The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics Discussion Thread

The men's downhill last night was brilliant, 4 skiers within a tenth of a second. Miller sounded pretty frustrated afterwards, no mistakes on the bottom half and yet he lost 0.7 seconds. Amazing race.

EDIT: Great analysis of the DH from the NY Times.

 

The Swedes are actually doing better than the Norwegians, aren't they?

I hadn't watched pairs figure skating for years, and thought it had regressed quite a bit; the Russians used to be great, and had a tremendously expressive style. The Chinese are mostly robotic...trick, trick, trick.

Tonight the men. Bad costume alert!

 

Hooray for Olympic Hockey!!!!

 

I called it...lots of bad costumes...the worst was the Yank in pink lacing.

All Jerome Iginla needs, it would appear, is Sidney Crosby and Rick Nash.

 

With the time difference, there isn't much figure skating coverage, with even German TV opting for live events. I've really lost interest anyway, too much questionable judging, and now with the new scoring system, who the heck knows what's going on. 6.0 was beautiful in it's simplicity.

Korea got it's second gold of the games, in women's 500m speed skating -- Germany' favorite, Jenny Wolf, lost by 5 hundreths. Hundreths! That's brutal.

 

I can't stand figure skating. Unfortunately, the highlights are getting the prime time here in the UK and the luge has been on too late to watch. I've seen more biathalon and snowboarding than I really wanted to. The men's downhill was OK though. Haven't seen any curling yet. Cursed time zone difference!

 

Hate to go back to the luge tragedy again, but I just spotted this: 2 years ago, German sport weekly SportBild ran a story under the headline "Death Races Along"warning of the dangers of the track. It even quoted German team coach Norbert Loch (and father of the gold medal winner) saying, "Does it have to come to an extreme situation for something to happen?" The magazine pointed to the problems again 2 weeks ago, pointing out that nothing had been done to change the track since the first article was published.

Google translation of their current column.

 

So it would seem. I managed to watch the second period and some of the third (switching between that and Lost), and Canada looked quite good after a 0-0 first period.

Ryan Malone was one of the goal scorers for Team USA against the Swiss. First person from Western PA to score an Olympic goal.

 

Looking forward to the women's downhill tonight, anyone know how the weather is? Zaz, look out your window now!

EDIT: Found a webcam, looks pretty darned good!

 

Don't ask me, I live in the 'burbs, not Whistler.

That luge death is a damn tragedy and shame, and Vanoc is absolutely at fault.

The British press is apparently so bored by the Brits not qualifying for much that they are attacking everything here, much to the indignation of the local press. Of course, the local press is worse, so what's the problem? Free country, guys. I thought the local reporter who sourly noted that 40 per cent of British men have premature you-know-what was carrying it a bit too far.

 

That was VONN-TASTIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Is that Swedish skier okay?

 

Paerson's had her share of knee injuries, seemed like she might have tweaked it again. But nothing too bad. Shame, though, she would have had bronze for sure, probably even silver, in what I assume will be her last Olympics.

EDIT Back to Vonn, you've just seen what pretty much every women's DH in the past 3 years has been like -- some great performances among the rest of the field (Mancuso really looked good) and then Vonn comes along and makes it look as if she's in a different sport. Incredible.

 

Well, good for her; I'm a fan.

 

Wow, good day for USA! 6 medals, 3 of them gold!

 

Shaun White is insane...wow. Props to him for defending his halfpipe gold from Turin, and improving his score on his victory run. It was pretty sweet to watch.

 

Yeah, the others didn't even stand a chance!

 

She went to the hospital to get checked out, nothing broken.

I thought the Gisin crash was actually worse-- on the replay you could see her twisting her upper body in the air, clearly scared realizing she had lost control. The that last bump to the side of the finish line. Ouch!

EDIT: Back to Vonn, I think I sat through the last 30 seconds of her run muttering "Don't crash, don't crash!" at the TV. She always skis so close to the edge.

 

Worst injury of the day was apparently the french skiier who lost her balance pushing off at the top, she tore her ACL. That has gotta suck.

 

Yikes.

I need to see if the video of Vonn's run is online somewhere... I didn't get to see it

 

They're minimizing the lip on that jump for the combined today. You really have to ask what the race organizers were thinking, it was a tough course as it was, that was compounded by the fact that it was icy due to recent weather and the racers only had a limited amount of practice on the course.

Paerson will decide whether to ski the combined today shortly before the start.

EDIT: RJ, I assume it's available on NBCs website if you're in the US.

EDIT2: Also, definitely try to catch Mancuso's run, it was brilliant in it's perfection.

 

They might even have a composite of their runs somewhere...they showed one on NBC.