Olympics Thread

At least with figure skating, they have to show other countries, since only one person is on the ice at a time. With gymnastics, there are athletes at every apparatus at all times, so it's easy for NBC to ignore the non-Americans.

But yeah. I was kind of pissed when they came back from some side thing last night and said "While you were gone, the ice dancers from France(?) performed!"

Meanwhile, they had to edit down the Opening Ceremonies to fit in the time slot, but were able to stretch the 50-second arrival of Team USA to about 5 minutes.

And of course, the endless explanation of what's going on onscreen. "This is all about Korea's past!" Yes, thank you Katie. We probably could have figured that out. Thanks.

Please, ABC/ESPN, get the rights next time they're up for grabs.

I'm pretty sure NBC has the rights to the Paralympics as well (I think they come as part of the package).  I can understand them not running them on the main network, but what exactly is NBC Sports Network for otherwise?

At any rate, it's bizarre.  "Here are all these inspirational athletes that will be competing in a few weeks!  And you can't see any of it!"

Luge doesn't do it for me. I'm staring at the screen, and the broadcasters have some big reaction over an error I can't perceive at all. Therefore the way they put on the brakes by lifting up the front is my favorite part; that and the little flappy hand pushes they use to get momentum.



Also the spectators alongside the luge track remind me of the guys on the catwalk next to the Death Star beam.

That wind on the ski and snowboard courses was insane. Boooo Mother Nature! How dare you interrupt the Olympics! Still, it was a bummer.

I watched the Curling between Canada and Norway tonight. At one point, the male Canadian team member was screaming at the female player who was making the shot. He was shouting at her "NO NO NO NO NO" or "STOP STOP STOP" or something like that. Basically shouting criticism at her. She kept reassuring him. He kept shouting at her. In the end, of course, she was correct, and it ended up a good shot. I was very impressed right after when the cameras caught him saying "Sorry".

Also, super cool to see that USA ladies skater land a triple axel. And I enjoyed the ice dancing. However, there was WAY TOO MUCH skating to Coldplay going on. Coldplay! Everywhere! Aaaaaah! I also liked the interview with Adam Rippon. The skaters seem like a cool group of people.

The best moment of this day was the cross country skiing event where the Norwegian skier was knocked down right at the start, trampled over, and had one of his poles broken. And then he came back to win the gold medal. Damn. All those other competitors whom he passed should feel ashamed of themselves.

The Canadian curling dude is a dick. The best part was the seething hatred in the woman’s eyes in the interview afterwards.

Question for viewers outside the US: does your televised coverage also always show the top X ranks plus the highest-ranked competitor from your country? E.g. 1 - Netherlands, 2 - Canada, 3 - OAR, 15 - USA

Wifemate and I have decided to form a mixed-doubles curling team, as there is actually a rink with curling five minutes from our house. Step one is team name and t-shirt:


Obviously Wifemate will photoshop in a little curling stone. No stealing our idea.

It does in Canada, yeah.

They do that here in South Korea as well.

I watched some luge today, and they do show an awful lot of it, but once you've watched a handful of people go down the luge course figuring out how well someone is doing isn't that difficult just from watching the body language of the luge-ist in question and paying attention to how well they're sticking to the line that the most successful luge-ists manage to stick to (plenty of them seem to make very light contact with walls without completely screwing up their run by pinballing back and forth against the walls.  

The Canadian team's giant team hug response when Alex Gough was guaranteed the first ever Canadian medal in luge was just amazing.

Random thoughts on the last few days:

That was insane that they made the Women's Slopestyle snowboarding go off in that wind. When over 75% of the competitors can't even complete a run due to wind it means it should be cancelled. One of the coaches was interviewed and said he thought it was because of tv scheduling. Damn, I hope not, because that is a lousy excuse. It didn't even make for good tv.

I'm starting to get irrationally angered by the winds. I want to see some slalom skiing, damn it! Stop being windy!!! What happens if the winds keep up and they can't fit all the Olympic alpine skiing events into the timeframe of the Olympics?

The only slalom I've seen so far was in the Men's Combined. Saw the great Norwegian skier Axel Lund Svindal have a great downhill run. Someone from NBC interviewed him afterwards, asking him about his recent knee injury and how he was feeling about slalom. He said, LOL, "I haven't done a single slalom run since I had knee surgery. Haven't done a slalom run in 2 years!" He said he was going to go up and try the practice run. I was nearly crying laughing during this. Basically, Svindal figured out the perfect way to get an extra practice session on the Downhill course. (Almost couldn't believe I was seeing NBC interview a foreign athlete!)

