Sunday, February 11, 2018

XXIII Olympic Winter Games, Pyeongchang 2018 (Day 2)

So we've got a Team USA guy in contention in some live luging going on a little after 10 Sunday night in Pyeongchang County, but I've got to finish up getting ready for Sunday school here in a couple hours this morning in Madisonville. Hmmm ... challenging ...

Previous reports:

-- I Olympic Winter Games, Chamonix 1924
-- II Olympic Winter Games, Saint Moritz 1928

-- VIII Olympic Winter Games, Squaw Valley 1960
-- XII Olympic Winter Games, Innsbruck 1976 
-- XVII Olympic Winter Games, Lillehammer 1994
-- XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014

-- XXIII Olympic Winter Games, Pyeongchang 2018 (Preface)
-- XXIII Olympic Winter Games, Pyeongchang 2018 (Introduction/Day 0)
-- XXIII Olympic Winter Games, Pyeongchang 2018 (Day 1)

48 comments:

  1. So there are four runs in men’s singles luge, and, after three, Germany’s Felix Loch, the gold medalist at Vancouver 2010 and Sochi 2014, is in first place in the standings. But the fastest third run was recorded by Chris Mazdzer, a 29-year-old from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and he’s up to second overall.

    We’re live with the fourth and final run on NBC Sports Network; a dude from Italy just overtook the lead from a guy not officially representing any country in these games, and we’re down to the last six sliders … GO! CHRIS! MAZDZER! ...

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  2. We’re down to the last three sliders … Germany’s Johannes Ludwig is currently leading … Austria’s David Gleirscher is on the track now ...

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  3. Replies
    1. Felix Loch‏ @FelixLoch

      Der bitterste Moment in meinem Sportlerleben ist dank euch auszuhalten! 🙏🏼 Vielen Dank für eure vielen Nachrichten! Es ist zwar extrem hart, aber zu wissen, dass so viele Menschen hinter einem stehen, ist überwältigend!! https://tinyurl.com/y7tpspcp

      Translated from German by Microsoft
      The bitterest moment in my athlete's life is thanks to you! Thank 🙏🏼 you for your many messages! While it is extremely hard, but knowing that so many people stand behind one is overwhelming!! https://tinyurl.com/y7tpspcp

      12:20 PM - 11 Feb 2018

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  4. At Sochi 2014, the Austrians’ total luge medal haul was a single silver; the Americans’, a bronze. So both squads have already outperformed against their last Olympics.

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    1. This changed during Pyeongchang 2018. It was good.

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  6. OK, Channel 6 has moved on to a snowy women's moguls competition in freestyle skiing.

    At Sochi 2014, the medal winners in women’s moguls were Justine Dufour-Lapointe (gold) and Chloé Dufour-Lapointe (silver) of Canada and Hannah Kearner of the United States (bronze).

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  7. I always worry about the long-term knee health of these athletes.

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  8. #Breaking ... in our little house Olympics this evening, I won gold (!) in the Sorry! event. My daughter won silver; my wife, bronze.

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  9. Now the gold-medal-winning Dufour-Lapointe from Canada has advanced to the six-person final, and she'll have the opportunity to repeat. But the other Dufour-Lapointe is not around, and neither is Kearney, who won bronze in Sochi and gold in Vancouver 2010.

    Hannah Kearney‏Verified account @HK_Ski
    4 years ago I was preparing to compete in my third Olympic Games. Now I am basically just an Uber driver for my dog.
    1:43 PM - 27 Jan 2018


    No American qualified for the women's moguls final today.

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    1. Medals: Perrine Laffont, France, gold; Justine Dufour-Lapointe, Canada, silver, and Yuliya Galysheva, Kazakhstan, bronze.

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  10. It's just past 10 Monday morning in Pyeongchang.

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  11. We've got some live figure skating happening on Channel 6. This is men's singles free skating, a segment of the team competition. Women singles are scheduled to skate in about an hour, and then, about an hour later, the thing wraps up with some ice dancing. Somehow, all of these scores pile together to give us a team champion. At Sochi 2014, the medal winners in the team figure skating were Canada (silver) and the United States (bronze).

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  12. I just spent the last 10 minutes reading about the Russian doping scandal, and it's 10 minutes of my life wasted. What a bunch of idiots. I'm not acknowledging any of their medals. It's like trying to outguess the stupid Patriots, and it just sucks the fun out of sports for me. I'm done paying a lick of attention to the habitual cheaters. Life's too short.

