PARIS — The funny thing about following the Olympics is that you don’t actually get to see much of the Olympics.

The thought came to mind recently when a friend asked me if I had seen Noah Lyles of the USA beat Kishane Thompson of Jamaica in a photo finish in the 100m on Sunday. It was one of the most exciting events of the Games so far.

I wasn’t at track and field on Sunday; instead, I spent the day bouncing from the women’s cycling road race to the beach volleyball tournament at night. In fact, I told him I didn’t even know it was happening until the Olympics came up in our group chat that night.

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It’s a bit like following the NFL. I go to every Lions game, and by the time I’m done writing after a 1 p.m. game, Sunday Night Football is usually on. I know the scores of the other games and I’ve probably seen some of the highlights, but I don’t watch the other 1 p.m. games; I’m writing head-first in the late afternoon, so there’s a lot of stuff going on in the league that I don’t have time to digest.

For the Olympics, this is a hundredfold because there are so many events and disciplines within different sports, and there really is no break in your days. After shooting the cycling/volleyball doubleheader, I headed out early the next morning to cover the triathlon relay, then wrote a short follow-up post about the road race and completed “Postcard from Paris,” while also covering an American team competing in a shooting event.

When I finally sat down to eat that night, I stopped at an Italian restaurant near my hotel that had a great view of the street, but no TV to watch the Olympics on.

I mentioned the other day that I was going to watch Simone Biles compete, but if it weren’t for that break in my schedule, I would have left Paris without watching Biles do gymnastics, Katie Ledecky swim, and probably without watching the U.S. women’s soccer team or the men’s or women’s basketball teams play — at least not in person or on TV.

I have a few more days in Paris and I feel like I have had the full Olympic experience. I have seen 12 of the 41 sports at the Games this year, and there is a new sport tomorrow: water polo.

But being on the field in Paris doesn’t mean I’ll get to see every big Olympic moment. If you’re watching on TV, you’ve probably seen many of them — or more — at home.

Contact Dave Birkett [email protected]. Follow her on X and Instagram @davebirkett.

This article was originally published in the Detroit Free Press: Postcards from Paris: Olympic experience means not seeing everything