|
Check out each day's coverage and hot jock in our Olympics
archive
Feb. 23
action
 Fall
classic:
Shizuka Arikawa won the women's figure skating gold, beating
out a bunch of stumblers to take the top spot. American
Sasha Cohen, who led after the short program, fell once and
took the silver, while Russian Irina Slutskaya also fell and
got the bronze. One of our board posters, Tennis Guy,
summed it up well:
Arikawa won the worlds a couple years ago and when she
didn't do that well the year after, people were writing her
off. The way she skated all this week, she deserved it.
She's a great blend of jumps and artistry. Very elegant
young lady.
The overall night was really disappointing, though. The only
other Olympics that were worse were the long programs in
Albertville (1992), when almost everyone fell, except Kristi
Yamaguchi, and she had a really sloppy landing on one jump.
But this was almost as bad.
Surprising that Sasha could still get the silver with two
falls (editor: technically it was only one fall), while
Slutskaya got a bronze with one fall.
On a
night when no skaters skated their best, and in fact, most
skated like crap:
Gold = conservative but elegant program where the only
mistake was doubling a triple
Silver = two early falls but landing everything else with
the best grace and artistry in the field
Bronze = one fall later in the program, doubling a triple,
and having the artistry of an epileptic seizure
If I had paid to watch it, I would have demanded a refund.
Slutskaya
wears the pants, Weir goes traditional?
In
Tuesday's short program, Irina Slutskaya took advantage of a
new costume rule and wore pants during her routine. She was
the only women among the leading contenders to do so. On
Thursday, Johnny Weir took time out of his exhibition
rehearsal to join the cast of "Olympic Ice" and preview the
women's free skate. As they showed a clip of Slutskaya in
her short program Mary Carillo asked Weir if he liked her
costume. "Yes, I like it," Weir said. Then he hesitated,
which he rarely does, before adding, "I prefer girls in
skirts ... because it's tradition." What? I might have
expected references to Care Bares on acid or designer hand
bags, but not the T-word.
I
found it funny at first that Weir of all people would have
such respect for tradition. But on second thought, if this
was Weir's reaction, what must some of the judges think of
Slutskaya's pants? I wonder if she might have found
3-one-hundredths of a point, enough to win the short
program, had she suited up in something more "traditional."
What a shame. Irina, you wear your pants! You're hot and
you're athletic. And you're clearly ahead of your time. Not
that that says a lot in the figure skating world.
(Ryan
Quinn)
Venus
vs. Mars.
Let's face it, the men are just stronger and faster than the
women, and it makes for better viewing. In tennis, the
strength of the men, to me, takes away from the competitions
– I'm just not interested in seeing ace after ace. In these
sports, whether it's figure skating or speed skating or ski
jumping, it's just more exciting and entertaining to watch
the men do more incredible tricks and land them with more
strength and grace than the women. That doesn't take away
from the effort that both sexes put into their events; that
is equal. But, from a few thousand miles away watching on
TV, the guys are just better to watch. (Cyd
Zeigler Jr.)
  Shani
makes up:
Some of us
have gotten a
gay vibe from U.S. speed skater Shani Davis (left),
and we got one more sign during an interview he did last
night on the "Tonight Show," where he chatted briefly with
Tom Green. He was asked about the "brouhaha" he went through
with Chad Hedrick (though Hedrick's name wasn't used) and
Davis said he assumes it is over due to "handshaking and a
little bit of hugging and kissing and making up." Huh? I was
amazed that Green, who has done lame skits all Games, didn't
run with it in a "Brokeback" kind of way. It could have made
for great TV, but all we're left with is the image of Shani
and Chad kissing and hugging.
(Jim
Buzinski)
Bad
food, man:
It seems that years of planning in a gastronomically
stratospheric environment couldn't help the hosts make the
guests very happy:
American bobsledders
Vonetta Flowers and Jean Prahm push away trays of
Olympic-issue food: A barely nibbled pizza, sauteed beef
getting cold on a bed of rice, a half-dozen untouched
Chinese dumplings,
AP reports.
“The banana was
good,” says Flowers, breaking into laughter.
For many athletes
and coaches, the quality of food at the athletes’ village in
this Alpine hub is no laughing matter.
An international
coalition of the hungry — from Russians to Kazakhs to
Americans — has been lobbying their Italian hosts to do
something about what they describe as bland and
nutritionally questionable grub.
Some Olympians said,
there weren’t enough veggies at the salad bar. Others
complained the hosts had no concept of the grainy,
high-fiber breads athletes need.
Russian bobsledder
Nadezda Orlova didn’t need words to describe what she
thought of the food — she just gave a thumbs down signal.
“She wants to eat,
but she can’t,” he said. “When you eat something it must
taste of something, it must smell of something.”
Oh boy ... when you get
the borsch, boiled potato and sausage Russkies to refuse to
eat your food, how much worse can it get??!
