Diaries

This year’s Tour de France was full of great moments, as we all know. But some didn’t necessarily make the nightly broadcasts. Too subtle, they were—but you could learn about them if you spent any time on the internet reading the daily athlete diaries.

For example, American Bobby Julich didn’t have such a great Tour. That was clear in the standings pretty early, and Phil and Paul occasionally made reference to his struggles during the telecasts. But, because I am a Bobby fan, I made my way over to Bicycling Magazine’s website every day to read his diaries. I wanted to hear from him how he was doing. He was open and honest about how his tour was going, and I came to admire him even more for his candor and his determination.

Here he is writing about the rest day that came the day after the epic stage up to Hautacam:

"When I got back, my wife and dog were here, and we were able to reacquaint ourselves after about two weeks on the road. My wife did bring me one small packet of M&M's, which definitely made my day. Little things like that go a long way in the Tour."

It’s not that there’s anything particularly enlightening about this—it’s the very ordinariness of it that makes it so extraordinary. There’s Bobby, suffering like heck, constantly re-evaluating his goals as he moves through the three weeks, finding himself riding with a gruppeto for the first time…and where is he finding happiness? Seeing his family, having some M&M’s, finishing another day, thinking ahead to the next day, the next week, the next month.

In other words, he’s a regular fella who happens, through hard work and good genes, to have a great deal of athletic talent. That’s what I love about athlete diaries—they offer us a glimpse into the lives of athletes and allow us to round out the mental picture we have of them through their own words. There’s nobody to mediate the experience—no reporter or editor—in the middle, and we can get a deeper glimpse, if they are honest, of their humanity.

Well, it appears that the International Olympic Committee wants to make sure those diaries don’t generate "news," and they’re telling athletes to refrain from updating their fans via web diaries. Doing so would somehow violate Rule 59 of the Olympic Code of Conduct, which says that athletes should not act as journalists.

American athletes were told of the ban when they showed up for "team processing" recently, according to an excellent report on The Standard. As the report says, there’s also a lot of confusion about how and whether the ban will be enforced, but the U.S. Olympic Committee is apparently advising athletes that the best plan is to hold back.

In a couple of words, this stinks, and I’ll tell you why: It appears to be all about the benjamins, just like so many things in the bloody Olympics. The IOC is trying to make sure that athletes don’t scoop NBC or any of their other broadcast partners who paid for the rights to air the events.

Now you tell me: How would that be possible? Do you really think that, say, Marion Jones is going to run straight for her computer to tell the world how she did in the 200? Faster than the regular journalists covering the event, who will probably be filing by the minute, or hour? Sure, she runs faster than they do, but somehow I think she’ll have other things on her mind.

This is particularly unacceptable and ridiculous in the U.S., where NBC plans to air evening shows of sporting events that will be hours old, the results already reported by, hmm…journalists. You know, those guys and gals who work for the Associated Press, or the Sydney Morning Herald, or the Los Angeles Times. I doubt that they could give a rat’s patoot whether they scoop the NBC broadcast. They realize, rightly, that their job is to tell people what happens as it happens. You may not want to know right away who has won the women’s triathlon, and that is certainly your right. But I do, and I will go hunting until I find out. I will still watch the TV so I can see the event itself, despite my frustration that NBC’s market studies show that women like me, their target audience, want to watch this stuff packaged like the movie of the week.

And while we’re on the subject of all things Olympic, Runner’s World has reported that the USOC has its undies in a bunch over a Fig Newtons magazine ad it claims might lead people to think that Nabisco has an official relationship with the USOC, which it doesn’t. Furthermore, according to the report, Fig Newtons compete with PowerBar, which does have such a relationship.

You may have seen the Fig Newtons ad. It says, "The ancient Olympians worshipped the fig and used it for energy during training. Pretty smart for a bunch of guys who wore sheets." It has a clever little drawing of some ancient Greek guys in togas. When I read about this, I went back to one of my magazines and looked at the ad again. Pretty inoffensive, unless you like to wear sheets. But maybe I’m missing something—some marketing subtlety must have gone over my head.

But here’s the thing, at least for the omnivorous athletes of the multisport world: I can’t imagine anybody giving a fig about the USOC when they’re hungry. I’d wager you’ve eaten PowerBars, Fig Newtons, Clif Bars, Balance Bars, Snickers Bars, and/or Pop Tarts, just to name a few. Possibly all on the same long ride, possibly washed down with a Coke. (But, if the gas station had only Pepsi, I bet you’d take that instead, marketing subtleties or no.) Sure, you have your favorites, but when push comes to shove, well, calories come in many forms.

So here we are, on the eve of the Olympics. But we won’t be watching much competition live on TV, at least in the U.S. And, apparently, we can’t make reference to things ancient and Greek unless we have a marketing relationship with the USOC, for fear of confusing the masses.

What side of the looking-glass did you say we were on, anyway?

Editor's note: NBC/IOC's ban notwithstanding, our sister-site Triathlonlive.com be featuring Victor Plata's Sydney Diary. He is an Olympic alternate, a status which brings with it two advantages: he's not an official entrant, and so isn't covered by the "diary ban"; and he will have less time to fret about racing, and more time to fret about writing.
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