This point system is what the NHL needs to adopt. 3 points for a win in regulation.

I went to high school with Evan Lysacek. Graduated a year before him.

So yeah, I'm tuning into Men's figure skating tonight.

Gretchen Bleiler is easily the best I've seen so far, even with the fall (then again, I'm about an hour behind on the DVR).

That said, the girls just aren't that impressive to me so far- they just can't get the same air so they can't do the same tricks, kindof like some of the beginning guys last night.

Tho, with the air and moves Bleiler was going with, she would have scored in the top 3 guys if she could hit it.

SI

Kelly Clark can get the air, too. But she's really wobbly between moves and it cost her on the first run.

SI

Puck hit a skate in front of the net and ended up right on the Swiss player's stick with a wide open net. It happens...Canada got a few of those bounces but Hiller just seemed to be in the right place at the right time.

The Swiss played the exact game they needed to play...trap, trap, trap...shoot...trap, trap, trap...and Canada didn't adjust by dumping it in and knocking the crap out of their d-men. The Richards line should've been out there a little more often to do just that.

Sunday should be fun, though!

Oh suck! Bleiler had the tricks and the air but just wiped out. She had such a great run but then took off a half second too early and wiped out :(

I feel cheated because she had the best moves of anyone out there but couldn't land and didn't get the gold despite looking like the best

SI

Fair scoring on the snowboarding. It's how I would have done it. The Australian was best.

SI

France-Canada in curling. The Canadians were up 4-0 but France just got back in to it with 2 in the 4th end.

SI

And Martin scores 5 in the 5th end.

Game over, Canada! 5 in the 5th.

SI

In Sweden-China, they just had to do a measurement. Think football where they bring out the chains. They had this bar that they stick in the middle of the ice and rotate around to see which of the stones was closer.

SI

I saw them do that in a USA women's match the other day. Pretty cool. I gotta say though, watching the curling online streams makes me appreciate the announcers on the regular broadcasts. I just don't know enough about curling strategy to understand what they are trying to do most of the time.

That's why I tend towards the Canadian ones- they are almost always streams piped in from Canadian tv so they have announcers.

SI

Oh yeah? Where can I find those?

The "Crosby is a whiner" crowd is ridiculous.

The current one:
Video | Men's prelims: France vs Canada | NBC Olympics

In general,
Video - Exclusive Coverage | 2010 Winter Olympics | NBC Olympics
Go to the "Watch the Olympics Live Online" box to find them

SI

Never mind- I think the French just conceded. Again, the Canadians picked up 5 in one end and it was over after that.

SI

Great job Evan!

Our DVR cut out so we missed the Russian at the end and the results.

FYI: China-Sweden going into extra ends

SI

Russia vs Slovakia going into a shootout.

Slovakia takes the shootout over Russia. The ice was a joke for that shootout. No one could deke without losing the puck. Still, great game.

Olympic hockey is amazing!

The Slovakia/Russia game was just as entertaining as it gets.

I'm off next week and have nothing to do on Sunday either.

3pm RUS vs CZE, 7:40pm CAN vs USA, midnight SWE vs FIN.

Good lord.

Anybody see the divas skate last night? Russian guy 'jokingly' steps onto the gold podium before assuming his spot on the silver podium. I was hoping for a cat fight.

No kiddin'. I wish I had the monday monring off. That's about the best three-game lineup in international ice hockey you can get...

why can´t that be on saturday ?? :banghead:

amazing pairings really.

USA curling finally gets a win, the women beat Russia 6-4. Hopefully the men can get their first win later today against France.

I'm sure many guys don't give two shits about ice skating, but the storyline all around for last night was as good as any Hollywood writer could dream up. Great drama, great clutch performance by Lysacek.

I wonder if they will make a lineup change. How can they run a guy out there who has missed 4 game winning shots in the last 3 games.

They have made a change. They have replaced the skip with the alternate.

The time zones and me DVRing the stuff have kept me out of this thread but some thoughts.

I don't see SI's hate for Mancuso, she seems fine to me. Maybe it is because I grew up in NJ and know what a real bitchy woman is like.

US mens curling has been brutal, like watching the Mets on ice.

