What's a Little Lost Sleep?

If some of your co-workers are a little bleary-eyed today, cut them a little slack. They were up late watching history being made…

People are already calling it an instant classic—the best swimming relay race ever. Unfortunately, it didn’t make the airwaves until after 11:30 p.m.

So much for primetime…

You have to admit that the Olympics do create quite a pickle for NBC. Normally, NBC shows the major events on tape in primetime, which means you have to spend your whole day avoiding the Internet and all other spoilers. But the time delay from Beijing is allowing NBC to show some major events live, which is great. Except that the time delay means the live events must be shown at odd hours outside of actual primetime.

And for anyone who doubts that some of the events are actually live only needed to witness last night’s Men’s 4 x 100 Free Relay. Because there is no way NBC would have kept that event out of primetime if they could have helped it.

Throughout all of the swimming events last night, commentator Rowdy Gaines kept hyping the relay by saying he just didn’t know how the Americans could pull it off. The French, who had been doing a little trash talking, were just too tough according to Gaines. And midway through the relay it appeared that he was right.

As the last leg began, Gaines said again, “I just don’t see how they can do it.”

But it’s not over until it’s over…

In a dramatic, world record shattering finish, the United States did do it with NBC’s phenomenal swimming play-by-play man Dan Hicks screaming all the way. It was one of those great moments that remind us of why we watch the Olympics—no matter how late at night it is.

Of course, this means that Michael Phelps’ dream of winning a record eight gold medals is still alive. Although it’s probably going to take a lot of late nights for us to see it.

But hey. The Olympics only happen every four years. What’s a little lost sleep?

If you missed it, you can watch the relay race in its entirety here.