Posts tagged skating
Olympics Recap Part 1: Some final random thoughts
Mar 2nd
Men’s Ice Hockey
I really really wanted to get excited about this USA ice hockey team thing. And I know NBC and ESPN wanted me to be really really excited (if I had seen one more “miracle on ice” clip I think I would have thrown out all my ice cubes and swear off any ice). But. This isn’t Olympics hockey anymore. This is NHL exhibition. Sorry. Just don’t think this is what the Olympics were created for. This is why we have the NHL.
Women’s Ice Hockey
Ok. I admit. Up until the gold medal game I bet I hadn’t seen more than 5 minutes total of women’s ice hockey. So the game and award ceremony was pretty enlightening.
First. The Canadian women are good. Really good. They skated circles around the USA women and should have scored at least three more goals on top of the two they got.
Second. I admit I also don’t watch many of the actual award ceremonies. But I got hooked watching this one (no. not because it was women.) So. Finland who took the bronze. Every single one of them looked so frickin’ happy and proud it reminds you that winning a bronze at the Olympics is really really special. There is this kind of lightly dazed look on some faces as they look down at that Olympics medal hanging around their neck. I think we forget in all the “who is winning the Gold” discussion how special the entire event is for each of the athletes and going home with a medal, any medal, represents a feat that 99.99% of the world will never truly understand.
Third. This is what the Olympics should be about. As they panned the faces these were girls, okay, young women. They were mostly not professional hockey players (I think there is pro women’s hockey in Europe). Regardless. Lots of young faces beaming with pride, some sadness with the losing team and that kind of young disbelief of “is this is truly happening to me.” Awesome. They should bottle this up.
Celebration controversy
Ok. I will ‘fess up here at the onset in the interest of full disclosure. This lil write up is coming from a guy who celebrated the completion of finals in his junior year of high school by going to happy hour at Hannibal’s in downtown Burlington with a bunch of friends for 5 for a dollar drafts. I was 16 (but I turned 17 in July). That said. C’mon. So the Canadian women drank some beer and champagne and smoked some stogies. And you don’t think the USA women didn’t? or the Swedish cross country team … or … well … any team.
So. How wild would you celebrate? Let me put winning (or getting a medal) in perspective.
There are 6,800,000,000 people in the world.
Ok. Only 82 countries send athletes to the Winter Olympics so let’s say for argument sake that represents 86% of total world population.
So that makes the Olympics countries represent 5,848,000,000 in population.
Approximately 2,600 athletes attend and participate.
That represents .0000004 % of population.
A pretty small and special group.
Then there are 86 events in seven sports at this Winter Olympics.
Let’s call it 258 medals. Maybe 10% of athletes participating win a medal.
So. 10% of .0000004% of total world population receives a medal.
Go fucking celebrate. Get shitfaced if you want.
The fact you won a medal puts you in such a special minority I think we can safely say you deserve a cocktail if you want one.
Cacophony at Curling
Yelling. Lots of yelling. I am unclear whether they yell at each other, the competition or the stone (who seems relatively indifferent to everything). If I had a gold medal on the line and I am sweeping crap out of the way of the stone and someone in a shrill voice is screaming at me I would be quite tempted to shove the broom up their ass. Ok. maybe I would pull them off to the side and say “hey, listen, there are maybe 75 people in this whole frickin’ stadium and they probably got the tickets for free and don’t really care what is going on so I think I could hear what you have to tell me without screaming, ok?”
Next. The announcers.
“How exciting, they have two stones in the house!” (and this is women curling just to be clear).
“Time to skip stones” (and the water is frozen)
“This is double peel territory” (and I think the kitchen is in another section of the building)
And they say all these things not only without laughing but also with true enthusiasm. Awesome. They don’t get paid enough.
Speed Skating
So. Finally they do something in this speed skating thing that I not only understand but also kind of enjoyed watching. This team race thing. And I give huge props to the German team who utilized a baseball tactic to win one race. Coming down to the finish the third (the slowest) gal on the team dives for first base to beat the throw … and wins. Awesome. You would think staying on the skates would be faster but she pulled a Pete Rose (without the gambling) and squeaked out a win for the Germans.
And then there was the coaching error that caused maybe one of the biggest dudes in the entre Olympics a gold medal. Hagar the Horrible from the Netherlands was really really pissed when he won but didn’t win.
