1976: What's On TV Through Feb. 15?

It's the Olympics!

04 Feb 1976, Wed The Paducah Sun (Paducah, Kentucky) Newspapers.com

The Sun-Democrat ran that little blurb on its front sports page Wednesday, Feb. 4, 1976, and I'm pretty sure they are going to do so daily throughout XII Winter Olympic Games, Innsbruck, 1976. That'll be helpful.

Channel 3 had an Olympics preview on Tuesday night, but I probably missed that to watch the NBA All-Star Game (huge night for first-year Washington Bullet Dave Bing, so I'm pretty sure--jump, jump, slam, slam--we're going all the way after last spring's disappointment). I imagine I'll be pretty dialed in now through Feb. 15, however. It appears there's quite a bit available from Jim McKay, Dorothy Hamill and the rest on YouTube.

For the opening ceremonies, we'll enjoy the wordless coverage from Österreichischer Rundfunk, "ORF," an Austrian national public broadcaster. Then we'll close out the night with some familiar Chris Schenkel/Dick Buttons love on the ice-dancing compulsories.

I love the Olympics, and I love the Internet and the HP.

Oh, Kentucky

Austria says the hacker of its government websites is a man from Turkey who lives in Bowling Green.

You can vote every day through March 6 for a prospective Google Doodle by a student from Madisonville’s James Madison Middle School: 

“When I think about what I see in the future, my heart lands on simply... love," she writes. "The perfect letters l-o-v-e could change the world. My watercolor and pen creation depicts a diverse, loving community willing to help and be kind to each other. I hope you enjoy!” The school is up for a $50,000 technology grant; the student, a $30,000 scholarship and a trip to Google. 

The (real) legislature is considering limits on how police can use drones for surveillance.

The state is looking for volunteers to review foster-care cases in 37 counties, and you don't have to live in the county you review.

A grassroots effort to open a shelter around Glasgow reportedly is intended in part to keep Barren County's homeless from having to get themselves to Metcalfe or Monroe counties.

Lyon County's Lee Jones Park is getting a bike trail!

Henderson's getting new city-limits signs this week.

A Letcher County native who came home has been named Staff Care's "country doctor of the year."

Yum! Brands has boosted paid maternity leave to 18 months and "baby bonding time" to six weeks for dads, partners and adoptive/foster parents.

Kentucky for sale:

Rest in peace, Lawrence "Butch" Gilbert, who was a big, big deal around Bowling Green football fields for about 70 years.

XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day 8)

Medals table:

1. Germany 7 gold, 3 silver, 2 bronze

Five of the Germans' 12 overall medals and four of their golds have come in the luge. Otherwise, Germany has scored a couple of medals in alpine skiing and one each in biathlon, cross-country skiing, figure skating, Nordic combined and ski jumping.

2. Switzerland 5, 1, 1

A couple of golds each in alpine and cross-country skiing and one in snowboarding have Switzerland on track for its best-ever Olympic Winter Games medals-table performance. The Swiss have also earned a silver in biathlon and a bronze in alpine skiing.

3. Canada 4, 5, 2

Freestyle skiing has been Canada's area of dominance: three gold, two silver and one bronze. The other Canadian gold was in short-track skating. There also have been a couple of silvers in figure skating and one in speed skating and a bronze in snowboard.

4. Netherlands 4, 3, 6

The Dutch have a bronze in short track skating. Other than that, it has been a lackluster Olympics for the Netherlands … oh, except the speed skaters have four gold, three silver and five bronze.

4. Norway 4, 3, 6

Cross-country skiing is the Norwegians' thing: three gold, one silver, three bronze. The biathlon (cross-country skiing with guns) has yielded a gold and silver, too, for Norway. Otherwise, there's a silver in snowboard and a bronze each in alpine skiing (cross-country skiing, only the country is sloped downward), Nordic combined (cross-country skiing, plus ski jumping) and ski jumping.

4. United States 4, 3, 6

Five of Team USA's medals (including one of the golds) have been in freestyle skiing; four (including the other three golds) have been in snowboarding. The other medals have come in skeleton (silver), alpine skiing (bronze), figure skating (bronze) and luge (bronze).

7. Russian Federation 3, 6, 5

Good medal distribution for the home team: three (and two gold) in figure skating, three (and one gold) in short track, two in biathlon, two in luge, two in speed skating, one in freestyle skiing and one in skeleton.

8. China 3, 2, 0

The Chinese have scored two gold medals and a silver in short track, a gold in speed skating and a silver in freestyle skiing.

9. Belarus 3, 0, 1

Belarus has two golds and a bronze in biathlon and a gold in freestyle skiing. Surely, Darya Domracheva--who has two golds in her two biathlon events so far in Sochi, with two to go--must be a national sports hero.

10. Austria 2, 4, 1

Four of the medals (two gold, a silver and a bronze) have come in alpine skiing, and then the Austrians have a silver each in biathlon, luge and ski jumping.

