Everything Olympics

I think I went into Olympic shock over the past 24 hours trying to take in all the athletic melodrama, while continuing to chafe at NBC's fast-food coverage of the track and field events. Here's a sampling of the fevered thoughts running through my brain as I wait for the water polo, platform diving, and Morgan Freeman "Olympic moments" to end...

So Tyson Gay missed the two days of relay practice at the U.S. training camp prior to the games. Haven't we learned in basketball that it's not enough to show up with the most talented athletes if they haven't worked together to function as a team? It's too bad the U.S. mens team didn't make the 4x100 finals, but they would have had NO chance against the world-record setting Jamaican squad. The Jamaicans ran 19.30, a huge improvement over the previous WR. For comparison, if someone were to break the mile world record by the same percentage, they would take it down to 3:41.5!

On the other hand, the Jamaican women totally botched their hand-offs, showing that the U.S. does not have a monopoly on wasting its talent. The Jamaican 4x100 team featured two gold and two silver medalists. Their first handoff was merely terrible, as their number two runner got a slow start. Their second handoff was a catastrophe, as their third runner left too soon, then slowed down and drifted across her lane at the same time. Eventually NBC reached the same conclusion after initially saying that the runner left too late. And wasn't it strange to be celebrating for the underdog Russian women against the mighty Jamaicans?

Congratulations to Bryan Clay for his gold medal domination of the decathlon. I haven't seen a single second of video from the decathlon, and once again I was unwilling to sit through hours of NBC coverage of other events in order to glimpse the few moments selected for air time. The decathlon is a hard event to fit into the network TV coverage, which is not the fault of the decathlon but of the coverage. I followed live results all day yesterday and let the marks speak for themselves. By the way, American Trey Hardee was in position to medal before falling victim to the "Dan O'Brien" curse, failing to clear a height in the pole vault and withdrawing.

That women's 5000... How can they run that slow? The opening 1k took 3:39, which is roughly 17:30 pace. Did the crowd start to whistle and jeer? Well, all's fair in an Olympic final, even if it makes for a strange race. Tirunesh Dibaba made great use of her closing speed to win her second gold medal of the games, and Meseret Defar had to settle for the bronze. Has anyone noticed the woman who earned silver in both the 10k and 5k, Ethiopian-born Elvan Abeylegesse? Her performances -- a total of 3 seconds deficit to Dibaba over 9.3 miles of racing -- were tremendous, but no one much mentions her. I wonder why?

Even though I'm not a huge Jeremey Wariner fan, the guy won silver instead of gold because LaShawn Merritt ran better -- a better Olympic final, and a better season. Let's hope they both run spectacular legs in the 4x400 relay today.

All of Finland must be in mourning after Tero Pitkamaki managed only bronze in the javelin. Forget about the troubles of the U.S. sprint team, for the Finns to finish 3-4-5 in their strongest event means it will be a long, sad day in Helsinki.

As I type this Saturday morning, I can see the IAAF link to the results of the men's 5000 meters is up. Should I click on it and find out what happened, or wait half a day and night to let NBC show me five laps, with 6 minutes of commercials in between?