During the 1992 Olympics, I remember when Shannon Miller of the US women's gymnastics team won the women's individual all-around silver. It was a very cool moment as a US women's gymnast had't done that well in forever. However, Miller missed gold by the slimest of margins ever in Olympic gymnastics history. 12 1/1000th of a point.

Regardless of that, her effort was still heroic, enough so that I can still recall it to this day. But there's also another thing I remember from later that evening after Miller won the gold. And that's the jackass reporter who asked her if she upset that she had "failed to win gold."

Miller gave the best answer possible, that she was proud of what she had accomplished, and that she didn't consider silver to be a failure at all.

Unfortunately, it appears that Olympic reporters haven't learned from the past though. Because last night or today or whenever the hell it was in China, NBC's Andrea Joyce drilled Alicia Sacramone by asking her SEVEN questions about her poor performance in her final two events of the team all-around competition in which the US won silver. 

I did have the YouTube clip up, but naturally NBC pulled it. Why? Because they want you to go to their site to see Joyce abuse Sacramone. So here you go. And go to hell NBC.

Sacramone does pretty well, until about the final question, where she seems to start to choke up a bit. And on top of this one-on-one interview, Joyce then interviewed the whole team and mentions "misfortunes," and "disappointment." This time Sacramone really does look like she's crying.

And I'm not mad about this because Sacramone is a woman. I'm mad because these questions are ridiculous. It's like saying to Tom Brady after the Super Bowl loss: "Hey, Tom. You really sucked hard out there in the fourth quarter. How does it feel to fail in the Super Bowl? Loser."

I'm always amazed that athletes don't blow up more often when reporters drill them with asinine questions like these. Look, they feel bad enough. They aren't some politician who just sold nuclear secrets to Castro and deserve a few harsh, pointed questions. They play a game.

Personally, I think Sacramone should have done to Joyce what she did to this drunk fool at Brown.



[HT: The Sedano Show]