By Jim Coffman
Greetings from Olympics Television Central. What follows are my informal, post-tragedy impressions of the competitive goings-on in Vancouver (great town, terrible Olympic location – generally not a good idea to have the winter games on the edge of a rain forest, even if it is a temperate, northern Pacific Coast rain forest) so far.
At least on Saturday and Sunday, the artificial snow held up against the rain (with some help from underground plastic tubes stuffed with dry ice), heavy fog never quite materialized and, other than downhill skiing, the events proceeded reasonably smoothly.
As for the one event that is designed to be anything but smooth, well, I’m glad the moguls are over. There were the three American medals in two (men’s and women’s) races. The USA would do well to repeat that medal rate in just about any other specific event.
But did anyone’s knees and back not feel a bit worse for wear after watching skier after skier pounding through – what was it – about a hundred vicious little hills per run? Yikes. If I’d watched much more I was going to need arthroscopic surgery on something.
Yes, yes, yes it is immature to focus too much on the medal count. But we’re talking about athletes zipping around as quickly as they can on snow and ice when they aren’t doing cool tricks high overhead. In other words, this isn’t about maturity.
So far we’ve enjoyed the thrill of a South Korean short-track speed skater trying an incredibly ill-advised late pass on a teammate, selfishly taking him out and ensuring that rather than being shut out, the U.S. would grab two medals in the 1,500. But we’ve also suffered through the agony of the Germans grabbing gold and silver in the luge. Let’s go non-Teutonic sliders! We need your help to ensure the Germans don’t slip past us into the top spot in the medals table like they did in 2006.
I spent far too much time watching biathlon coverage Sunday afternoon. The guy announcer Al Trautwig trumpeted as a medal hope for the U.S. finished 47th but that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was the international video feed rarely matching up with what Trautwig and his partner were talking about and the two of them refusing to acknowledge that fact nearly as frequently as they should have.
And how about next time, you have some footage of the American athletes from previous biathlon competitions this winter? Then if you have an unexpected event like young American Jeremy Teela taking a shocking ninth (he was not expected to get anywhere near the top 10), you can at least show us some tape of him competing in another event?
As my 10-year-old son pointed out, how weird was it to go from the shot of one of the American male pair figure skaters locked in a dramatic virtual embrace with his partner to a shot of his wife in the stands? And then there was the news that they had a five-month-old baby. That was just uncomfortable. They won’t be contending for a medal after finishing 10th though so no biggie.
The U.S. women’s hockey team beat China 12-1. But that was nothing compared to host Canada knocking off Slovakia 18-0. Even though there are more than a dozen countries willing to send out bodies in sweaters in these competitions, there are only four countries where women really play hockey. Let’s just go with those four next time, play some semi’s, a third-place game and a final and call it an Olympic tourney.
More next week including tons more detailed hockey-related observations (unless the U.S. teams get thumped), a long rumination on the majesty of curling (again, it would help if the good ol’ red, white and blue squads were at least in contention for a bronze) and what I’m sure will be tons of speed skating and real skiing. Unless the rain forest prevails.
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Mogul Gold
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Ryan T.’s Day Three Highlights
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Jim “Coach” Coffman rounds up the sports weekend in this space every Monday. He welcomes your comments.
Posted on February 15, 2010