Notes from watching the trials with non-track fans

Great Post. I’ve experienced VERY similar reactions from non-runners/non-fans as well.

MPH and splits for things like 1400 meters are driving me crazy.

They did have 400 splits up for a few laps in the 5,000 which was nice.

Great write-up.

+1 on your point about low viewership not being inherent to the sport itself. Outside of the Super Bowl and March Madness I can't get my wife to watch any sports with me, yet she will always watch the Trials and Olympics with me.

Did Peacock not go do a dual screen during the Steeple and 5k commercials? The NBC broadcast on our local antenna channel did. I am shocked if Peacock did not. Still annoying to have the commercials at all, but at least we were able to see the race.

NBC has gone picture-in-picture for just about all commercials (i think there was one during 5000m heats where they didn’t), but Peacock has not done any of that - they’ve gone to regular commercials or a black screen.

Thanks for sharing your experience with hopefully new fans of the sport. perhaps they could make it like pro wrestling where each athlete has a persona like glamour girl, farmers daughter, etc. ESP could be the farm girl coming out of the tunnel in overalls over her kit. They could have Chelimo ride an army motorcycle or jeep to the track. They could play up Kung Fu Kenny with more than just a headband… take some footage of him doing the crane kick from karate kid. I like that Shacarrie is focused on the running now, but when she threw the wig behind her it was definitely talked about.

Mph on the screen is so freaking stupid it's just amazing. I'd love to give an IQ test to the a**hole who decided that was a good idea. (He's probably a Harvard MBA.)

This is a great perspective. Im on the west coast and turned on the meet at the end of the work day. A coworker asked what I was watching and said she’d never even watched the Olympics. It’s hard for us to realize that not everyone follows the sport like we do.

anytime I have watched the trials or olympic track with non track fans the first thing they talk about is the insane female bodies (great legs, butt, etc)

like its all thats talked about. even my wife mentions the same thing ("damn, look at that girl!")

maybe its just my crowd?

Great stuff. I agree that knowing the athletes’ back stories is huge for the casual viewer. So is some basic education on the events. While I was watching the NCAA championships a few weeks ago with a non-fan, I got asked the following question when the triple jump started: “Why do they do that?”

Why does Peacock go to a black screen for the premium/non-commercial option? Is it really that difficult to just continue the broadcast? Premium is a complete rip-off, because even though there are no commercials, the coverage is exactly the same, as far as I can tell.

The coverage is not good. I think I pay for Peacock going back to when I thought I got coverage with no commercials. Maybe I'm remembering NBC Gold. Anyway, prime example of NBC not covering the competitition, was the coverage of the Heptathalon. They focused squarely on Anna Hall. So much so that it wasn't until well after the race was over that they even mentioned who was 2nd or 3rd. And they never even went to show those ladies celebrate thier moment.

How many times do we see the camera focus on the winner, and not even show the rest of the competitors finish. And don't even get me started about not showing the entire steeple final or women's 5k final and go away to commercials!

If you go to commercial during a race, you're inherently telling your audience that this race isn't important. When you don't tell anyone how many laps the race is or what lap a race is on or how fast the last lap was or if this heat is going faster than the last one how do you expect anyone to know what is going on or care.

Thanks to OP for the report. Glad your crowd got into it.

I've been watching on NBC and haven't been happy.

-It's great they have the technology to follow each runner so closely that they can say X is running 15.2mph and Y is running 15.1mph. But I'm certain the margin of error is more than 0.1mph if they can update it every 2 seconds. Taking a step back, the pack of 5 runners is going the same pace. Showing speed for each of them adds nothing. They need to display it in a different way. Maybe they could show the speed for the lead pack and the speed for the chase pack. Or just give the mph for the lap. Just because you have the tech, doesn't mean it's a good idea to use it. It's gotta add something. The very casual fan may appreciate the mph speed but just doesn't need it for everyone.