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  13. The skater on the ice now is Adam Rippon, a 28-year-old from Scranton, Pennsylvania, and I'm not much of a figure-skating fan, but this guy's performance was amazing. Johnny Weir just called it "spellbinding" and "magnificent," and I totally agree. That was a gift to get to see. I think it was a Coldplay song that Adam Rippon was skating to, and I like Coldplay a good bit.

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    1. Of course, super Wikipedia is able to confirm that Adam Rippon's skating song was something called "O (Fly On)" by Coldplay. The bit I heard in the skating program was just beautiful. I'll have to search that out. Thanks again, Adam Rippon.

      Now we have a Canadian skating to one of the zillion covers of "Hallelujah," which are all great. I'm pretty sure this one is U2's.

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    2. No--pardon. This is the Jeff Buckley cover.

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    3. OK, seeing the Adam Rippon performance again on a rerun of the prime-time show ... this thing was the perfect marriage of performance and music choice, in a similar way that it's almost like Maurice Ravel unwittingly wrote Boléro back in the 1920s for Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean to dance to at Sarajevo 1984.

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    4. This men's singles free program was the sixth of eight competitions in the team skate. With Rippon claiming eight points for Team USA (I would've given him 10), here were the standings at this point:

      1. Canada 55
      2. OARs 48
      3. United States 44
      T4. Italy 42
      T5. Japan 38

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  14. Mirai Nagasu, a 24-year-old from Montebello, California, lands the first "triple axel" by a U.S. woman in the Olympics, and her performance in the women's singles free skate helps Team USA increase its lead over Italy for third place in the team event. Canada appears to have the gold medal locked up, going into the free-skating stage.

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    1. The Japanese competitor in this eighth skated to some stuff from the Yann Tiersen's phenomenal soundtrack for Amélie.

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    2. The Canadian's doing "Rhapsody In Blue." This would be a great choice, if you had time (and energy) to skate to the whole 17 minutes. But given Gabrielle Daleman had to whittle down George Gershwin to 4:30, it just makes you mad.

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    3. I actually do feel sorry for these athletes from Russia who came to Pyeongchang and apparently weren't doping. Here's a teen-aged skater, and I know she must be great because Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir are falling all over themselvers for her, and those two are great and absolutely know what they're talking about. But the whole time, I can't even enjoy it because all I'm thinking about is how they brought all of these athletes over to Sochi in 2014 and got us all to pay attention, and then they cheated all over the place. It just infuriates and (still) astounds me--the hosts cheated.

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    4. One eighth of the event to go:

      1. Canada 63
      2. OARs 58
      3. United States 53
      T4. Italy 49
      T5. Japan 44

      Well done, Adam Rippon and Mirai Nagasu. To fall out of the top three now, Team USA would have had to come in last of the surviving five in the upcoming ice-dancing free program and Italy would have had to finish first. And even then I think they would've both been awarded bronze medals. So, Rippon and Nagasu--friends of more than 10 years, Rippon is telling Mike Tirico--really did a super job of holding the line in their free programs.

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  15. Now on Channel 6, we've got NBC laying the love on Team USA's ice-dancing Shibutani siblings, in obvious hope of their clinching the bronze here live in a bit.

    Meanwhile, on NBC Sports Network, Americans are first and third going into the final run in women's slopestyle snowboarding. At Sochi 2014, the medal winners in women’s slopestyle snowboarding were Jamie Anderson of Team USA (gold), Enni Enni Rukajärvi of Finland (silver) and Jenny Jones of Great Britain (bronze). Anderson is back, and the 27-year-old from South Lake Tahoe, California, is the first-place American in Pyeongchang. Jessika Jenson, a 26-year-old from Idaho Falls, Idaho, is third.

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  16. While we wait for these Monday event wraps, let's catch up on some more Sunday results ...

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  17. Our old friend, Sven Kramer, of Heerenveen, Netherlands, is now 31 years old, now has 405,000 Twitter followers (up from 119k as of Sochi 2014) and now has eight Olympic gold medals. He won the men's 5,000 meters for his third-straight gold in that event (a speed-skating first). Canada and Norway took the silver and bronze, respectively.

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  18. Back to the snowboarding on NBC Sports Network, Jenson fails to improve her score with her second run, so she'll now wait out the rest of the competitors to see if her third place holds up.

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  19. Germany, Czech Republic and Italy took the gold, silver and bronze, respectively, in men’s sprint biathlon Sunday, so Team USA’s domination of biathlon will have to wait at least until Beijing 2022. Lowell Bailey, a 36-year-old from Siler City, North Carolina, finished 33rd; Tim Burke, a 36-year-old from Paul Smiths, New York, finished 47th.

