Thursday, February 13, 2014

XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day 6)

Pretty funny ... On NBC, Willie Geist, Savannah Guthrie and Al Roker were just yukking it up on the Sochi set of Today after a feature on the "Kremlin's fabulous Faberge eggs," while, on MSNBC, the Norwegians and their crazy pants were curling against Sweden in a pan-Scandinavian throwdown. Turn your TV dial to the right, and, on Fox News Channel, Martha McCallum was conducting a grim American's Newsroom interview with a reporter deployed to icy-again Atlanta, as FX aired the 2000 Cuban missile crisis white-knuckler, Thirteen Days.

17 comments:

  1. I have seen the future of figure skating, and his name is Jason Brown. And I have heard the future, and its voices are those of Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir.

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    1. Tara Lipinski's success makes me very happy, as I was a big fan of hers back in the day.

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  2. NBCSN is broadcasting live the short program in men's singles. Skating to a terrific Prince song (that I can't quite place from one of those great, crazy records of the late 1980s/early 1990s right after Purple Rain had sent him over to the moon and into unassailable-artist orbit), Brown--a 19-year-old from Highland Park, Ill. (where I lived ages 2-4)--just executed a typically precise but an (apparently) unusually athletic performance.

    Brown "is the only one out here who is skating like he wants to win the gold medal," Weir said on NBCSN.

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  3. Brown is far and away atop the short-program leaderboard after 17 of 30 performances, but the NBCSN team seems pretty confident that Brown's spot on the medals podium is a mirage. The more successful skaters' short programs are still to come this afternoon (in my living room, tonight in Sochi), and then there's still Friday's free program to go, too.

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  4. Except for Brown's performance, Lipinski and Weir were non-plussed with the short programs thus far.

    But "now this is good skating," said Lipinski, the Nagano 1998 women's singles gold medalist about 30 seconds into the 18th performance, that of Japan's Yuzuru Hanyu .

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  5. Indeed, Hanyu's score blasted by Brown's, and there are still 11 short programs to go.

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  6. And getting back to Lipinski and Weir (who placed sixth in Vancouver 2010 men's singles) ... they are as good as the gathering hype.

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  7. Their standards are very high, and their criticisms can be stinging (e.g., "the music is great; I just wish he would skate up to it"). But Lipinski and Weir aren't doing just some made-for-daytime-TV Mean Girls schtick. Their analysis is detailed and insightful, and their zeal for the art and craft of world-class figure skating is clearly, breathlessly genuine.

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  8. And they really, really, really are great together. Lipinski and Weir are already right there with my all-time-favorite TV couples--right there with Clare and Cliff Huxtable, Jim and Pam, James Garner and Mariette Hartley, David Letterman and Terri Garr, etc. I hope they get married.

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  9. Nine short-program scores yet to come in, and Brown is already back to fourth.

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  10. Six to go, and Brown's hanging in there at No. 4.

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  11. OK, wait ... Lipinski just said that Brown is now a medal contender. Weir explains that Brown has a history of slipping up the leaderboard when competitors flub more aggressive programs.

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  12. Four to go, and Brown's still fourth.

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  13. OK, Brown's sixth after the short programs. His short-program score, 86.00, was a personal best. His personal best in a competition free program was 158.32, in November. If Brown can match that Friday night, his total score of 244.32 would've ranked fifth overall on the Vancouver 2010 leaderboard. It looks like the Sochi 2014 judges are a little less hard to impress than the Vancouver 2010 judges, just looking at the top short-program scores from both events. Well, who knows? Brown needs to be fantastic Friday night, but it certainly looks to me like my Highland Park homeboy has a shot to get a bronze.

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  14. Short-program leader was Hanyu of Japan, with a 101.45. Then there's Canada's Patrick Chan, with a 97.52. Then there are 11 skaters who scored from 81.09 and 86.98. Only six of these top 13 have ever competed in the Olympics before now, and only one of them--Daisuke Takahashi of Japan, who won bronze at Vancouver 2010--is a former medal winner.

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  15. So, who knows? And, besides, you know what they say--they don't skate these things on paper, baby. Go, Jason Brown!

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