Oh, c'mon. If there's anything we should be more proficient than the rest of the world in, it's guns. How do we miss on the biathlon (besides the horrible difficulty of what they're doing and all...)

I mean, I get why we lose to, say, Norway or Canada, at the skiing. They ski to work, right? And the only people in the USA who do that live in, I dunno, Minnesota or Utah. But we should be better at shooting stuff- no excuses ;)

SI

Biathlon just amazes me - you take something that is all about utter calm and precision, and then combine it with tough athletic exertion - and if they miss even one shot it's a heavy penalty.

USA are beating China 9-0 in women's hockey. They'll probably reach double digits in goals before China hits double digits in shots.

I found some footage of that 82-0 Slovakia win over Bulgaria on youtube, after a few goals I couldn't even watch because I felt so bad for the Bulgarians.

What does the coach say in the locker room after a game like that. At least we didn't give up 100?

nordic combination is insane as well, first ski jumping which in itself where it is incredibly tough to balance athletic ability and weight and then a cross country race afterwards which is about athletic ability all the way, both sports need an incredible amount of practice time and to combine them is just incredibly tough.

Dang. I just got back about 15 minutes ago so I missed the end of the Nordic Combined :(

SI

What I wouldn't give for a non-figure skating channel tonight. I'm going to get screwed out of a ton of final luge runs and men's moguls and instead be forced to ignore Scott Hamilton and his whiny annoying voice and partner.

SI

Isn't there something streaming online that would work?

Might be luge here :

hxxp://www.vip--tv.com/londoner.php

yep, Moguls now, luge later tonight

I was thinking the same thing. Man is Loch tearing up the track in luge or what?

Oh, hell. Just give the Chinese the gold. Looked pretty much flawless and Lord knows they are the sympathetic favorites. Hand it over and let us check out the final 5 lugers (as that's where they're at now).

SI

Yep, one skating pair and it's the highest score ever in any International competition. Get your coverage to the luge.

SI

It just was no contest with as good as Loch has been on all 4 runs.

SI

Why on earth would they shift coverage away from the far & away most watched event of the entire Winter games?

I'd personally rather watch hockey practice than figure skating but reality is that I'm in the minority on that one.

With the men's moguls going on. I just have to say "thankfully, there's Justintv" even if it's consistent

SI

And holy crap is the moguls getting dramatic (the live feed, not the tape delay on right now)

SI

Moguls were awesome!



SI

(added some more details to the spoiler above but probably best to not read as they're showing it now)

SI

Ridiculous that the Russian couple scored that high with the fall and the rest of their program not being that much better than the other couples.

However, that Russian skater is gorgeous.

figure skating judging still ruins the enjoyment of watching it

Ayup

SI

Took three Olympics but we finally did it...THANK GOD!!!!

It was still too high, but had they hit their jumps, they would have been right up there with the Chinese team and now the other Russian team, because the rest of their elements were close to them in the eyes of the judges. With this scoring system, they only have so many (dictated by rule) points they can take away or add to the total for a missed element.

Would almost be better if they just did this for show and not scores. I mean the whole thing seems rigged anyway.

exactly

That did not help the feeling that this is rigged

SI

Minor note - but Dale Begg-Smith never won gold for Canada, he did it for Australia in 06 as well.

He left Canada when he was 14. Not sure what happened - but he seems very bitter towards Canada. He has even refused to do any media interview.

I thought they mentioned something about his side business gave the Canadian coaches a feeling that he wasn't taking it seriously and he felt slighted.

Yeah- I misunderstood what they said. My bad.

SI

I usually just loathe the TV coverage, but have to say I've been pretty pleased with the ratio of actual competition/features so far this Olympics.

I seem to remember saying that about 2008, too. I think they're getting better about stupid fluff stories.

SI

Could you imagine the Russian or Chinese mafia being behind these figure-skating riggings?

"We crush you---with a triple salchow"

Chalk me up as another one who just doesn't get the judging fit figure skating. How does a pair have a fall and still finish way ahead of a pair that had a clean routine? I find it hard to believe that the US routines are so dumbed down that even though another couple falls it still has a better routine.

