The Trials of Jim Dunaway, by Jim Dunaway, note by Larry Eder

Many of you have known James Dunaway through his sixty plus years of covering our sport. Dunaway decided, at the age of 85, he just would not be comfortable walking up and down the stairs of Hayward Field to cover his 15th Olympic Trials, I believe.

We asked Jim, instead, to review the TV broadcast each and every day, of the 2012 US Olympic Trials.

Our TV critic, James Dunaway, Editor of American Track and Field, has worked on hundreds of track and field telecasts for ABC, CBS and NBC’s Triplecast, and has covered track and field action at fourteen Olympics.

Here is his first column.

The Trials of Jim Dunaway

A
week ago I decided to skip the Olympic Trials for the first time since
1972. I had a press credential, and I had several reporting
assignments, but I also was having some serious problems with allergies.
And 10
days in Eugene
is no way to deal with allergies.

Then
I was asked write this column, with the object of reviewing and appraising what
I heard and saw of the Trials

on TV, and when appropriate, suggesting improvements.

Tonight
was to be my debut as a TV critic. I was expecting to see two hours of streaming
video on NBCSN (NBC Sports Network, formerly Versus). But after a mixup with my
cable company – a mixup I helped cause – my streaming didn’t stream, my video
didn’t vid, and I was left to glean what information I could from the summaries.

And
you know what? The summaries are pretty damn good. They’re on the USATF web site,
and tonight’s looked like this:

When
you click on “result” for an event, you get a lot of information. Take the heats
of the women’s 800 meters, for example. First you see all the entrants in the
event ranked by their first-round results, with a “Q” or a “q” indicating that
they have advanced to the next round. Scroll down and you’ll see the finish
order of each of the four heats, which gives you an idea of how each heat was
run, and who beat who or lost to who.

And
if you were surprised, as I was, to see that Erica Moore, the 2012 World Indoor
bronze medalist, finished fifth in Heat 4, you can click on “View Splits,” and
see each runner’s time and place every 200 meters. And you can see that Moore,
despite running what seems to have been a somewhat sluggish race, was still in
contention at 600 meters – 5^th but less than 4 meters behind the leader – but just
didn’t have the finishing kick to make the top three.

As
I went through the list of results, I found myself, like a poker player looking
at his cards, slowly, slowly, one by one, peeking first to see the top
performer, then scrolling down to see the second best result and then, after wondering,
“What the hell happened to soandso?!” slowly revealing, one by one, the others
in the event.

Then
I would look more closely at the non-qualifiers, to see if any of the year’s
top performers hadn’t made the cut.

Finally,
I was down to the last two events, the day’s only finals, the men’s and
women’s
10,000. Once you’ve digested the results, you can use the 400-meter
splits to
analyze what happened, and build a real mental re-creation, lap by lap,
almost
as if you were watching if unfold. In the women’s 10,000, you can use
the
splits to see how Lisa Uhl stayed close to her training partner Shalane
Flanagan, and how when leaders Amy Hastings and Natosha Rogers picked up
the
pace at 8,000 meters, Uhl was able to follow Flanagan and finish fourth,
unless Rogers has picked up an “A” qualifier of 31:45 that I don’t know
about, means that Uhl will be on the U.S. team going to London.

Similarly,
looking at the men’s 10,000 splits, you can see how Chris Derrick lost contact
with Galen Rupp, Matt Solinsky and Dathan Ritzenhein also at 8,000 meters, and
despite a sizzling 62-second last lap, couldn’t catch the top three.

In
other words, as Yogi Berra said, “You can see a lot just by looking.”

Don’t
get me wrong. I’m eagerly awaiting Saturday’s and Sunday’s one-hour NBC
telecast, and I just wish they were going to be two hours.

In
the meantime, I’m just gonna make lemonade.

Jim