All because his coach told him to do something (once again the whole lane thing kinda confuses me) that
he shouldn’t have done. Some reporters took Hagar to task for how he responded after realizing he was disqualified. Ok. Look. The dude didn’t lose he was DQ’ed (and no that doesn’t mean he got a free blizzard at Dairy Queen). They could have penalized him seconds, minutes, a lap, whatever and he would still have crushed all the others. But no. No gold. Shit. No medal. No sponsor money (oops. that’s right. that doesn’t matter). Thank god these Netherlanders are passive and high on pot all the time or he may have gone really ballistic. Could you imagine if it had been a Russian (notice I am not picking on some American here)? Yikes. Igor would have obliterated the coach before our eyes. Give Hagar a break. I would have been pissed too.
Olympic Update 4
Feb 27th
Figure skating
So. They come right out of the blocks with a scoring scandal. Awesome. All the judging hijinks (love that word) have sufficiently made all the American male skaters weep like babies and the ever Slavic Soviets sneer in disdain. The Russian after party set a record for vodka consumed and some were caught out on the biathlon course shooting Kalashnikovs at targets with American skaters’ heads on the targets while Americans sipped triple caramel frappucinos and discussed Ralph Lauren designs for all the Olympic teams.
The loser, Plushenko, coach Alexei Mishin and even a few Russian politicians were furious with the results of the men’s scoring because Plush (as his friends call him) finished second after being the only top contender to land a clean quadruple jump.
“Quad is quad. If the Olympic champion doesn’t know how to jump the quad, I don’t know,” Plushenko said afterward. “Now it’s not men’s figure skating, it’s dancing. That’s my point.” (point to Plush).
From this scoring “scandal” the Russian skater believes he’s the platinum medal winner (cause he didn’t win the gold). His medal reads, “Silver of Salt Lake, Gold of Torino, Platinum of Vancouver.” What’s impressive here is that not only has Plushenko’s website team fabricated an Olympic medal, it designed a platinum medal, too. Bravo. That’s commitment. Oh. Unfortunately it isn’t real but it makes for a great story. (“It’s absolutely a mistake. Evgeni has absolutely no idea about this. Absolutely no idea,” his coach said, “Nobody from our team is awarding a platinum medal.”). Nuts.
Anyway. Here is where American skating finally gets a real gold medal (at least from the Enlightened Conflict judge).
The Olympics’ hottest couple is not one of the figure skating or ice dancing pairs. No, it’s this crying figure skating gold medalist Evan Lysacek and the darling of the Beijing Olympics, Nastia Liukin, who has a gold medal of her own in all-around gymnastics. Awesome. X-rated visuals inserted here.
Oh. Last. How awesome would it be if we kind of had a figure skating biathlon? I am not sure we would be allowed to shoot at each other (although it may make them move a little faster on the ice) but maybe at the conclusion of their performance they take up a rifle and see how many judges they can knock down, kind of like the shooting gallery at the circus. Just a thought if TV ratings are down.
The Biathlon (just because I am hooked)
Neuner (the biathlon beauty as she is known in her country which up until her had steroid swimmers and international arm wrestling champions to line up as ‘beauties’) won a second gold. I just wanted to start this section with Nooner…oops…Neuner.
Next. The Russians, Germans and French medaled in the women’s Biathlon relay (nice combination of friendly countries that have certainly never shot at each other in the past, ignoring WWI & 2 & numerous other medieval conflicts of course).
France got a 22 second lead at the first exchange, but then Russia and Germany caught up to on the second leg, and the three teams stayed together until the Russians pulled away. At the prone shooting station, the Russian quickly made all five shots to open up an 11.6 second lead over Germany, while poor shooting cost France a chance at the gold.
The French woman missed five of her eight shots and had to ski two penalty laps putting France more than a minute behind. Ok. As you will see this point later in this post, how the fuck do she train 4 years for an event that only happens once every 4 years and MISS 67% of the shots she took?
Anyway. As background (because I assume this is my last shooting/skiing post), as you might expect from a sport that involves a rifle, the biathlon has military roots. Norwegian soldiers have been running combined skiing and shooting races since at least the mid 1700’s and the Norwegian military sponsored the first modern race of this kind in 1921. It wasn’t quite like the biathlon we know but rather it was an event called “military patrol” that involved a four-man patrol going through the event in heavy backpacks. (And bigger guns than they have today)
Military patrol was actually a medal event at the 1924 Winter Olympics but was only a demonstration sport at the 1928, 1936 and 1948 Games. The idea of individuals racing on skis with guns gained popularity in Europe throughout the 1950s (I believe this is also the time that Heineken became quite popular in Europe) and by 1960, the races were back on the Olympic program as the individual biathlon event. Personally, I would prefer this event be called the Military Patrol pursuit and let them shoot at each other.
