather on for hours.

* During the women's 5000m, Ato Boldon points out that runners now will use the stadium Jumbotrons to see where their competitors are, whereas in years past stadiums used to shut off those monitors to prevent just such a thing from occurring. Right after he said that, every wide shot used by the director featured the runners in the foreground and the Jumbotron in the background. Nicely done, NBC.

* In the women's 4x100m relay, the Olympic and world records date back to the '80s and both are held by the East Germans. Well, yeah, but c'mon... those weren't really "women."

The US wins tonight in world record time! So now communism is officially dead.

* Back at the pole vault the winning height is 19 feet, seven inches. That's crazy high.

* In the men's 4x400m final the Bahamas outsprints the US on the final leg to win gold, but the most important thing according to Tom Hammond is that double-leg-amputee Oscar Pistorius finishes, an inspirational story for the ages. Oh, did I mentioned that he and his South African teammates finished in last place? Has there ever been such a big deal made about the team that finished last?

* I also caught the last part of Mary Carillo's fluff piece on a guy who designs coats-of-arms. I wish I had seen the whole thing because end part was bizarrely hilarious. Maybe you can drop me a line and tell me what I missed.

It's strange for me to be missing so much of the Olympics. Isn't that odd? That it's strange to not constantly be watching television? What has the Olympics done to me? Oh well. Vacations are good,too. See you (briefly) tomorrow!