Friday, August 2, 2024

Peyton soars. SNL crashes.

Can we make the whole Olympics a Manningcast?

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• It's been a week since the Opening Ceremonies and we're finally getting our first track event from Paris, the Men's 10,000-meter final. Unedited, it would be 25 laps of the 400-meter track. NBC joins it tonight with five laps to go. All of these guys are good, so that's just as well. No one is going to try to break out of the pack they're running in until then, anyway. There are three Ethiopians and two Kenyans in the top 10, in case you were wondering which countries dominate this event. Oh! But on the last lap American Grant Fisher makes his kick right as the pack turns down the homestretch and moves from fifth into bronze! That was exciting! That's a good way to start the night.
• NBC is now going to bring it down by going to the diving pool for the men's synchro 3-meter springboard. The first two divers are Chinese, Long/Wang. What? I didn't name them! It's right there on the screen. Eek. Americans Down and Duncan make a major mistake, one of them hitting the water with his legs still bent. They get 2.5 and 3.5 for scores. I don't think I've seen that at the Olympic level. By comparison, the next two divers score in the 8.5 range. Down and Duncan were in third place, but they won't be after this round. Nope. They fell to eighth. Ouch. Ultimately, China wins gold again.
• Diving commentator Cynthia Potter gets a little gets a little love from the NBC crew. I guess she's retiring. They never actually say that, but why else would they have this segment?
• It's Snoop's Greatest Hits time! BMX riding! Team Handball! Shooting! We finally get a look at the meme of the week, Yusuf Dikec, the shooting competitor from Turkey who likes wearing t-shirts, winning Olympic medals, and starting memes. At the pool, we get a quick shot of the guy who gets swim caps off the bottom of the pool, and the scuba divers who set up the cameras. Finally, beach volleyball under the Eiffel Tower lights. Snoop has had quite a week.
• To the track! Leigh Diffey narrates the Mixed 4x400-meter relay. Two men and two women are on each team. This first race is just a heat not a final, but the US team is killing everyone else. The Americans set a new world record and beat the second place French team by over three seconds. That's a relief, because the Americans have had problems with relays in years past. In fact, even in this race, Shamier Little, the second runner, was lined up in the wrong place. Fortunately, a race official pointed it out to her before Vernon Norwood got to her. The US probably doesn't want to count on a lucky break when it comes time for the final.
• Let's get some fat-man fluff! Ryan Crouser, world record holder in the shot put, gets interviewed by Peyton Manning. And Manning being Manning, he gets Crouser into the film room to break down how his form has changed over the years. What is this? An interview with an athlete that isn't a sob story and actually deals with the technique of the sport? I… I think I liked this! Fluff that I actually liked? Am I going soft?
• All three American men make the shot put final. One American woman makes the discus final. I wish we had spent more time on these events as opposed to the diving. It's fun watching people hurl heavy things across the field.
• Sha'Carri Richardson gets some fluff. She qualified for Tokyo and then… wasn't there. What happened? NBC doesn't answer such questions. But she's redeemed herself… from this thing that we're not going to talk about. Fluff!
• Leigh tells us. She tested positive for THC. Why couldn't that have been in the fluff? Whatever. Richardson is now running in the first heat of the women's 100-meter race. She wins! We'll see her again tomorrow for the semifinal.
• Jamaica's Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce will be competing in her last Olympic Games at age 37. They show a brief clip of her destroying the competition at her son's school where they had a Parent's Race day. That was funny and, since they worked it into her waiting for the 100-meter to start, not fluff. She also advances to the semifinals.
• Great Britain's Josh Kerr and Jacob Ingebrigtsen from the Netherlands have a rivalry in the men's 1,500-meters. But American Yared Nuguse is hoping to sneak in and break up their party. Fluff, but at least there's some smack talk by Jacob to make it interesting.
• Yared and Josh are in the first heat. After two of four laps, both men are in the back of the pack. One lap to go! Time to kick! Kerr passes the whole pack on the outside, but Nuguse barely makes it, edging his way into fifth at the last second. Jacob also qualifies in his heat. Rivalry tomorrow!
• Caeleb Dressel won five gold medals in Tokyo. Was he happy? Sorta. He wasn't fulfilled because he thought he should have had some world records, too. He's his own worst critic, apparently. He dropped out of swimming and got into therapy. Now he can manage his own self-criticism and he feels better. Oh, and he and his wife have a cute baby. Awwww. Fluff!
• Tonight he's swimming in the men's 50-meter freestyle. Go! It's over. It's a fast race. Dressel doesn't medal because he's 0.05 seconds too slow. Told you it was fast.
• Next up is the women's 200-meter backstroke final. This one won't be as fast, but Regan Smith should have a chance at a medal. Smith gets silver, finishing behind Australia's Kaylee McKeown, who with this win becomes the first woman to win the 100-meter and 200-meter backstroke events in two consecutive Olympics.
• Bring out the Frenchman! Leon Marchand is back to set the French pool on fire in the 200-meter individual medley. He blazes to victory in Olympic record time. And the crowd goes wild! Marchand went four-for-four for individual golds in this Olympics. He'll never buy another drink in France again.
• Caeleb races again tonight in the 100-meter butterfly semifinal. He finishes fifth, and Rowdy doesn't think his time is going to be good enough to advance. Gaines has been pretty good with his predictions so far. Let's see if he still is. Oof. He is. All eight swimmers in heat two have faster times than Dressel, so Caeleb is going home without a medal in this event.
• Kate Douglass and Alex Walsh still have a chance for some medals though. They'll be racing in the 200-meter individual medley semifinals tonight. Both advance.
• Trampoline! Men's soccer! Men's tennis! Men's golf! Equestrian! These are just some of the many sports you won't see unless you go to Gold Zone.
• Speaking of gold, there are a bunch of gold medals coming up tomorrow, says Mike. They're calling it Gold Rush Weekend. Okay.
• Time for some cross-promotion with Saturday Night Live. Mikey Day and Marcello Hernandez of SNL race-walked against actual Canadian race-walker Evan Dunfee. They didn't do well. Back in the restaurant studio, Mike chats them up. They saw Simone Biles. They seem to believe that yelling is comedy. It isn't. Team Rockwood member Sandy asks, "Do they not have anything better than this?" Sadly, the answer is no.
• Mike recaps… the Opening Ceremonies? Sort of. He starts there then recaps the first week of the games. Ah oui, Franz… zay should be zo very proud. And to prove it, we get to see another medal ceremony for Marchand, where both he and the crowd sing once again. Most of this is fluff, but I do count medal ceremonies as events, so Mike gets a partial reprieve there.

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Where has Peyton Manning been all of my Olympic life? Oh yeah, in the NFL. But he's retired now! If we could actually get interviews about the sport with a human touch... why, that would be an Olympic-sized achievement! Hopefully we get more of that. And I know it's cliche to say that any group of SNL cast members is less funny than the previous group, but man. That was just sad. See you tomorrow, hopefully with more Peyton.

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