Today I was discussing with commenter David V about how'd he accidentally learned the results of the men's 4 x 100m freestyle relay yesterday before he'd seen the race on TV. At first, I didn't even believe him that the race wasn't live, thanks to some annoyingly deceitful tactics from NBC. (If my fact-checking is accurate, they did it again tonight. The "LIVE" graphic was up in the right-hand corner through the men's 100m backstroke, in which Americans Aaron Peirsol and Matt Grevers went gold-silver. But judging from the times on NBC's website (which say the event took place at 10:31 a.m.) and online world clocks (which say it was about 11:30 a.m. in Beijing when I was watching) the race was tape-delayed here by about an hour.)
One reason I didn't believe him was that I'd thought I'd checked ESPN.com frequently before the race Sunday night but had seen nothing of the American team's victory. I couldn't imagine what ESPN could have to gain from not spoiling NBC's surprise, other than not pissing off their own readers, which would actually be kind of sweet. I had to know if they put it up before the broadcast. My curiosity got the best of me tonight and I went to the site before when I thought the race would be televised and immediately saw the main story, that Phelper had won his third gold in the 200m free.
However, I couldn't (and, as far as I can tell, still can't) watch the video online yet, and I somehow miscalculated and missed watching it live. So I feel kind of screwed but can't tell for sure. Since I missed it, I guess it's possible NBC really did show it live...anyone know what's going on here?
As a postscript, I really liked a quote from another cool New York Times article about the Olympics and American swimmer Branden Hansen:
“In the United States, we raise the bar so high on ourselves,” Hansen said. Then, referring to Michael Phelps, he added, “Now to even be noticed, you’ve got to win eight gold medals. The poor guy’s swimming his mind out. And everybody’s saying, ‘Okay, one down, seven to go.’ Let him enjoy the one. You don’t know how hard it is to get on the blocks and do what he’s doing.”
Let him enjoy the one. I love that. There is such a small margin for error in the Olympics. We see this when we watch someone who barely qualified at trails make the finals of an event, or we hear about some veteran who missed out four or eight years ago for the smallest-sounding reasons. The one that always gets me is when a world-record holder can't quite break through for gold. Considering all that, it's amazing Phelps has even gotten as far as he has already, especially in a sport that lends itself so well to specialization.
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