Downhill skiing
Ok. I know those gate thingies have a lot of give but if you are going 100 mph in negative 5 degree weather and are getting smacked every time you go by one my guess is it hurts like shit. And when they wipeout, hey, it ain’t a half assed wipeout. But I have a better idea. I personally believe they should have stone monuments instead of the gates. Kind of like the Stonehenge of downhill skiing. Now that would make it exciting. Team events could be called the “chip off the old block” downhill super – P (p for pain).
Curling
I keep wondering if someone at MSNBC pissed someone off. While you can watch Olympics coverage almost 24/7 on MSNBC, it is always curling. USA versus Switzerland. USA versus Sweden. USA versus China. USA curling practice (they do curls in the gym). USA against everyone and losing (I think they are maybe 2 and 6 as I write this, but because I am unclear how they score this stupid thing I cannot really tell who won until everyone starts jumping up and down and sliding all over the ice in some whimsical ice dance celebration…an aboriginal interpretive dance I believe). I mean who the hell at MSNBC screwed up? They don’t even get one event with someone in tights. It is only the most unathletic looking Olympic athletes in the history of Olympics. Wow. Someone better be updating their resume.
Olympic Update 3
Feb 23rd
This Snowboarding Pipe Smoking Thing
This whole snowboarding thing is very cool but I still haven’t figured out why it’s an Olympic event. I know several past college friends treated their pipes as Olympic athletes…but…well…another post. Anyway. This Shaun White kid is called the “Flying Tomato.” Awesome. Could you imagine someone having that nickname in the NFL?
He won his second men’s Olympic half pipe (and what exactly is a full pipe…oh…that’s for the plumber Olympics) gold medal Wednesday with a “conservative” first run. I watched this conservative thing and I am not sure how he didn’t land on his head several times let alone just get plain dizzy. On the other hand he may have landed on his head but kept snowboarding and they gave him points for that. So. Once again another Olympic sport that has wacky scoring. He could have won the gold medal just on his first run alone. But they make you do the second run, even though it doesn’t matter … in other words he could done a figure skating routine on his second run and they still would have given him a gold. (WTF?). If the rules allowed it, his first run score of 46.8 would have earned him a silver medal, too.
Anyway. His second run the announcer was so flabbergasted (I love typing that word) with all his Tasmanian Devil whirling dervish tricks they couldn’t keep up with identifying them. Afterwards they told us it was a “super-sized Double McTwist 1260, two back flips with 3.5 rotations of his board and a double cork”. Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Right. He’s 23 and owns a Lamborghini. I would walk over to my closest McDonalds and order a dozen double McTwists if I could have a Lamborghini.
Olympic Crying
After American skater Evan Lysacek(above, far right) finished his moving short program on Tuesday night, he was overcome by emotion. In the area where they sit and stare while the scores come up (what other sport do you sit there and watch while the judges make up the scores?), he wiped away tears. And you wonder why they call this area the “Kiss and Cry” area (what a manly place for all the male skaters).
The USA figure skating coach (who supports Greco-Roman wrestling in the Summer Olympics where they never cry but do rub up against other men) was embarrassed by Lysacek’s behavior “I kept wanting to say, ‘Stop it. Stop it. I’m very stoic, very disciplined. I think of the ski jumpers: when they do well they don’t start to cry. Let’s put it this way: I don’t like figure skaters to cry, but it was an emotional moment. I’m not saying crying is horrible, but I would rather him stop.”
Unfortunately for the coach one of his other skaters, Mirai Nagasu, is also considered a champion crier.
In the end, after several sob sessions following competitions, the USA coach put his foot down and instituted a “no crying rule.” (good luck dude).
What makes me cry? When I read things like this about men’s ice skating … “You have about 10 brilliant boys in the world who are looking at each other wondering …” said the USA coach Frank Carroll.
Olympic Condoms
The Olympic condom count at the Athlete’s Village at the Olympics is 100,000. For comparison during the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, organizers ordered 70,000 and had to order an additional 20,000 (uh. That’s 90,000 total if you don’t have your abacus). Beijing ordered 100,000 in 2008 with the Olympic motto, “faster, higher, stronger” on them.
(oh my)
So. With the 100,000 condom count in Vancouver it translates to slightly more than 14 for each player, trainer, official and coach. But I believe teammates are allowing unused ‘ones’ to be ‘used’ by more active teammates. (therefore active athletes are totaling 19+ condoms for the Village sports)
In addition the USA Curling team is co-sponsored by the “Hurry Hard’ condoms so they didn’t order any getting all their’s for free.
In a follow up story, Playboy is awarding bronze, silver and gold medals to the athletes who have used the most condoms.
