Before they hit the air each day, Dan Patrick and Al Michaels will spend time at the Olympics like other fans: taking in the action.
The afternoon anchors requested they take in one event each morning (our time) before they begin their daily duties for NBC. The first event they will see in person is the start of the Olympic rivalry between Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte in qualifiers for the 400 individual medley.
“It really seems like you can’t go half a day without someone talking about Phelps and Lochte,” Patrick said. “The U.S. may have had the best swimmer in the past, but they’d be going up against a guy from another country, but this adds another element to it with the admiration and respect these guys have for each other. And at some point these guys may be winning gold as teammates.”
Unlike past Olympics this history will be captured live: likely on your television and definitely on your computer, where NBC is livestreaming every event. NBC had received criticism in the past for not showing Olympic events live and saving them for juicy primetime ratings. With the social media age fully upon us, and news from live events impossible to keep secret, NBC has taken an aggressive approach with social platforms to give the fans more of what they asked for.
Patrick and Michaels are anchoring the afternoon shift, when a lot of the live action will be broadcast from London.
“We haven’t done that before, but it’s what people want to see,” Patrick said. “Here it is live, let’s watch it together. Instead of pretending it didn’t happen already …. then in primetime Bob [Costas], as only Bob can do, will put it in perspective with his insight: This is why it happened the way that it did.”
The Phelps-Lochte rivalry is in stark contrast from four years ago when Phelps was a one-man show winning a record eight gold medals in a single Olympics. He was the story of those two weeks, but his workout ethic for this year’s Games has been questioned.
“I don’t know if Phelps dropped off, but Lochte has definitely stepped up,” Patrick said. “But Phelps is going to be the most decorated Olympic athlete ever, and I am going to get a chance to chronicle it.”
For Patrick, this is the first Olympics he has covered since serving as a reporter at CNN at the 1998 Winter Games in Calgary. In between, he rose to prominence as a “SportsCenter” anchor before leaving ESPN in 2007 for his own radio show.
“I’ve done something like 3,000 ‘SportsCenters’ in my life. Maybe if you put all that together that would be like what this is going be like,” Patrick said. “I’m going to be like an air-traffic controller at JFK with some sports taking off and others landing.”
justin.terranova@nypost.com