In the wake of the Men's 4 x 100m relay swimming final in London on Monday morning (our time), I'm pretty sure I witnessed, through sleepy eyes, some of the worst media coverage of a sporting event since Greece first hosted the Olympics.

Our four lads (dubbed by some the 'Weapons of Mass Destruction) were hot favourites for the gold medal. Our big gun James Magnussen was first out of the blocks but swam around 0.8 seconds slower than expected, making it very hard for James Roberts, Eamon Sullivan and Matt Targett to make inroads.

As we all know by now they finished fourth, out of the medals, behind France, USA, and Russia.

Bitterly disappointed, James 'The Missile' Magnussen could barely look at the camera in the after-race interview, and none of the four could find words to explain how the upset came about.

Disappointing? Yes. Devastating? Perhaps. Big news? I guess.

But did we have to spend the next 90 minutes (thankfully I had to go to work early) listening to commentators at the pool and in the studio repeat how devastating the loss was, why it might have happened, and how they, particularly Magnussen, could bounce back after such a loss.

The repetition heard from the Channel 9 team of Cameron Williams, Leila McKinnon, and Grant Hackett was maddening. They'd go to an ad break, come back, and say exactly what they said before the ad break, go to another ad break and do it all again for an hour and a half.

Viewers were taught that swimming a body length behind the leaders creates choppy water that's harder to swim through. Then we had that lesson belted into us another half a dozen times just in case we missed it.

At one point, in a bid to make sense of the loss, it was put forward that the win by the Aussie women in their 4 x 100m relay could have been a reason for the pressure getting too much. How?

I realise live TV is a tough gig, but surely there is so much happening in the Olympics that we could have just have dissected the race for 15 minutes and moved on.

I also know this article is nothing more than a rant, but it's lunchtime, I haven't had my coffee yet, and I'm sleep deprived because I've been watching too much of the Olympics.

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