Uniforms
I have already taken a look at some of the curling “uniforms” in my curling Olympic post (they would have to guarantee me a medal to wear some of them). But figure skating is taking it to a completely new level. I believe it is the Russian skaters who brought out their formal “aboriginal” costumes (which drew rebuke from Australian Aboriginal leaders as well as the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy team – although I did hear Britney Spears has asked if she could use the costumes on her next tour stop in Fond du Lac).
The skaters, Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin (I don’t buy that those are their real names …) skated in brown toned body suits augmented by red loin cloths, white striping and artificial leaves. It has been noted that Aboriginal leaders in Australia criticized the costumes as inauthentic and offensive. (I will admit I was slightly surprised that the aborigines were high viewers of figure skating).
“I’d like to say it’s not possible to do a 100% authentic folk dance on the skates. It has required elements … and we have some restrictions in our costumes. I can’t skate without pants like some aboriginal people.” says either Domnina or Shabalin I cannot tell them apart. Awesome stuff.
Olympics Update 2
Feb 19th
Women’s Biathlon “pursuit”
Ok. I am addicted. Chicks in tights with guns. The German woman (I am sure she is east German because they were always the ones who could shoot in the good ole Soviet days) is attractive in a gun slinging way and wasn’t even huffing & puffing despite cross country skiing up a reverse ski jump slope and then shooting something they suggest is “the size of a grapefruit” from 100 yards away or so. In fact. After shooting she almost looked bored. Her name is Magdalena Neuner and she won her second medal of the Games and her first gold today. I love the way they describe her “Neuner, the fastest skier on the biathlon circuit but an inconsistent shot.” Love it. A good reminder to not stand behind the target when she is shooting.
She is already one of the Germany’s most popular athletes and is known as the “biathlon beauty”.
Anyway. I have always had a standard rule that I never give anything sharp as a gift to a woman (you can never tell when it may come back and haunt you). However, I may be interested in giving a rifle if they could do this cross country ski and shoot thing and look as good as they do in tights.
Men’s Biathlon “pursuit”
So. This was kind of funny in a sad way for some of the contestants. They screwed up the start for a number of the contestants. And they screwed it up because they have this really screwy thing where they stagger the start of the second stage of this biathlon thing depending on what time they had in the first stage. For example, if you finished 45 minutes after the gold medal winner in the first stage you start 45 minutes after him in the second stage. Holy cow. So some guy who finished like 2 minutes behind the leader in the first stage they started 2 minutes and 14 seconds (or some crap like that) after the first guy started shooshing (I have always wanted to type that) and everyone in the announcer booth is freaking out and there are coaches running alongside the skiers shouting and the skiers have loaded guns (so I am hoping they don’t get too pissed off) and the Canadians are all standing around smiling and being nice because that is what Canadians do and…well…I am truly beginning to like this biathlon thing.
Oh. What the fuck is this “pursuit” thing? It’s a frickin’ race. Call it that.
Ice Hockey
So. I tried watching some of the USA – Switzerland ice hockey match only to realize that I not only cannot watch NHL games but I also cannot watch Olympics ice hockey games. It’s ice hockey. At least they score more than soccer. USAToday scoreboard told me USA won 3-1. This may be the closest I get to watching Olympics ice hockey.
Speed Skating
Ok. What’s up with Korea and Japan and China? I know they kick ass on the pommel horse and the incredibly kooky floor exercise in gymnastics, but speed skating? When did that happen? Anyway.
It is this event that has given us “the name of the Olympics”: Joji Kato.
Japanese name but would be a kickass name in any language.
Also. I would like to remind all the youngsters in the crowd that Kato (it could have been Cato) was Peter Seller’s (Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau) sidekick in all the Pink Panther movies. My favorite was when Kato hid in the refrigerator to catch Inspector Clouseau unawares but that is another post for another day.
The Weather
Ok. I am not a meteorologist nor do I even look at my local forecast (usually figure it’s gonna be what it’s gonna be). Anyway. This Olympics weather thing confuses me.
As I understand it, things have been rainy and slushy so they have been pushing some events back but most events kept cranking along. Ok. That I get (but I will make a point later).
But then all of a sudden it starts snowing and they are putting events on hold. Say what? This is a Winter Olympics I believe. Wouldn’t you be actually jumping with joy and shoving competitors out the door at the first sign of snow? Confusing. In my simple mind no snow equals Summer Olympics and lots of snow equals Winter Olympics. But that’s me.
Next. The whole rainy and 40’s and slush thing. Aren’t you supposed to schedule Winter Olympics somewhere where it is cold and has snow and ice and stuff like that? But, hey, I am not smart enough to be on the International Olympics Committee.
