The 10,000 meters has not exactly been a strong point for the U.S over the years, and any time an American does well it's generally considerd an upset (c.f. Billy Mills in 1964).
But Shalane Flanagan is no fluke, and she overcame the heat (no ice vest for her), a case of food poisoning that kept her from running for two days, and a blistering early pace to win the Olympic bronze in the first track final of the games. It was only the second time the U.S. has medaled in the 10K since 1984, and it is an odd footnote that both of those medals were won by women born and raised in Massachusetts.
Flanagan ran with a perfect combination of brains, confidence, and mental toughness. The food poisoning had been serious enough that she couldn't keep food down for two days and it would have been entirely understandable if she had withdrawn from the 10K to focus on the 5K, which would give her more time to recover. Instead, she just went out and ran her own race, figuring she had come this far so what the hell. According to the Shira Springer's excellent story in the Globe, Flanagan had a moment in the race where she thought to herself "this could end really well or really badly."
In eighth at halfway, Flanagan started picking off other runners, and moved into 3rd with about 800m to go. At the finish, she wanted to celebrate but because of the lapped runners, she wasn't sure she was third. But she knew she had run a great race; it turned out to be an American record 30:22.22, about 28 seconds behind Tirunesh Dibaba's Olympic record 29:54.
Flanagan's race made staying up late worthwhile, but NBC's paltry coverage was embarrassing. It was bad enough that they waited until after 1 a.m. to show the event, but in the end they showed barely a quarter of the race. In fact, before they showed the finish of the 10K, they showed throws from the men's shot put finals that took place AFTER the finish of these. It wouldn't have mattered, except that in one throw you can clearly see the finish of the 10K on the stadium scoreboard.
I hate NBC. I hate them with a burning passion.
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4 comments:
It's too bad too... NBC's live swimming and gymnastics coverage has been for the most part excellent. Why couldn't the games have the track finals in the AM like those events, thus allowing us to see everything live?
BTW... they cut away from the women's 800 meter freestyle for commercial, apparently because the 8:14 race was too long to keep Americans interested.
Sometime soon coverage will be complete for each sport. Probably on line. A site for full-time trackies to see every event in entirety with track based ads on the side or after/before each event. Gotta think this business model makes sense. I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet. One channel for all olympics is a bore.
Commercials pay the way, so you cannot really avoid them.
I say bring back the Triplecast they used for the Barcelona games. That was terrific! It was worth the price to see virtually everything.
no, shotput finished before the 10k started, i was there. they did the medals before the start of the 10k too. grrr, i was really rooting for adam nelson.
the coverage in china's been so complete i forget how spotty the US is with the events that aren't big there. there are 6 channels in China dedicated to the Olympics.
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