Olympic 100-meter dash for info

8/18/2004

She looks like she s having fun out there.

Nope. Not until after the competition and possibly winning a medal. After four years of training, a transcontinental trip, and competing against the world's elite in front of an audience of billions, that brilliant grin is merely locked on for cosmetic purposes.

You can feel the electricity . . . .

Not unless you ve spilled your drink on the GameCube you re using as a coaster.

They ve got great team chemistry.

They have absolutely no chance of winning but they look very good in their national team uniforms.

Spare me from the having to hear any of these classics again, but that s not likely when NBC has paid $793 million for its Olympics broadcast contract, and the European Broadcasting Union, which includes the BBC and other Euro networks, has added $400 million to the pie to telecast from Athens. Nobody s going to see a single image without the sweet sprinkle of clich .

When you subtract the sound, Telemundo and CBC hang in there with the big brother outlets. The Olympics are pretty graphically organized already: National colors, flag, and three-character country designation. An event made for the mute button.

But if you want information, detail, background, results, and schedules, you must go with online or newsprint. The newspaper wraps up the previous cycle, and online provides the next cycle - live.

The official Athens 2004 Olympics Web site is a ticking clock full of up to the minute results. Note the military time (10:00:00 = 10 a.m. and 16:00:00 = 4 p.m.), add seven hours from Athens to Toledo (03:00:00 = 3 a.m. and 10:00:00 = 10 a.m.) to find exactly what you want without the $793 million commercial.

When Toledo s Devin Vargas fights Morocco s Rachid El Haddak in his heavyweight preliminary this morning, I know I can wait for the pageantry. What I need is the info. We will share the results with you on toledoblade.com shortly after 10:30 a.m.

Mud Hens Danny Klassen and Adrian Burnside play baseball for Canada and Australia respectively today. Canada will play Greece and Australia will play Japan.

St. John s Scott Parsons will compete in the men s K1 Kayak single heats tomorrow (Thursday) and part-time Toledoan Sloan DuRoss will compete in the men s quadruple sculls semifinal tomorrow morning (Thursday).

You can feel the electricity, here but with no travel, no channel changing, and no charge.

Only 67 days remaining before the Oct. 24 Detroit Free Press Marathon. Week 10 ended with a relatively easy 10-mile road and trail race through Hell, Michigan. The consistent and injury-free training made four hellish Livingston County hills manageable. Satan, dressed in traditional red bodysuit with pitchfork in hand, was at Mile 4 giving out high-fives. He didn t seem like such a bad guy at Mile 4. I might have seen him in a different light had he decided to hover near Mile 9.