NBC did such a good job announcing the Athens swim meet that I wonder how they could have so bungled the track and field. It's a simple thing really. These events are not happening in a vacuum. This event, these Olympics, are part of a continuum of sporting history. Therefore, in order to appreciate and understand what we are watching, we need perspective. It could come in the form of a featurette, as it so often does. It could come in the form of historical performance including archival footage of past games, which we so rarely see, or it come simply with just presenting the World and Olympic record holders and their respective times and distances, which for some ungodly reason, NBC has decided to hold in confidence.

I shouldn't have to go online whenever I want to know even the most basic information about a particularly event.

The coverage which started off on such a high with the live coverage of the preliminary shot put round from Olympia has fizzled into a serious of disjointed, unreferenced highlights and it's really, really sad.