In the summer of 1992, I (Wayne) was looking forward to watching the 1992 Olympics on TV. The Olympics were held in Barcelona, Spain. They were officially known as the Games of the XXV Olympiad. I was pleased to find out that NBC and Cablevision were going to provide what they called the Olympics Triplecast. They intended to include preliminary events leading up to the finals. I signed up for the coverage, with the intent of recording (on VCR tapes) key preliminary events or finals that I was interested in. My focus would be the Track and Field TV coverage. As part of the package, I received the Olympic TripleCast Program Guide (see Reference 1). I told a friend of mine (Giles S.) that I signed up for the extended TV package; Giles requested that I also record Heat 1 of the women’s 100m, 200m and 400m, as a friend of his knew a student at “Prin” (see note 2) who would be competing in the aforementioned events representing a foreign country. Although I successfully recorded the requested 100m and 400m heats, I missed recording requested 200m heat (possibly due to a schedule change). No doubt Giles (and his friend) discovered this when they tried to copy the 100m, 200m and 400m 1st round heats the “Prin” student/athlete was competing in.
Additionally, I was interested in the women’s 1500m and 3000m finals, which I recorded on tape. I wanted to see how PSP (see note 3) would perform in the aforementioned events. During the NBC TV coverage of the 1500m, the TV commentator (Craig Masback) pointed out that during the 1992 Olympics, they did not have a women’s 5000m event, which would have been PSP’s best event. Approximately 27 years later, I took those same tapes, and successfully digitized the aforementioned events via creating a video of each event on a home computer. I was surprised to find that after all those years, the quaility of the tapes were still good.
I was pleased that during the NBC TV coverage, just prior to the men’s 5000m final, NBC showed a 7 minute tribute to Steve Prefontaine. The NBC TV prime-time host (Bob Costas) quoted a poem written by John Greenleaf Whittier (see reference 2). The poem stanza he quoted begins with “For of all” and ends with “It might have been!”
References:
1. “Olympics TripleCast Program Guide", July 26-August 9, 1992, published by NBC and Cablevision
2. The poem “Maud Muller”, by John Greenleaf Whittier
Note 1: The “Sport of Track & Field" web page can be viewed by selecting Sitemap->Sport of Track & Field from menu bar at top.
Note 2: The “Illinois" web page can be viewed by selecting Sitemap->States (US)->Illinois from menu bar at top.
Note 3: The “Prefontaine Classic - 1991" web page can be viewed by selecting Sitemap->The Sport of Track & Field (T&F)->My Photos of The Prefontaine Classic - 1991 from menu bar at top.
