Commentary: Keeping in the dark about the Olympics is tougher than you might expect

Improbably, my plan was working.

I had climbed into an Olympics cocoon and managed all day to deflect the results of maximum-interest events before they reached my eyes or ears.

Those sports and news websites I maintain on laptop speed dial and check every quarter-hour? Cold turkey.

Facebook and Twitter and other social media that invite chatter about athletes wagging their finger or wearing a hijab? A no-trespassing sign went up to prevent me from wandering into reports of an outcome.

At the coffee shop, earphones were plugged in to drown out Rio-related conversations.

One hour remained until NBC’s all-tape-delay telecast in prime time, and I remained gleefully in the dark, eager to watch the Games without all suspense drained from them.

Then, my cellphone pinged. Expecting to read a personal text, I dug it out. Instead, the message was an alert via a non-sports app, noting that Sun Yang of China had won a gold medal in swimming.

Drat.

OK, at least I stayed unaware of U.S. swimmer Ryan Murphy’s fate in his finals. Sports without uncertainty surrounding the outcome is something else. Ignorance, indeed, was bliss.

All beeps and sundry sounds emanating from my pants pocket were subsequently ignored. But when the phone rang, I had no choice. Answering it, I could not avert my eyes from the screen, which declared, “Murphy wins gold.”

Curses.

Might as well make like the Olympic judokas as they surrender to an opponent and tap out in a white-flag gesture.

During this era of info bombardment, when trying to shut out news of any sort is futile, maybe I should soak in the Games during prime time as if they were reruns of “Perry Mason” and “Murder, She Wrote.” We know from the get-go that Mr. Mason will win his court case and Ms. Fletcher will find the killer, same as we know whodunit the best in the main Olympic sports.

Yeah, NBC does livestream it all. But, what was the point of trading up to a humongous, wall-blanketing TV monitor if I were satisfied with viewing sports on a puny laptop or cellphone screen?

Besides, Olympics watching is often pitched as our nation’s last communal experience, aside from the Super Bowl. What is communal about squinting at a shrunken version of the Games in concert with a much smaller audience?

If not for a recent switch of time zones from Eastern to Pacific, I would at least be treated this week to live swimming finals. But because NBC regards the Games as a glorified short-term summer replacement for “American Ninja Warrior” and “The Voice” by plugging a dated broadcast into its mid-evening schedule, we Olympics geeks on the West Coast suffer the same indignity as entertainment awards show devotees who have endured similar slights.

All prime-time Olympics here is past tense. Gymnastics, which begins no later than noon PT, is so old that by the time it airs, the next day’s competition is close to commencing in Rio.

Claiming it is guided by research, NBC would not split the nation thusly if another formula would bump the ratings. So my lobbying for earlier TV coverage on weekdays to enhance the as-it-happens lineup of sports has ceased.

Yet the campaign to show all premier events live on weekends while shrinking or abandoning the night Olympic programs will carry on. C’mon, NBC, throw a bone to us lovers of live sports as it becomes ever more challenging to insulate ourselves from instantly receiving news.

If the main criteria for becoming an Olympic competition is accomplishing a difficult task — how else did croquet, tug-of-war and rope climbing once make the cut? — then let’s consider a relevant addition to the sports menu.

The sport of Avoiding Hearing the Results.