It devolved quickly: Mary Carillo and her epic Olympic badminton rant, 17 years later

Without notes and without warning, Mary Carillo lifts the store-bought badminton birdie with her right hand to highlight its nefarious design for a national television audience at home: “Even though it doesn’t look sophisticated, it has a tree-seeking device implanted in it somewhere.”

She cannot explain where the implant is located, but she will spend the next two minutes meticulously documenting the consequences during NBC’s coverage of the 2004 Athens Olympics. And the story starts when the birdie gets stuck in that tree.

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A child throws a racquet to get it down.

Then the racquet gets stuck.

“Now there are kids from all over the neighborhood that have come into your backyard, and they’re emptying out your garage, throwing stuff at your tree,” Carillo says. “You realize — suddenly — you own 18 basketballs. You’ve got nine footballs. There’s softballs flying through the air.

“The tree is now groaning with children and equipment. Someone’s turned on the hose. Badminton is a water sport. They’re trying to get this thing down with a hose.”

By the end the story, a rubber raft, a dented Jeep and a decade-old quest to save a baby duck have each made a cameo. The segment is less than four minutes long, and it was supposed to have laid out some of the differences between the badminton played at home and the game as it appears at the Olympics.

With the help of YouTube, the clip resurfaces every few years, usually before a Summer Games. It was making the rounds on social media again a few days before the Tokyo Olympics as Carillo, the award-winning broadcaster, was preparing to resume her work with NBC’s coverage.

“It’s called a badminton rant,” she said over the phone. “But we both know: That’s a motherhood rant.”

Her children, Anthony and Rachel, grew up in a neighborhood in Naples, Fla., that was teeming with young families.

Carillo, a retired professional tennis player who won the French Open mixed doubles title in 1977 with John McEnroe, tried to keep her children active. The whole point of parenting, she said with a laugh, is to get your children tired.

“You put ’em in the car and they’re out cold,” she said. “Their head’s at a disturbingly severe angle in the backseat and it’s, ‘I have a little bit of peace.’ You don’t even want to get them out of the car. You’d just leave ’em there overnight, if you could.”

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The names she dropped in the badminton rant belong to real people. The rubber raft was real, too, she said. There really was a time, after a heavy rainfall, where the family embarked on a mission to help a baby duck struggling in the aftermath. (“A duck rescue can take a whole day,” she said.)

None of those details, though, were ever scheduled to appear on live television.

Carillo was making her debut as a full-time Olympic host in 2004, when she appeared on both Bravo and USA Network. (She worked as a reporter and analyst in previous Games. The Tokyo Olympics represent her 15th as a broadcaster, and her 12th with NBC.)

There was a learning curve that first summer, especially in the humor that was tolerated around equestrian — and specifically in dressage.

“After the third time I said it, I was told in no uncertain terms that I couldn’t keep saying: ‘Alright, let’s throw it out to horse dancing,’” Carillo said with a laugh. “I was spoken to about that.”

A general concept had been devised to help introduce badminton. A network runner was sent out to buy a standard-issue badminton racquet and accompanying birdie. Carillo said a top-level player lent one of their top-level racquets for the segment.

“It was supposed to be instructional,” she said. “It devolved quickly.”

Carillo was not reading off prepared notes, and she was not reading from the teleprompter. She started by comparing an elite racquet to the one found in backyard matches. There was no hint of what was to come, even when she described the better racquet as the one the “bad boys of badminton play with.”

She described the elite birdie, with its feathers all coming from the same side of the goose, apparently to promote a good contour. Then she held up the backyard birdie. The one with the “tree-seeking” device.

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That is where the story began.

Her producer came out for a visit during the commercial break.

“I’m there like, ‘That worked pretty well — a little off-script, maybe,’” Carillo said. “Bill Kunz walked out of the studio and comes over to my desk. Just very quietly, he looks at me and says, ‘What the hell was that?’”

She cannot remember what time of day she delivered the rant.

“You do that, and then you think, ‘I’m still employed, this is great,’” she said with a laugh. “You wait for the tap on the shoulder. But it didn’t come.”

To the contrary, it might have created more opportunity. Carillo was host of “Olympic Ice” for the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, on USA Network. It was an hour-long show with a modest budget and a broad canvas.

It was irreverent. Carillo said they would invite medal-winning athletes onto the air, where they would hand them a bowl of cereal. The athlete would take a bite of cereal and deliver the line: “Olympic Ice: It’s crackling good television.”

They created a mockumentary of their own show. They also ran a feature on the man who drove the ice resurfacing machine at the figure skating venue.

“Guido was beautiful, and he just seemed like a nice guy,” said Carillo. “I said to my producer: ‘We’ve got to do a salute to Guido. I mean, look at this guy.’”

So she went for a ride-a-long with him on the ice. She asked him if he had a Zamboni license. (He did not). She asked if there was any test he had to take. (There was not). She asked if any skaters had ever complimented him for his work. (“I work hard, very hard, and there’s no medal for me.”)

“So I see on the side of your Zamboni, it says, ‘Passion lives here,’” Carillo tells the driver at one point. “Is that true? Have you ever had a little romance in the Zamboni?”

“Uh, no,” he answers. “Because there’s one seat.”

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Her children are adults now. Anthony is 34, and Rachel is 30. It has been 17 years since the badminton rant first appeared on the air, and Carillo said she still smiles whenever it is mentioned, all these years later.

There was still one question left unanswered, though: Did she ever get that birdie out of the tree?

“I think it’s still up there,” she said. “Along with God knows what else. I think there’s still a hockey stick or two up there.”

(Photo: NBC screenshot)

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