I thought I would hate the snowboarding but actually liked it. I also told my wife the women should go first. No offense to the women, but they look like a bunch of children out there in comparison.

Olympic hockey is the nuts, it is awesome.

I thought this video was very cool about what the medals are and how they are made - really turned me around on the subject.

Vancouver 2010 Medals : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics

The new guy REALLY sucks.

how fucked up a sport is skeleton ? Going head first down an ice track with very little space on the side in terms of protection.
I had to turn of the TV, can´t watch it. All i´m thinking is "don´t crash now, where´s the rider, why is this so fast, don´t crash please, don´t die, WTF are you doing ?"

nice insight on the medals :)

Great Britain wins a gold at the WINTER olympics!

(yeah I know we won Curling in 02, but this one is particularly impressive as we don't even have a skeleton track anywhere in the country)

And the girl in question had never won a world cup event before, but sets two track records and just performs out of her mind all week. Pretty nice story.

I love these three observations, particularly "Mets on ice" :D

Also, I had forgotten ice dancing. Figure skating, well, I've written volumes on how I don't like it, the judging, or the coverage. But this is completely useless as a "sport" as well.

SI

Wow- great run by Svindal. The differences between the medals were a couple of hundreds of a second and he just smoked them all by 0.30

Oh, and I think you could have an Super G drinking game involving the term "weasel"

SI

The ice dancers are warming up.

Who knew the Olympics could also provide comedy.

While I agree with your general point, Belbin is a stunner.

ayup

Not related to the competition, but did anyone else find it strange that for the AT&T snowboarder-in-space commercial they used the Lou Reed song that played in Trainspotting when Ewan McGregor OD'd?

Sounds like the Russian guy is an ass. Just saw an article about him complaining that the winner isn't a real champion because he didn't try a quad something.

he actually has a point. It´s kind of like another snowboarder beating Shaun White with inferior tricks because he rides more smoothly on the halfpipe between jumps.

Not saying he is definitely right, but it is definitely true that the jumps and the difficulty of them have gotten an afterthought and taken a backseat to technical elements.

And it´s also true that now there are less difficult jumps being done than 5 years ago.

but who cares, it´s figure skating :D

Svindal is a monster, figuratively speaking. Once stood right in front of the guy and he really stands out. I have been following his career since years and years ago when i "called" his breakout season by selecting him in a game where everyone drew an athlete from every major winter sport in a fantasy-game.

She's also super cool. She's a local girl and I've heard a few radio interviews with her. She seems very down to earth and funny.

Interesting Winter Olympics trivia I learned through Wikipedia - Curling was included in the first Winter Olympics in 1924, then a few times as a demonstration sport, then back to full status in 1998. The sport of skeleton, which seems to have evolved from a similar sledding sport called Cresta Sledding (from a Cresta track set up for the head-first sport in St. Moritz) and was included in the 1928 and 1948 Olympics in St. Moritz but then not again until 2002 (as Skeleton.)

And now skeleton runners are known as "Of all the death defying sports in the Olympics, these guys are the craziest. They take the luge and think 'It's not crazy enough to do a sport someone died in this week. Why not try this head first?' "


SI

How many of us have gone sledding as a kid and went down a hill head first on the sled? Granted not as fast but I venture to say it is about as dangerous as we sure didn't have helmets or anything even close to protective gear. They don't have to worry about hitting rocks or trees at least. :)

Being from Houston, 0 times ;)

And once I moved to Kansas, I was mostly smart enough to go legs first (tho, yeah, I did go head first- just not down the really big hills)

SI

Do people really not realize that skeleton is mucho safer than luge?

No clue, personally. It sounds like a crazier idea. As for whether it's safer or not, I have no idea.

SI

Not really. As Lysacek points out, if it's all about the jumps then just have a jumping competition. It's about all the things that make up skating - jumps, spins, footwork, and wide range of artistic elements.

And to be clear, Plushenko landed all of his jumps, but many of them were wobbly and he barely pulled them out, whereas Lysacek's jumps were not only all landed, virtually all of them were nearly flawlessly executed.

