Millrose Games

My thoughts on the Millrose Games and its broadcasts...

So last night I'm watching the ESPN2 live coverage, and around 8:45 I finally figure out the Wanamaker Mile won't be on, and I'll have to wait until NBC's tape-delay broadcast to see it. OK, I can deal with that. It's certainly better than last year, when it wasn't on until two days later during the Super Bowl.

Well, today I sit down, turn on the tube, and...no meet. My local station decided to run a zit-cream infomercial instead. This is not the first time they've done this; in fact, they used to cut every meet/road race/triathlon until our local clubs bitched up a storm about it and we finally got to see the NYC marathon and Hawaii Ironman races last fall. But I swear, I'm going to go over there and put my foot in someone's ass.

I didn't get to see the Wanamaker Mile, the women's pole vault, the men's shot or the men's 60m (bad). On the other hand, I didn't have to hear Carol Lewis (good).

The usually-better-than-this Tim Layden took the MSG fans to task for leaving while Isinbayeva attempted a World Record...but he got her first name wrong, and his editors didn't catch the foul-up either. Still, his analysis is worth reading.

Race of the Day: Sounds like the Wanamaker. Lagat won again but it was not easy. Last week I thought Webb looked good. While I didn't get to see him, the stink is that he didn't this week. If any more confirmation was needed, we now know Craig Mottram is the real deal.

UPDATE: Nobby Hashuzime's comment: "from what I have seen so far, Mottram is a very smart runner and Webb is not. Webb seems to have his peak all over the place. There's no doubt that Webb is a very talented runner but, again from what I've seen, he doesn't seem to know when to peak."

Trend: Shawn Crawford is running well again. He says he's not being coached by Trevor Graham anymore. As Mike Wallace would have said, "And you expect me to believe that?"

This Week's TV Complaint: Post-race interviews. Most sports interviews right after the fact are rather pointless, but in track they're even more so. Unlike football, for example, our sport has precious little in the way of strategy. As a result, these interviews are little more than a breathless and sweaty exclamation of platitudes and cliches and the occaissional Lord-thanking. For most meets, I simply tape the show and zip through these mindless exchanges.

At the Edmonton World Championships they had a "media 800", where the athletes turned the table on the writers and broadcasters. Among the humiliations they (deservedly) suffered was having a microphone shoved in their faces as they crossed the finish line.