American skier Ted
Ligety, who won gold in the combined, left a plate of pasta
with tomato sauce half finished on the eve of the giant
slalom.
“The food here is
actually not so good,” he said. “The highlight this week is
that they installed a machine for ice-cream bars.”
The ice-cream fueled
Ligety didn’t even complete his giant slalom run.
So, it was an Italian
plot to subvert the competitors while their own team was off
secretly eating the Good Stuff!!
Flowers and Prahm
also abandoned a balanced diet as they prepared for the
women’s bobsled event. “This is our pre-race meal —
bananas,” said Flowers, an Olympic gold medalist at the 2002
Salt Lake City Games.
Apparently the
banana strategy wasn’t a winner. Flowers and Prahm, finished
the first night of bobsled in ninth place.
Honey, it's not enough
to just have a banana. You need some chocolate syrup and
nuts to go with it!
“I think the food
is good, especially the Chinese food,” said Polish
bobsledder Mariusz Latkowski.
Then he added: “But
I’m sad there isn’t a McDonald’s here.”
OK, I think we've
officially bottomed out here, to misuse a phrase. When the
Poles, eating Chinese food, are your best Italian
ambassadors, Mamma Mia! And then to add the Golden Arches
coup 'd grace to the already hammered Italian ego?
Get me some Freedom
Fries, prego!
Some excuses did
bubble to the surface:
"Meals were first
prepared in the northern Italian city of Bologna, vacuum
packed, then “reactivated” in the village kitchens.
Asked about
athletes’ complaints concerning tough meat, Bianchi
responded, “there will be some soft bits and some hard bits
... These things don’t always go perfectly.”
Gays have LONG known
that things don't always go perfectly with our meat, and
there will be some soft to go with the hard. Maybe they can
redeem themselves by catering the Gay Games.
We're also very
forgiving, especially when served by some hot Italians! (Brent
Mullins)
 Hot
jock of the day: It's been quite an Olympics for U.S.
biathlete Jay Hakkinen, 28. In his first event, the Alaska
native missed all five shots in the prone position (stunning
for an elite biathlete), then skied six penalty laps as
opposed to the five he was required to do. Doh! He finished
80th and said it was like being hit over the head.
A few days later, though,
in the team relay, Hakkinen, 6 feet, 165 pounds, was superb,
giving the U.S. the lead after his leg and leading them to
ninth-place finish, its best in any relay in 34 years. Quite
a turnaround.
"It's the Olympics -- it's a dream
come true, but I didn't have much time to think about it
because there was a big group behind me," Hakkinen said of
his time at the head of the pack. In the relay "it seemed
like the crowd was much louder, and there were more people.
I had to force myself to stay calm. ... It was a huge
thrill."
Hakkinen has
eclectic tastes: His favorite TV show is the
Simpsons, while his favorite movie is a foreign film "The
Horseman on the Roof," and his favorite author is Chekov.
(Jim
Buzinski)
Olympics
fatigue.
It's finally setting in – Olympics fatigue. After 12 nights
of it, I'm done with it. I don't need to see any more races,
no more jumps, and I don't need to hear any commentators
getting way too excited. Part of the problem is so many
events that are, essentially, exactly the same. Do we really
need the 1,000, 1,500, 5k and 10k in speed skating? And do
we really need 16 days to cover these events? I, for one,
wish they'd cut it by a good 30%, because I'm just over it. (Cyd
Zeigler Jr.)
Get
them over with:
I agree with Cyd on Winter Games fatigue and it's simply
that they are too long. NBC pays a zillion dollars to
telecast the Olympics and they want them to stretch over
three weekends. It's way too long for an event with much
fewer sports and participants than the Summer Games.
People have
noticed and one proposal I read about mentioned shifting
some summer events to the winter. The IOC is resisting,
claiming that any new events must be contested on either
snow or ice. That's narrow thinking. There are at least two
events that would fit quite well in the winter and gain more
attention than they do now – indoor volleyball and water
polo.
With the
tremendous popularity of beach volleyball, the indoor game
is a neglected stepchild at the Summer Games. The same goes
for water polo, which plays second fiddle to swimming. These
are just two of many indoor sports that could help fill out
a TV schedule that's way too padded (do we really need three
hours of curling?).
(Jim
Buzinski)
Another
reality TV casualty:
American skeleton racer Kevin Ellis broke a vertebra in his
back Thursday while competing against members of the U.S.
luge team in a made-for-TV, non-Olympic sledding event.
He was one of five
athletes in a friendly sliding competition at the Snow Show,
an organized sledding hill in Sestriere on Thursday, joined
by skeleton Olympians Eric Bernotas and Katie Uhlaender and
luge Olympians Christian Niccum and Erin Hamlin. The hill is
part of the Cultural Olympiad, near the athletes’ village.