Anyway, was happy to see Hirsh win that Combined event. I remember the stories about him from the last Olympics, and have heard about the pressure he's under in his country, and from the media. To win all those championships and then not have an Olympic gold medal created insane pressure on the poor guy.

I watched some of the women's snowboard halfpipe. Saw that American girl win, Chloe Kim. My god, how are 17 year olds winning gold medals? I'm so old! Aaaaaah! I saw she was tweeting *during* the competition. Girl, I totally understand. I'm also a Twitter addict. A reporter asked her why she was tweeting during the competition. She said, "What else is there to do?" I officially love her. Saw another reporter ask the kid who won the Men's Slopestyle what he was going to do with his gold medal. "Look at it for a while, I don't know" he said.

I saw most of the Pairs Figure Skating short program tonight. Had it playing in the background while I was working OT. Damn, one of these pairs skates to Ed Sheeran. And there I was a few days ago complaining about Coldplay. Have mercy, figure skaters! Why does the USA suck at Pairs Skating now? How did this happen? The USA pair was merely okay. Though, I really like the two of them. They seem fun, and I like how thrilled they are to be at the Olympics. NBC has TWICE aired a sob story profile piece of them. It seems she had a weird illness that was blocking her intestinal track and had to have stomach surgery. Ew! Glad to see athletes recover from that. Anyway, of the top teams, my favorite was the Chinese pair that's in 1st place. They looked great.

Adam Rippon continues to be the best interview of Team USA. Heard him interviewed today. He said, essentially, "Hey, I'm not contending for a medal, so I have no pressure. We skate early in the morning. It's basically like practice for me!" Cannot imagine how fun being in the Olympics must be in that situation. Also saw the Japanese defending gold medalist Yuzuru Hanyu get all but mobbed by reporters. My God, I cannot believe how many reporters and photographers are following him around. I imagine he's not having nearly the amount of fun that Adam Rippon is having.

Watched the Men's snowboard Halfpipe competition tonight. I love this event. Love watching the crazy tricks they do. The Japanese guy who came in 2nd looked so good. But at one point I thought, "Was this guy even born when Shaun White first won a gold medal?" I had to look it up. Okay, yeah, obviously he was, since the event itself isn't older than the Japanese guy. But, that guy was 7 when Shaun White first won. He looked so dejected to come in 2nd. He's 19! Dude, just come back in 4 years.

Haven't been able to watch any speedskating yet. That is the other winter event I really like. Going to try to catch some of those events over the next few days.

Desert Dweller Aksel Lund Svindal first became one of my Olympics crushes during the Vancouver games, thanks to NBC doing a whole gauzy "athlete overcoming big odds" feature about his catastrophic injury at Birds of Prey several years before that.  NBC's clearly had the hots for him for a good, long time, and his lack of Americanness will not stop them from bringing him to our living rooms!  And for that I'm grateful.  He's such a dreamboat.

I was sorry to have missed the women's halfpipe on Monday night, so it was nice to get to see so much of the men's competition last night.  The continuing cancellation of the downhill skiing is giving NBC's primetime broadcast a lot of breathing room; it felt like they gave us a pretty thorough showing of that event.  And holy shit, the halfpipe is awesome.  That's my inane statement for today.  It was a great contest, and I really didn't think that Shaun White was going to be able to top Hirano's run.  (I love that about the Olympics -- how quickly I'll decide I've become an expert in some sport I have literally never watched before in my life.)  So that was pretty exciting, but probably didn't warrant nearly as much coverage of White ugly-crying all over his family afterwards.  So, yeah, I was happy that NBC didn't have the skiing to cut away to during the halfpipe when the actual snowboarding was going on, but was really sorry NBC wasn't cutting away once they decided we needed to watch the emotional aftermath of White's win.  It's like when they made us watch Bode Miller cry after his last race in Sochi for what felt like about six hours.  Why do they think anyone wants to see that?  Ugh.

The pairs skating did not disappoint last night.  The American couple, whom I also really like, were clearly still genuinely happy just to be there and to be skating together, even if they sucked.  Awww!  That's sweet!  The North Korean pair was bonkers good at being insanely likable, so I appreciated that NBC let us see their routine.  I also appreciated Johnny and Tara doing their best to paddle out of the deep water after Terry asked them about the pressure those athletes are probably under.  I love love loved the Chinese pair in first place, but want a moratorium on skating to "Hallelujah" (especially k.d. lang covers of it) (Hugs felt, with that woman's hairstyle, that they should have been skating to something by The Cure).  I couldn't believe that German woman, in her fifth Olympics and on what seemed from the commentary to be her billionth partner, was only 34.  And I really liked the last Russian pair to skate, because they totally had an "androids from outer space" weird vibe to their chemistry.  That was awesome.