    NBC interviewed Bailey after the race, and it was just heartbreaking. He missed only one target on a windy day, so he was pleased with his shooting--he said he was simply unable to generate the speed necessary to compete for a medal. He even praised his equipment providers, saying they had put him in position to excel. It apparently just wasn't in him today. That must be a tough realization.

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  20. Norway swept the men's skiathlon medals in cross-country skiing. That's a giant score for Norway, as it collected only a bronze in the event at Sochi 2014 and still won the overall medals table (if you disregard the cheating Russians' results, as I do).

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  21. Norway led in total Pyeongchang 2018 medals through Sunday, with eight. Here were the standings:

    1. Germany 3 gold, 0 silver, 1 bronze
    2. Netherlands 2, 2, 1
    3. Norway 1, 4, 3
    4. United States 1, 1, 0
    T5. Austria 1, 0, 0
    T5. France 1, 0, 0
    T5. South Korea 1, 0, 0
    T5. Sweden 1, 0, 0
    9. Canada 0, 3, 1
    10. Czech Republic 0, 1, 1
    T11. Finland 0, 0, 1
    T11. Italy 0, 0, 1
    T11. Kazakhstan 0, 0, 1

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  22. And that brings us fully to Monday, and, back live on Channel 6, here are the Shibutanis, who also are skating to Coldplay. HUGE NIGHT FOR COLDPLAY IN PYEONGCHANG!

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  23. The Shibutanis are amazing. Tara Lipinski just called their performance "inspired," and I totally agree. Believe the hype on Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir--they are dynamite skating commentators.

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  24. So Channel 6 has gone to this deal where it displays a little scantron grid below a score of the skaters during their performance. The score--two digits and then decimals to the hundredths--cliimbs cumulatively as the skaters do different tricks, and then the little scantron boxes turn green (good), yellow (judges need a second look) or red (bad news) as things go along. It's pretty nerveracking and a little distracting but, on balance, a really neat innovation.

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  25. The Shibutanis are now the leaders in the ice-dancing clubhouse.

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  26. Now we have the Canadian ice dancers, and we'd have to see a whole slew of red boxes for Team USA to vault into gold contention. Alas, of the nine boxes on the scantron grid, eight are green--with one yellow.

    The guy skater sings along with their song. I think he's the only one who does that that I've seen, but I haven't been looking for it.

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  27. That's it for the figure skating team event: Canada wins gold; Team USA bronze. Good job by the Shibutanis--26-year-old Alex originally of Boston and 23-year-old Maia originally of New York (they both now live in Ann Arbor, Michigan)--with a terrific program that holds the Italians at bay!

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  28. Back to NBC Sports Network, a Canadian moved into second place in the snowboarding, pushing Team USA's Jessika Jenson off the podium, but no one's second run is better than Jamie Anderson's. She's getting ready for a victory lap, though the commentators are saying one of the previous competitors might get an redo of her second run. That seems like a big question to leave open before sending off the first-place snowboarder with the expectation she already has the thing clinched. But, whatever, the she goes ...

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  29. And she falls!

    I'm going to really be angry if they let that other woman go again.

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  30. No. No redo. Hurrah! Jamie Anderson wins!

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  31. Women’s slopestyle snowboarding medals: United States gold, Canada silver, Norway bronze.

    Nice job, Monday-morning snowboarders and figure skaters, repeating your Sochi 2014 medal performances in these two events at Pyeongchang 2018.

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  32. I'm scared to check the official site for fear of spoiling some of my tape-delayed fun tomorrow, but here's where I think we now are in the Pyeongchang 2018 medals standings:

    1. Germany 3 gold, 0 silver, 1 bronze
    2. Netherlands 2, 2, 1
    3. United States 2, 1, 1
    4. Norway 1, 4, 4
    5. Canada 1, 4, 1
    T6. Austria 1, 0, 0
    T6. France 1, 0, 0
    T6. South Korea 1, 0, 0
    T6. Sweden 1, 0, 0
    11. Czech Republic 0, 1, 1
    T12. Finland 0, 0, 1
    T12. Italy 0, 0, 1
    T12. Kazakhstan 0, 0, 1

    And now to head to sleepytown with a mixed-doubles curling semi in which I have no strong rooting interest. OLYMPICS!

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  33. Adam Rippon at the moment tops U.S. trends on Twitter; Coldplay is third.

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