I could be wrong, but it seemed like NBC was laying off the fluff stories during events like luge and combined, but ramped them up for pairs skating - when more women might be tuned in.

Figure skating, gymnastics, etc...

It makes so much more sent to me to have every person do the same routine. After that, bump it up to a higher level and have everyone do the routine again. Bump it up to the higher level and have everyone do the routine again. Keep going up however many levels you want to whittle the field down and make sure that the final round is extremely challenging but that at least everyone is doing the same routine.

As it is...it's just a stupid waste of time.

Everyone doing the same routine would KILL tv ratings. They are WAY more important than the purity of competition.

And I've been to gymnastics competitions where everyone did the same routine. I can assure you that makes it no less a waste of time.

What I'd love is to see the stats before the routine. I know, Scott, in your whiny voice you can tell us all you want about how so-and-so's routine is better but show me. I'm not a dope and I imagine this isn't too hard to figure out. I suspect they don't do it because they'd be showing just how much easier it was to rig these things.

Then again, if we can't get OBP and SLG on baseball broadcasts, much less something like wOBA or ISO, then it's probably a lost cause.

SI

The main problem with figure skating IMHO is the new scoring system in use since 2004. Basically with the new system, it limits expression and creativity by forcing everyone into a fixed series of elements that the skaters must adhere to. I thought Frank Deford had a good commentary on this a while back:

Figure Skating: The Olympics' Broken Sport : NPR

You see I much prefer the new skating scoring system to the old. In the old system, the Chinese team that skated first, would not have finished first. The judges would have saved their higher scores in case they liked a skater better in the later performances.

The current system takes a lot of the judges indivuality away-each element is rated by a technical specialist who does not score the routine. I agree that the current system takes away too much individuality and creativity, but I would rather them to be more fairly judged on their elements then leaving it to the judges opinions and biases on their expression and creativity.

The one thing they need to do is to open up the music choices much more like they do in the free program for ice dancers. Right now they are choosing the same music over and over again because the judges like that music, and I'm getting real bored with it. You get to use music with vocals in the free dance, and I find that to be much more interesting than I used to.

Golden boy of the slopes - Sport - theage.com.au

In other news, I'm going to say I'm boycotting the Winter Olympics until women's ski jumping is allowed. It's not true, but..if someone asks I'm going to say that. Truth is, I'm just not interested this year for some reason or another. I don't know if it's the way coverage is spread out, their declining relevance or what.

But, meh.

I love how the media seems to love giving Begg-Smith the cold shoulder because he won't answer their questions. But all I have to say is this - if you can find time to be one of the best skiiers in the world AND run a multi-million dollar company, do you really have to answer to anyone at that point?

Holy crap! What a competitive men's downhill!

I have two problems with the downhill skiing:

- the course warmed up/degraded after the first 20 or so skiers, which meant that the guys after that could have the run of their lives and still have no shot. Kind of dumb.

- because of the above, the whole thing was super boring for the second half. Just dude after dude skiing down the hill that everyone knew had no chance. Why even continue? You may has well have thrown skiis on some bystanders and let them have at the hill for an hour and give us something interesting to watch.

It looks like they'll be showing the downhill on tape delay tonight

SI

kinda unspectacular course though, well relatively speaking of course.
And only until you saw slow-motion, holy shit :eek: I mean, the power you need in your legs to stay low on those curves and how freaking un-smooth the course looks from up close, what seems like smooth sailing from away is just one bump after the other.



Up until when do you guys need spoilers btw ?


allways like that in the olympics. In other disciplines you start with the worst athletes built it up until the best come along, but for the reason you named (course wearing down) you can´t do that in the downhill and super G because you can´t fix the track in between.

That reason is also why the slalom and Giant Slalom are so fun though, first round the best athletes get early numbers but in the 2nd leg the best placed (mostly the ones that started early in the first leg) start last and have to deal with a seriously fucked up track.

I think the general rule with tape delayed stuff like this is until when it's being shown on the tape delay for most of the US (west coast is screwed in this, I think).

SI

Turns out that Begg-Smith's Internet company is one of the main sources of spyware.

Spyware Confidential mobile edition

heh

Anyone know if there will be an internet stream of tomorrow curling match that I can watch at work?