Where Was NBC When the Russian Gymnast Fell?

When Russian gymnast Ksenia Afanasyeva fell on her face during her floor exercise in the women’s team all-around Tuesday, NBC edited her out of its prime-time broadcast, as if dispatched to a video gulag.

That prompted Nikki Finke of Deadline.com to speculate that NBC had cut the routine out to “create fake suspense around Team USA.”

Finke’s misguided claim missed the point: It was simply unfair to remove Afanasyeva’s routine.

The online replay of the event showed that there was great drama in watching her unfortunate stumble. “Oh, no! Oh, dear!” said one of the announcers. “It’s all come unglued.”

NBC’s crew did not mention her or how much more damaging her score was to Russia’s waning chances against the U.S. team. Al Trautwig, Elfi Schlegel and Tim Daggett fixated on another Russian, Anastasia Grishina, whose floor exercise did not get removed from NBC’s prime-time package.

Using his favorite hyperbolic adjective, Daggett called Grishina’s floor exercise “catastrophic.”

In a conference call Thursday, Mark Lazarus, chairman of the NBC Sports Group, said that Afanasyeva was cut out of the broadcast “in the interest of time.” The producer for the event felt that her floor exercise was “immaterial to the outcome.” He added that “all the drama was about the U.S. performance, not about what the Russian team had or had not accomplished.”