Granted I've never done it at Olympic speeds, but I wager it's safer because you can see where you're going and adjust course/slow down by dragging your feet more easily. And in the event of something going wrong you can much more easily tuck and protect your head/neck/spine. (Of course, I have a scar on my chin from 30 stitches received when I was tubing headfirst, so maybe my theories are wrong.)

btw, does anyone get MSNBC in HD yet? Can I bitch at Comcast for having to watch USA-Canada in non-HD, or is NBC/Universal really dumb enough not to put marquee hockey games on a channel like USA or Universal that people get in HD?

I'm watching Norway-Switzerland on MSNBC HD right now. Sounds like a Comcast problem.

valid points, but you also have a worse balance, one on the course because you have more of the body weight being up front, two on the luge itself because of your legs being bottomside up and being draged upwards by the powers in the course and third because you have to steer by shifting your body more actively.
Steering a luge is way "easier" than steering a skeleton-sled.

Plus the things under the skeleton vehicle (seriously blanking here) aren´t as "pointy" as under a luge, much less traction on the ice and thus much tougher to maintain a steady ride.

All in all skeleton is much more shaky than luge. But yeah, obviously can´t be as dangerous as it looks but youve got to admit that it really seems very wrong to go head first :D

"slowing down" is kind of a relative thing when it goes from 145 to 130 kph by dragging your feet :)

Yep, have it in HD on Time Warner.

I don't get MSNBC in HD either. Not sure it's even shot in that.

During the 9th end McCormick choked, yet again, Britain couldn't come up with the big shot to close out the game in the 10th.. They had a 5-4 lead with the hammer against the US and the US came away with a point. Great stuff.

Has been since last June.

from the wiki
MSNBC HD is a 1080i high definition simulcast of MSNBC that launched on June 29, 2009. All live programing as well as select long form programs air in HD.[35]

Cablevision was the only provider to carry MSNBC HD at its launch date.[36]

A Dish Network press release on May 8 indicated that it would be the first satellite service to launch MSNBC HD in June.[37] However their launch was postponed to July 8.[38]

Time Warner Cable launched the HD feed on July 22 in the New York area.[38] The feed was made available in late July in Ithaca, NY on Time Warner. It has also been reported that Bright House Networks will add the HD feed in July, with other unnamed providers to follow.[39] Phil Griffin claimed MSNBC HD would have 11 million viewers by the end of August 2009.[39]

Verizon FiOS added MSNBC HD on February 11, 2010.[40]

The US without the hammer in 10th and 11th ends comes through with the win. McCormick with a big shot in the 11st to redeem herself from the 9th.

my brother has declared that him and his friend will be on the US curling team in Sochi. They're going to go sign up and start learning at the club two towns over.

USA curling on a roll, men and women have each won two straight. Shame about the horrific start though. I think the problem is that it's all Northerners competing. Get some rinks built in other parts of the country and we'll start medaling in this sport consistently.

:lol:

One addition to watching Curling on TV that would be awesome, imo would be a speed measurement and time measurement on every shot.

It's amazing to watch some of these shots go for so long so slow all because of sweepers and then it would be interesting to see how fast the take out shots are.

I think it would add a little bit more to the experience.

Mark Tuitert! Well worth staying up until 3:00 am!

Tuitert was an absolute beast.

Celski DQ'd in the short track semi, looked like the Canadian dude made contact first and was behind Celski. Oh well. C'mon Ohno.

Wow- that second semifinal was awesome

SI

This is such a sad little second final.

SI

Yup. However, this race should be exciting.

Would have been nice to see the women's 1500m short track, an eight person final sounds nuts. NBC with their "there's a short delay on the track" bullshit :/

Only a bronze for Ohno, damn Canadian knocked him off his balance when he made his move.

lol

My DVR schedule says that race was already planned for the late night coverage tonight. I imagine it'll be shown in about 40 minutes at the beginning of that coverage.

It's a fucking disgrace. I've always thought Bob Costas was an obnoxious piece of shit and a Yankees homer, to flat out lie to the entire country and say there's some kind of delay when in actuality there's a medal event going on in an exciting sport is bad even for him.


Well at least we'll get to see it, I don't see why they couldn't have showed it when it happened, and I don't see why Costas felt the need to lie to everyone.

what a great interview by ohno...what a classy guy

So what's up? They let it run and didn't show it live?

