Five-ring circus: The Thread of the XXXIII Olympiad

Solid race by Nikki Hiltz. On to the final.

 

Lyles gets smoked and NBC suddenly is making every excuse in the book. Maybe he's sick? He came running out of the intro like a crazy man and played to the crowd just like he did in all the prelims.

Lyles had nothing over the last 50 meters for the Botswana guy, who also did the 100 and 200. So zero excuses, NBC. You pump up the headliner, you own it.

Sorry. Bednarek at least gave the guy some competition.

And now Tirico playing the "wah, wah, maybe he's not right" card, too.

Jingo! Jingo! Everybody gets a jingo!

 

Oh no ... he wore a mask!

 

Well, at least Kenny beat Lyles.

 

Track analyst on NBC digital feed (I think it was a recently retired SportsCenter anchor) referred to Hiltz with a "she" before immediately correcting himself to "they" and "their" or "themselves." Good job on the on-the-fly correction.

 

Not jingo -- he was NBC's Chosen One.

 

I mean, Liles ran 19.70 and was a decisive third. It's not like you can play defense. Both he and Bednarek were slightly faster than they were finishing 2-3 in Tokyo.

 

Probably was John Anderson. He was doing world feed track for Olympic Broadcasting Services in Tokyo.

Team USA women's water polo just lost in Olympic competition for the first time (edit: in a while), to the Aussies, though it was actually a shootout, which seems like bullshit.

 

Not really, that was Ledecky and/or Biles. While Lyles got a lot of attention once track started, it wasn't more than NBC paid to Usain Bolt. "The Fastest Man in the World" is an easy selling point.

 

Noah has gotten PLENTY of hype over the past few months and throughout the Games. He is certainly the network's No. 1 male star.

 

Been struggling with that myself, and I'm only posting on social media. Mostly been trying to write around it.

 

WHAT THE HELL? COVID?

OK. In 30 minutes, NBC went from "Just 200 meters from double gold!" to "What a gallant effort from Lyles, dealing with being sick!"

Does NBC really think we're that fucking stupid? Or are they that bad at Journalism 101 level sports reporting? (Yes, they're worse, but that's another issue.)