The competition was
filmed and scheduled to be aired later in the Olympics by
NBC.
Ellis now works as an
accountant for Vaughn Petroleum.
I guess the cultural
part just nearly killed him, what with working as an
accountant for an oil company and all. We'll have to see if
NBC has the balls to show the consequences of their event.
For an accountant that
slides face first down an ice chute on a flimsy board, he
finally met something he couldn't conquer: Fake TV.
I guess it doesn't fit
into the "I'm doing this for my dying mother" kind of
storyline they've developed into starchy emotional dumplings
to force down the gullet of the audience to "enhance the
viewer experience."
Pardon me while I run
for a bucket. (Brent
Mullins)
Bitch,
bitch: "The team would like more German support at some
of the events. He blamed a lack of spectators cheering for
the black, red and gold flag on the difficulties of
traveling between different Olympic venues, which he said
has stymied both German fans and team members who want to
support their compatriots on days when they weren’t
competing themselves."
Those Huns are never
satisfied unless the trains run on time. (Brent
Mullins)
 Calling
it quits:
So much trauma for such a young man -- and yet no regrets:
Roger Cruickshank, who
recovered from a bad crash to compete in Turin with nine
pins in his knee and a leg brace, has announced his
retirement from Alpine skiing.
The 23-year-old Briton,
who finished 37th in both the downhill and super-G, said he
planned to concentrate on his career in the Royal Air
Force. “I feel very satisfied and content with what I have
done in my ski career and I have no regrets about calling it
quits,” Cruickshank said. Cruickshank is to go to RAF
flying school in April; his new ambition is to pilot a
Eurofighter jet. (Brent
Mullins)
Medal
count not worth its weight in gold:
The
medal count was created decades ago by journalists and was
watched most closely during the Cold War when nations used
any means possible to display their power. While the media's
fixation on counting medals remains, the relevance of a
medal count today is questionable. I have no problem with
the medal count. Keeping track of the number of medals won
by a country provides perspective and helps to digest all
that happens at the Olympics.
But the
medal count is misleading if you use it as the primary
measure of a country's success. First of all, divvying up
medals along nationalistic lines means little in world where
cultures have blended and athletes immigrate. For example,
the USA won a silver medal in ice dancing, but Tanith Belbin,
the lady in that pair, wasn't even an American citizen until
two months ago. And the winner of men's freestyle moguls has
dual citizenship that allows him to live in Vancouver, but
ski for Australia.
Besides,
there are other interesting statistics that offer a more
informative perspective on Olympic performances:
--26 out
of 28 medals South Korea has won in the Winter Olympics have
come from short track speed skating.
--All
seven of the medals won in Torino by the Netherlands have
come in long track speed skating.
--Not
only do all three of Croatia's medals come from Alpine
skiing, but they all come from members of the same family,
the Kostelics.
--Norway
has only won medals (18 total) in sports that use skis (i.e.
no skating or sliding events)
--No
country has won a medal in every sport (the Canada comes the
closest, medaling in 10 of 15 sports)
--Canada
has won 18 medals in Torino, the most ever for that country
at a Winter Games. But the one medal they wanted most, for
men's hockey, slipped away in a quarterfinal match against
Russia.
--As of
Wedneday, 201 medals had been given out in 67 events. Good
for the medalists, but in those events, there were 469 other
athletes who finished in the top 10 but did not get a medal
(i.e. they placed fourth-10th). The top 10 places in many
sports are separated by mere seconds or less. There are
likely more success stories among those top non-medaling
athletes than the medalists themselves.
My point
is that when you glance at the medal count you don't see any
of this. The medal count, and the obsession to go for gold
or bust, tends to draw the attention of people who need an
oversimplified view of the Games to make up for their lack
of knowledge about Olympic sports and athletes. Ah, how
American.
(Ryan
Quinn)
I'm
gonna barf:
I saw the insufferable Tucker Carlson on MSNBC this morning
for 60 seconds as he was fawning, excuse me, interviewing,
former gold medalist-now-sister-to-Emily Sarah Hughes--who's
apparently translated her hefty appearance into "now doing
her MSNBC work from a studio in Turin as well as
contributing to NBC's Today show."
"I
understand you have a 'SarahCam' you took with you ... tell
us about what you shot!" At which point they show footage
of her on the Today Show set, getting makeup and apparent
tips [coincidental, I think not!] from Brian Boitano.
"Outstanding!" was Tucker's journalistic contribution.
After
teasing that out as long as possible, he then hit his
journalistic stride by asking "What is your sister doing,
right now at this moment?!"
"Well, I
think she's eating right now...and then getting some rest
before going to the arena."
"Outstanding!"
I wanted to
take his pretentious bow tie, wrap it around his
non-existent balls, and then exclaim "Outstanding!"
(Brent
Mullins) |
Bad
Falls, Bad Food