SI

oh i agree. i wasn't laughing at you...just laughing at the absurdity of it.

they could say "oh the women's final is going on now...tune in late-night or set your dvr to watch it later" - but they're so like...bullshitty that they don't

because we have to show it all the tape-delayed shit and the human interest bullshit

After watching the replay I don't think the Canadian really didn't anything. He had his hand on him but I don't think he knocked him off balance. It didn't really look like he pushed him at all...

yeah - even ohno says he just slipped a little

Ohno is just being diplomatic unlike Russian figure skaters and Korean speed skaters. Maybe.

You can't look at the video and not think that the hand had something to do with the slip, the slip was right after. Now maybe it wasn't much of a push, and Ohno should have done a better job of weathering it. But regardless, pisses me off that he got in on the finals on a BS review after riding the back of a skater, and helped cost another skater a better medal by pulling the same contact.

Damn, they showed an earlier curling shot made by Murdoch for the Brits against Canada, a difficult double deflection that finished on the button and scored them three points. So awesome.

Why is this sport so great? Maybe it's because I like playing shuffleboard at the bar and this is kind of like a giant version of that, except this is far more complicated and there's Olympic gold and petty nationalism involved. I'm becoming obsessed I think. I don't know what I'm going to do when the games are over, four more years until I get to see more curling sounds like a terrible wait.

You know, if Canada and Norway keep winning while everyone else stays clumped in the middle, the US men just might have a shot at the curling semifinals. Switzerland and Sweden are currently winning, that won't help at all though...

The women are only half a game out after winning two straight. This rollercoaster ain't stopping for awhile.

God damn is Ohno over rated. I mean he has got the press over the last two olympics, but the Koreans have owned his ass. I do not even remember him beating these guys ever other than the one last olympics that was controversial DQ'dS on the Koreans. It pisses me off now I have to listen to Mrs Galaril bragging about the South Koreans kicking Americas ass in short track again. Yes, we will argue about short track for nationalities sake.

I think the throws and the strategy are pretty interesting. My issue with curling revolves 100% around the time of it. It just seems like there's way too much time between shots, and then there's too many throws and ends. Speed it up and I'd be able to sit through it all, instead of turning over to "Almost Famous" on TBS and missing the end of the USA-SWE match like I did today.

Curling is about 100 times more fun to play than it is to watch. Once I get too old for more active sports I'll probably end up back in curling (I curled for 6 or 7 years as a youth). But watching it can be painful. I always liked it better when there were 8 ends, 10 seems unnecessary.

Okay, if a Canuck understands where I'm coming from, I think I'm on the right page.

Belarus up 2-1 on Germany...

Curling seems to be filling my winter fix for a slow moving leisurely sport (read: baseball substitute).

SI

No need for a baseball substitute. Pitchers and catchers have reported, my friend! :D

I wonder if a pro curling league would make it in the US with a few tweaks, shot clock, etc...

probably not.

That's not baseball. That's a bunch of guys just throwing a ball around. Call me when somebody has a bat!

Hard to say a guy who has 7 medals is overrated

seriously. short-track speedskating is just such an unpredictable competition, where in any given race the fastest skater can win, or potentially not win. not like long-track where they race the clock, it's more tactics-driven and you've got the whole concept of passing and bumping while you're on these razor-blade thin skate edges.

I know, but it's not like I can watch it yet. :D

SI

Overated in that of those 7 medals he's got 2 gold only and really one was not earned but given by the judges who DQ'd the winning skater for a blocking call that even I as a USA fan thought was BS. In this olympics his silver medal was just luck when the Koreans fell. I know short track is strategy and bursts of speed but look at the Korean guy this time Jung-Su Lee he has two golds to Ohno's silver and bronze. It is great he is in the Olympics and earning medals but celebrating the boat load of non golds is like Vikings or Bills fans celebrating being in four-five Super Bowls but never winning.

Go Slovakia! (Biathalon)

SI

This just makes me shake my head.

I guess we just have a different concept of what the olympics mean.

Only about 10 more minutes to go.. hopefully, the game isn't a blowout.