Winter Olympics!

Remove all ads!

Norway's Curling team definitely has the best appearance so far .

 

I'm actually surprised by the US team. We usually do not perform nearly as well in the Winter Games as we do the Summer Games. We're currently winning in total medals, and that's not something that typically happens. (I concede that Canada and/or Germany can still overtake us.) The last time Canada had the Olympics in 1998, the US won just eight medals. Granted, there are more events now, including snowboarding where the US dominates, which didn't even exist back then. But we're also winning medals in skiing, and even one in figure skating, which definitely is uncommon.

 

Maybe America has remembered we have a north?

 

Aldeth, while I agree that the US generally doesn't do all that well in many Winter Olympic events, (alpine) skiing and figure skating are two areas where the US is often competitive, and will win an occasional medal.


Kullervo, while I wouldn't say that the Norwegian curling team's pants are "stylish", I would say that it does take quite a bit of chutzpah to wear those things.

On a side note, while curling doesn't get covered much in US Olympic broadcasts, I do get a kick out of it and glad that it's an Olympic sport.

 

That's true. They are pretty good at the alpine, but that's one of five main skiing events that involve going really fast down a mountain. (There's a lot more than five if you count things like moguls, biathlon and cross-country.) This year, Lindsey Vonn, Julia Mancuso, and Bode Miller all have multiple medals.

Also the one long-time olympic sport that the US has typically been good at is speed-skating. They didn't just get good at then when Apollo Ohno and Shani Davis started competing.

It is kind of cool, like shuffleboard on ice!

 

I hear it can be as popular as hockey inside Canada so I'm sure many home visitors are watching.

I think it is interesting and I've done it once thanks to the friendly staff at a nearby public athletics/park building/complex that does curling, football, track, and community meetings.

On my way to see when the speed skating is and how it is going.

 

I'd forgotten about speed skating as another are where the US is competitive.

I have to admit that I'm more fond of traditional speed-skating, not the short-track variety. Short track SS-ing seems too much like what you'd get if you helm track meets inside an office building's corridors. I guess that I like the purity of speed skating where the skaters aren't mugging each other constantly.

 

Ski Cross is starting today. I know that some of the events in the Olympics are dangerous but usually aren't deadly or create serious injury.

Sure speed skating can have pile ups and the blades can really cut someone. But that is unusual even with the close quarters racing and when it does happen usually all that occurs is that someone wipes out and slides off the track into the padding on the side.

Ski Cross gives downhill skiers another chance to compete but having them start shoulder to shoulder and doing turns and bumps combines the speed skating risks with skiing minus the trackside padding.

Good idea or no?

 

Well we don't exactly have specialized ski troops. Most conscripts ski during their time in the military, sure if you do your military service in the north you are likely to have to ski more but everyone is expected to know how to ski, it's more or less a basic requirement, a bit like swimming.

 

Yay! Another golden medal for the Netherlands. All of our medals have so far been won in speed skating, it's not like other sports matter

 

I don't know, curling always cracks me up, in a "Wait, that is a sport?" kind of way. It might be fun to watch it over a beer at the local pub, I guess, but I just can't take it seriously as an athletic competition..

Apart from that, I enjoy the olympics and I'm very sorry I don't devote more time to watching them. Unfortunately, I can't really watch online TV all night - they run almost all night on the national TV, but I don't have a TV set in my room so I watch them online. There are reruns in the afternoon that show the more interesting events and any Bulgarian participation.

 

Nope. It's a bent up disk that looks like a coin after being ran over by a train. There's also hard to etchings on them.

Nowhere near as cool as Torino's medals.

 

So I see that Russian figure skating douchebag has awarded himself with a phony 'platinum' medal. I think the IOC should strip him of his real silver medal for unsportsmanlike conduct. What a f***ing crybaby! "BooHoo! I didn't win gold, so I'm going to b**** till I get my way!"

 

As I heard he was actually totally robbed which always is a problem in the judging "sports".

On a happier note, Sweden won the cross-country team skiing! Woo! Female dog slapped those filthy Norwegians!

 

Well, it was a bit of a scandal about that, yeah - a lot of people thought he should have got the gold. The reaction of the commentary here on it was practically hilarious - you could imagine the announcer tearing her hair out .

In other news, I just watched the US beat Switzerland - I think that means it goes to the semifinals, right?

 

Canada is locked in a titanic struggle with Russia in Men's Hockey. Go Canucks!

 

I turn on the radio today as a local broadcast goes to sports.

"And here's Steve Grubbs with sports."

"Our curling team sucks!"

Made my morning.

 

Finland once again made it to the semifinals in hockey, and even better: Sweden didn't .

 

Regarding the Russian figure skater - his complaint was that his jumps had a higher degree of difficulty than the American's jumps - which is true. However, the judges did give him higher scores for the jumps part of his program. The problem is that jumps only make up 1/3 of your score. The other 2/3 of the score is based on footwork, spins, and a couple of other factors that I don't remember offhand. He scored lower on those elements, and thus his total score was lower. They interviewed one of the Canadian Olympic officials (not one of the judges) on NBC a couple of nights ago, and he didn't seem too fussed about it.

Regarding hockey: They don't televise a lot of the matches in the US, and I don't think they showed any of them during primetime, except for the Canada-US one last weekend. (For example, they did NOT televise the Canada-Russia game last night.) Therefore, I'm not familiar with many of the teams compositions.

My question is this: Are most of the players on the European teams from the NHL? I know that the Canadian and US teams consist completely of NHL players, and I know that the Russian and Czech teams have a good number of NHL players as well. But I do not think there are enough NHL players from places like Finland, Norway, and Sweden to make an Olympic team. There almost certainly aren't enough Swiss NHL players to make a team. Obviously, they play hockey in Europe, so I assume that there are national and/or international hockey leagues in Europe. What are the primary European leagues that different teams draw their players from?

 

I'm not that much into hockey, but the german team has (or had) 8 NHL players in their rank. I guess our league is "not bad", being at least full-pro and attracting a lot of spectators.

The coverage in geramny is perfect! You can watch basically all events.

Concerning Biathlon: It might be strange, but i think it's great fun to watch. You can go "OOoouh!" when your favorite athlete misses a target and stuff ;-)

Do i get it right that Biathlon is not very popular in Canada / USA?