Olympic Decathlon

The last couple of weeks I have immersed myself in the Olympics. I have watched almost every hour of primetime on NBC plus a little extra.

It is fun to actually care about sports that are neglected by the masses for all but 2 weeks every 4 years. Swimming, track and field, water polo, you name it. Even BMX biking was neat. On Monday, I won’t watch a single minute of any of these for another 4 years.

Now I understand that it is impossible to show every sport and there are too many events going on at the same time to show everything on one station. We’re also watching everything about 12 hours after the fact.

They are currently showing Bryan Clay in the 10th event of the decathlon. He has an “insurmountable lead” as the announcers stated. On Thursday night they did not show any of the first 5 events in prime time because the beach volleyball gold medal game went long. Tonight they only showed maybe three of the events from the second half.

They show all these swimming, diving and track preliminary rounds. Once upon a time, the decathlon crowned the greatest athlete. When it was an American, the media let you know it. Bruce Jenner and Dan O’Brien were put on a pedestal and thrust into the spotlight. This year I feel like it was glanced over and not given its due. Bryan Clay owned the first 9 events and it got about 5 minutes of coverage. I want to see the long jump, high jump, javelin and all the rest, dammit. I guess next time I have to stay up until 4am to watch more events.