Post-Olympic Viewing

The Olympics may officially still be going on right now, but as far as I’m concerned they are over after the men’s marathon.

Track junkies want to know, how will I get my fix? There’s actually a pretty good amount of stuff coming up. Take a look at my TV listings page to see.

NBC Sports Network will be running one-hour recaps of major Olympic action, and five of them are for us. Those shows are men’s sprints (and presumably hurdles), women’s sprints, men’s distance, women’s distance, and the deacthlon/heptathlon. (Notably absent are field event recap shows, which tells you all you need to know about how NBC execs see half of our sport.) You want to check your local listings, as with anything.

Stars will be making the rounds on the domestic talk-show circuit. The two I know of are Thursday’s Late Night with David Letterman, which will have high jumper Erik Kynard, and Friday’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, which will have sprinter Allyson Felix. Check my listings page, I’ll add more as they’re announced.

Then of course is the remainder of the Diamond League, which goes to Stockholm on Friday. Universal Sports, the US broadcaster of the series, recently announced that its webcasts will be free but only be available to those whose cable providers carry the TV channel–and since NBC has hung Universal Sports out to dry and given it no support in gaining wide carriage, most of us don’t. Fortunately, the CBC webcasts are apparently not blocked in the USA, and there are plenty of other pirate feeds available. I’m not going to miss any of the meets but will simply lose what small amount of guilt I felt about not buying Universal Sports’ crappy webcasts.