Bob Costas returned to NBC’s Olympic coverage tonight, dry eyes — and wit — intact.
“I’m Bob Costas sitting in tonight for Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira,” deadpanned the longtime Olympics anchor at the start of Monday’s coverage.
Costas’s eye infection became one of the story lines of the first week of the Sochi games. “Too much attention spent on it,” Costas told Brian Williams earlier today. “It just got to the point where they were so blurry and light sensitive, I couldn’t impose that on the public.”
Costas hosted the first night of coverage last Thursday, with an infection apparent in his left eye. Over the weekend, it spread to his right eye. By Tuesday, Lauer was called up to fill in. Meredith Vieira relieved Lauer on Friday and Saturday.
Before the first commercial break, Costas added: “My sincere thanks to Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira, two friends and true pros who stepped in for me on short notice and my thanks to you who expressed your concern and my apologies for the unavoidable but uncomfortable circumstance of a broadcaster’s ill-timed affliction getting in the way, even for just a few moments, for what we all came here for: the Olympic games.”