-Following on with that same tech, I was so disappointed in the heptathlon coverage. Just like UFC Fan said, I didn't hear who was second and third until way after the race was over and immediately before commercial because of the focus on Hall. Near the beginning of the race around 100 meters in, I think the announcers said the 4th place was really going for it, trying to overtake the 3rd place in points and they said how many points differential was needed to make up. It was last Olympics or WC where they used this tech to show in the 800/1500 the point differential in real time. We could hear that X was 150 points behind and then see on screen that with the relative positions in that final race that it was now 115 points, then 5 seconds later it was 105 points, then 5 more seconds later it was 125 points. It made it exciting because it's hard to follow when it's not first across the line but who gained/lost points in that last event of the hep/dec. That was a good use of the tech but they didn't do it this time (on NBC).

-Several times they cut back from commercial or from an interview or from replays of an event that just finished and the next event was about to start so we didn't see the introductions of the competitors or at least not all of them. I realize that takes time but perhaps it's helpful for the casual fans. So many times a lot of the competitors look similar so it's helpful to get a closeup at the beginning so I can see that this runner has medium grown hair and a black/green shirt but the other guy has dark hair and a black/yellow shirt. Of course, Nuguse was easy to pick out on the zoomed out camera view but Kessler and Ciattei wore similar kits and have similar color hair (though different hair cuts). I'm sure for most of you here you could pick them out a mile away but more casual fans could easily have been confused. So, intros are important.

-As usual, the announcers on NBC didn't seem the most up to date on the competitors' qualifying situation. It was sometimes frustrating. This info needs to be in front of them. And they need to be able to explain it for the lay person. I love Ato and am fine with the others, they just could use a bit more info to provide us.

-Just for me: I wish one of the announcers could explain why the one discus throw was able to go so off course instead of hitting the cage. It was dangerous!

Thanks for that, OP. Very illuminating.

We constantly watch alone/with other avid runners, so we get annoyed at the backstory and 'coming back from injury/giving birth' angles, but it makes sense that a more casual viewer would respond more to that.

My gym had it on the big screen near the smoothie bar and people were casually watching it. They were lining up the heptathlon 800 and giving Anna Hall and Chari Hawkins some long screen time. A half dozen guys milling around started to have an animated conversation about, "Da*n! These girls are fine!".

They also watched the 5000 and Parker Valby was quite popular. Some were a bit upset when she got passed.

Catch a clue USATF and NBC!

I agree would love to see a lap counter on the screen with splits like a football score at the bottom. I was a distance runner but even for me it's hard to follow what lap they are on especially when 1/3 of the race is a commercial. Kept trying to figure out when they were actually kicking vs speeding up tempo. Plus it seems the commentators don't know when there is a commercial and they just keep talking so we miss whatever they say when the race cuts off.

ya thats just your crowd. If it'd been with my (21 yo) friends maybe that would've come up, but with my family the closest was "Wow looking at [St Pierre's] abs you'd never know she had a baby".

lol yeah someone said the same thing about the steeplechase water pits/barriers. I actually don't know, I've always assumed it's a relic of when people raced against horses.

It might be more common than you think. I was watching last night with my gay male partner, and we both commented on the incredible shape and beauty of Anna Hall.

Absolutely, if you look away for a few seconds you can completely lose where they are in the race. Idk if they still do it but in some older L&L videos they had a lap counter on screen and it was a little track that showed where they were on it and it had a lap counter in the middle. It'd be great to see that in real time since I know the technology exists for it and it can't be that hard to implement.

Especially since they're already tracking athlete's positions in real time (since they have the speeds on screen), they could have little dots for where the athletes are and maybe even a pace line for the Olympic standard or something. It would be really nice for visually gauging where the athletes are in relation to each other since camera angles can be SUPER deceiving. Wouldn't be too useful in the sprints, but 800 and up it'd be really nice. In the 5k it would have been really nice to see Valby right on the standard. In the 1500 it would've been cool to see how they went from way behind standard pace to blowing right by it.