Yesterday, Constantina Tomescu won the Olympic Marathon. As with any gold medal win, it was a remarkable achievement, but it was made even more remarkable by several factors: her age (she’s 38 – the oldest Olympic marathon winner), the early lead that she carved out and maintained to the finish (almost a minute), and her overall speed (halfway through she was running just over five minute miles).
Sports commentators are not always the most articulate people in the world, but one repeated idea really struck me the wrong way. As she ran, the commentators reviewed her performance in the 2004 Athens Olympics. Suffering from heatstroke, she had pulled up and walked for a bit, eventually finishing 20th.
Because of this, the commentator said several times that her run yesterday represented a quest for "redemption" on Tomescu’s part. Redemption? She was ill (and speaking as someone who has had the precursor to heatstroke, heat exhaustion, it’s no joke). She still finished. What is there to seek redemption for? His word choice (not an isolated one – he repeated himself several times) made it seem that she had to atone for some criminal act.
The bombast of Olympic commentary is bad enough without this sort of nonsense. And winning Olympic gold is remarkable enough that it doesn’t need to be tarnished by commentating like this.