The metaevent

I've been watching a fair amount of Olympic coverage this week, and as always on of my favorite sports is the metaevent: seeing just how ridiculous NBC's Olympic coverage can get.

The Olympics are so much more fun to watch then 16 years ago, thanks to the DVR. Don't want to see Mary Carillo play with the polar bears? Zip right through and on to something more interesting.

But finally NBC's coverage broke through my defenses. They showed the fourth and final heat of Women's Skeleton last night. Of course, before that they had a five minute interview with Evan Lysacek (their second in primetime) and a four minute puff piece on Noelle Pikus-Pace who was in fourth place going into the final heat.

The other American was in the 10th spot. Two Germans were in 5th and 3rd, a Canadian was in 2nd, and Amy Williams for Great Britain was in first. So naturally, NBC started their coverage with... 11th place?!?

What? As near as I can understand, her run was shown purely because she was right in front of the American and they didn't want to make it too obvious that they really, really, wanted to show the US athlete in 10th.

Now, I'm not one to ding NBC for showing US competitors that are way back: If I was in France, I'd want the TV locked on to a French athlete in 27th place. But I would also want them to actually show the medaling runs. And that's why I hated what happened next.

NBC skipped the runs for the 9th through 5th competitors, jumping straight to Noelle Pikus-Pace in 4th. Now the competitor in 5th was only 3 tenths of a second behind the Canadian in 2nd, so she was definitely a medal competitor. And they skipped her so: they could show 11th? A second interview with Lysacek? That was just wrong.

True to form, the Canadian made a few small errors at the top and the German whose run we didn't get to see took the bronze. Very exciting. Would have been more exciting if we had actually GOTTEN TO SEE IT, NBC!

Of course, I may be biased myself. The German's name: Anja Huber.