The Peacock announcers had a rough morning. Bill Spaulding continued to butcher names and concluded that Tokyo silver medalist Zambrano had scratched in the 400m repechage to save himself for the 4x400 relay. Colombia is not entered in the 4x400 relay. In the pole vault, Darrell Hill declared that people who missed at 4.55 were out. They advanced. (In fairness, the vaulters probably thought they were out too.) But at least Spaulding and Hill have been generally good.
The real problem is that Dawn Harper-Nelson has done no research and merely recites inane tropes. Even her intuition is off: she confidently declared in two different races that Kendall Ellis and Chidi Okezie were starting to make big moves. They were in fact going backwards. She is to this year’s broadcast team what Gail Devers was to the world championships broadcast a couple of years ago—a former sprint star who just shows up and whose commentary extends no further than her own personal experience.
I expect they’ll get better over the rest of the sessions, and I hope Harper-Nelson will shine as we get deeper into the hurdles events.
Wonder if WA changes or eliminates the open 400 repechage moving forward, it's pretty silly with all the scratches.
If the point's to give the best runners another shot, then it's not really working because the faster runners are the ones on 4x4 teams. If the point's to serve up more good races, it's not really working bc these 3 and 4-person heats are a joke
Lol announcers so happy to have a repechage with no scratches, going on and on about how Sean Bailey is a serious threat for the final... and then Bailey pulls up 120 in, clearly saving himself for the relays as well
I'm late to replying to this but the Jamaican men don't even have a 4x4 team this year. So the Watkins dns and Bailey DNF aren't a 4x4 strategy. Jamaica has been a bit of a mess this year for their relays. They made Junelle Bromfield run both rounds of the mixed 4x4 despite having the open 400m and the women's 4x4 but didn't make their best men run it when they didn't have a men's 4x4 qualified. Plus the top men didn't assist in the attempt to get a relay qualified for the Olympics at the Jamaican trials.
