The Good:
With World Cup and Tour de France active, along with MLB, kudos to NBC for coverage of the Prefontaine Classic at Hayward Field today. It is difficult to find T&F events covered at all, and this one was covered reasonably well, except
The Bad:
Tom Hammond. Know the voice, Wikipedia tells me “play-by-play announcer for NBC Olympic coverage since 1992”. So after a fine Bowerman Mile won by Asbel Kiprop, I have to react to the lamest piece of sports reporting I’ve heard in a very long time:
“Yet another sub-four minute mile in the Bowerman Mile”.
Pretty Ugly:
Hammond was a ten-years old when Roger Bannister broke the barrier in 1954! 56 years later it is common place. There has never been a super-four minute mile at the Pre Classic. Yet another? Step it up.
Oh come now. You expect people to know such stuff? Who’s Roger Bannister anyway?
(I vividly remember opening the green sports pages of the San Francisco Chronicle one morning in August 1975, while on a trip to the west coast with my sister, and discovering that John Walker had just run under 3:50. I was stunned.)