(But I would still recommend some place cold and snowy for the next Winter Olympics)
Olympic Update Part 1
Feb 16th
This whole Biathlon thing.
I love writing about the biathlon because no one else does (and I am slightly fascinated by this whole skiing and shooting thing).
So. In the Women’s Biathlon Sprint event Slovakia’s Anastazia Kuzmina won with a score of “19:55.6”. Once again the scoring is one of those things that take a guidebook. Speed of skiing and penalties for misses. Anyway. It’s like 7 kilometers of skiing or something like that. And then they shoot at this miniature target of Osama bin Laden all with a heart rate of over 170 or something like that (apparently it is an incorrect belief that these shooters slow their heart rate to level the sighting). Just to give you some perspective it’s like maybe jumping rope for 15 straight minutes or doing a hundred straight jumping jacks a fast as you can and then sitting down with a pencil and writing all your valentine’s day cards (in a way someone can actually read them). Amazing stuff.
The guns are wacky looking but they do seem kind of lethal (so you don’t see a lot of spectators hanging out behind the targets).
And in the Men’s Biathlon Sprint event. (And I am still a little unclear how this merits a “sprint” heading .. see Summer Olympics hundred yard dash as example of confusion). Anyway. The top three were:
France. Vincent Jay
Norway. Emil Hegle Svendsen
Croatia. Jakov Fak
Never heard of them (but have heard of the countries). I just wanted to note the winners. I figured this may be the only time their names appear on our radar. Oh. Yeah, their fans (who I assume are mostly relatives or people who subscribe to Guns & Ammo), they are nuts. Think cowbells and big funny hats and horns. I am just not sure guys who ski and shoot rifles for a living are funny hat/cowbell spanking type of guys but, hey, whatever floats your boat. Maybe the tickets were for free. I went to a fencing event at the Atlanta Olympics because I had free tickets (but I left my cowbell at home … just blew a dog whistle every time someone did something great).
This whole mogul downhill (going downhill with lots of bumps and a couple of jumps) skiing thing.
Women’s version. Ok. Men’s version. I don’t care. My knees and lower back just start hurting every time I watch these contestants bounce their way down the hill. Their knees pump furiously as they pound down the course. Their runs are a brilliant mix of speed and technical skiing with daring back flips and “helicopter spins” and other amazing feats that seem to defy gravity. Who thought this crap up? Awesome.
Women’s ice hockey
The Canadian women’s hockey team, a two-time defending Olympic gold medalist, didn’t disappoint. The Canadians cranked out an 18-0 rout of Slovakia (exciting the 16,000 Canadian fans eager cheer to keep warm and disappointing the 496 Slovakian fans – who cheered anyway to keep warm). C’mon. 18 to zilch? And I thought Slovakia had ice rinks. Oh well. They would beat the crap out of Canada in a “bryndzove halusky” (small dumplings made of potato dough with sheep cheese and topped with scrambled bacon) cooking contest. I know that for sure.
This speed skating thing.
Yikes. First the solo stuff. Who decided to put that on television exclusively? 20 some laps of two guys skating around a really small rink with one hand tied behind their back (ok. that’s what it looked like). And then there is the group speed skating thing. In the huge wipeout fortunately the Koreans weren’t injured with those razor sharp blades flying in their pileup (thank god they weren’t North Koreans or some nukes may have been dropped). Anyway. This group speed skating is kind of like Indy car racing where the cars are inches apart and you cannot really fathom how they can stay so close to each other without hitting each other. But, it was kind of amazing to see the skaters in that one race self destruct at what would have been a 1-2-3 finish for them and allow the Americans to take the 2-3 positions in the race. These races often have a little bit of roller derby flavor. But on really big skates. And with funky colored outfits. I still admit I don’t really get it and it seems a little boring to me.
Cross country skiing.
Awesome. Today a really cute 22 year old Swede girl unexpectedly won her cross country event and puked after crossing the finish line (she still had a Crest bright big smile afterwards). The Polish woman, the favorite, collapses in fatigue maybe a minute from the finish (so that’s collapsing after maybe 23 minutes of cross country skiing). I need to watch more of this. Put it on prime time I say.
Oh. And how cool is it your coach (or I assume it is a coach and not some random spectator hovering at the side of the track) is screaming at the top of their lungs (and because it is in Swedish or Russian or Croatian I have no clue what they are saying) at the skier as they ski by. I assume they are saying something like “you are a lardass and an embarrassment to the queen (or whatever monarch is appropriate) and may your ancestors be hamsters if you don’t win a medal.” But the screaming person sludging their way through the snow beside the track is awesome. I would go if I could do that.
