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I was watching the Olympic Marathon this morning. NBC had the whole event covered, a period of just over 2 hours. The current Olympic record for the grueling 26.2 mile race is 2 hours and 10 minutes.

Since the event was long, it was full of interruptions and commercials. Occasionally, I would switch channels to see what else is going on in the other channels. At around halfway through the marathon, the announcer was talking about a man who attacked the Brazilian runner who was in the lead. I had missed it, but NBC quickly showed replay of the assault.

The Brazilian runner was comfortably ahead by about 45 seconds to 1 minute when he was attacked by a man dressed in a Irish kilt. I couldn’t believe my eyes watching the replay. This guy just took out a marathon runner in the lead. The Brazilian runner was never quite the same after that.

He eventually gave up his lead and finished in 3rd place. Although shaken, he continued running. He gathered himself and even celebrated a few hundred yards away from the finish line with his arms spread out like airplane wings and running from side to side. What a great story.

Although the Brazilian did not win the gold, he won the bronze medal. He drew the loudest cheers, even louder than the top two finishers who were clearly the stronger runners. In the end, the main story of the marathon in Athens Olympics was this Brazilian runner finishing the most grueling sport of the marathon in spite of what happened to him.

It was indeed a great story. As far as the man that tackled him, he’s spending several nights in jail. They should keep him in jail whenever there is major sports event.

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