11. France 2, 0, 2
12. Poland 2, 0, 0
13. Sweden 1, 5, 2
14. Japan 1, 2, 1
15. Slovenia 1, 1, 2
16. South Korea 1, 0, 1
17. Great Britain 1, 0, 1
18. Slovakia 1, 0, 0
19. Italy 0, 2, 3
20. Czech Republic 0, 2, 1
21. Finland 0, 2, 0
21. Australia 0, 1, 1
21. Croatia 0, 1, 0
24. Latvia 0, 0, 2

25. Kazakhstan 0, 0, 1
25. Ukraine 0, 0, 1

Previous reports:

-- XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day 7);
-- XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day 6);

-- XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day 5);

-- XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day 4);

-- XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day 3);

-- XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day 2);

-- XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day 1);

-- XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day 0);

-- XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day a);

-- XII Olympic Winter Games, Innsbruck 1976;

-- II Olympic Winter Games, Saint Moritz 1928, and

-- I Olympic Winter Games, Chamonix 1924.

XII Olympic Winter Games, Innsbruck 1976

The Sportscaster Cards were, indeed, awesome but perhaps not as awesome as this website "dedicated to their preservation." There's nothing that I will add here that is potentially as entertaining as simply browsing that website, so I encourage you to not read another word of this post before exhausting the link.

OK, now that you're back, let me just say that I loved my Sportscaster Cards. I had maybe a couple hundred of them at the height of my collection, but I sold off most of them to the nice fellow (and Church of Christ Sunday-school teacher) at Rocking Chair Antiques in Paducah along about 1984 or '85, when I decided I needed money probably to rent a tuxedo for prom or to pick up a copy of Quadrophenia or Nebraska at Camelot Records. I have zero doubt that Rocking Chair gave me a more-than-fair price for my cards, and I still listen to Quadrophenia and Nebraska, and I'm thankful I went to the prom because at least I was a little less terrified and awkward around girls by the time I got to WKU.

Still, I miss my Sportscaster Cards. I played with them a lot when I was 8, 9 and 10--and especially when I was 11 during the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, N.Y., in 1980. I pushed ski jumpers off my bed; I scooted bobsledders around the shag carpet, and I even spun figure skaters on our cleared kitchen table. And when it came time for the Summer Games later that year, I went on and staged my own Cairo Road XXII Olympiad--in flaming defiance of President Carter's Moscow boycott.

So, all of that said, you might wonder why this post is labeled as being in commemoration of Innsbruck 1976 if my little Sportscaster Cards experience is more directly tied to Lake Placid 1980. Well, that's because the Sportscaster Cards depicting winter Olympians that I still own won most of their medals in XII, not XIII.

Says the back of his card: "Although he lost the 30 km cross-country title by 28 seconds to Sergei Saveliev of the USSR, 21-year-old William Koch was the star of one of the biggest success stories of the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics. The first American cross-country skier in the history of the Games ever to win a medal, Koch stunned the world of Nordic skiing, challenging the traditional domination of Scandinavian and Soviet athletes."

"(S)he collected three medals: a gold in the 500 m; a silver in the 1,500; and a bronze in the 1,000 m. Although her triple triumph at Innsbruck brought her a great deal of publicity, to Sheila it was something of an anticlimax. Her proudest moment had come a month earlier, on Jan. 31, 1976, at Davos. There she became the first woman to break the 41-second barrier, turning in a world-record time of 40.91 seconds in the 500 m. 'I much prefer my world record to the Olympic gold medal,' she said. 'For me it represents the crowning achievement of 16 years of work.'"

Austrian "Anton Innauer's uncanny ability, ease, and control catapulted him to the peak of the ski jumping world. These qualities also made him the super-favorite at the 1976 Olympics at Innsbruck. But the 17 1/2-year-old high-school boy muffed his Olympic chances. The pre-Games publicity and pressure took their toll, and Innauer had to settle for a silver medal in the 90 m jump."

"Meinhard Nehmer, who at the age of 35 won two gold medals in bobsledding at the 1976 Olympics, is symbolic of the great potential of the East German athletes. Although he's a weatherman and a member of the East German Army, he's always devoted himself to sports."

"In 1976, Rosi Mittermaier of West Germany came very close to matching the Olympic triple-gold skiing exploits of Austria's Tony Sailer in 1956 and France's Jean-Cleaude Killy in 1968. At Innsbruck, Mittermaier finished first in the slalom (her specialty) and first in the downhill (her least favorite event). But Canada's Kathy Kreiner prevented Rosi from making a clean sweep of the women's races, edging her out in the giant slalom by just .12 seconds."

"Some 10,000 Austrian fans in the Tyrol spent what was possibly the longest 12 minutes of their lives one icy cold day in February, 1976. They were lined up along the Patscherkofel waiting for their teenage hero, Franz Klammer, who was competing in the Olympic downhill in 15th position. Just minutes before, the partisan crowd had watched 28-year-old Bernhard Russi of Switzerland, wearing No. 3, turn in an excellent time of 1:46.06. Now Klammer was making his descent, and at the halfway point he was clocked at .19 seconds behind Russi. But Klammer pulled out all the stops and managed to beat Russi by .33 seconds. And so it was that six years after becoming the world champion at Val Gardena, Russi bowed to the much younger--and slightly faster--Klammer."

"She mesmerized international audiences with her performances, charming them with the near-sighted squint she needed to read the scores, and the radiant smile she flashed when her marks were high. Dorothy couldn't see more than a few yards without glasses, which led to her characteristic expression and the nickname 'Squint.' But she didn't need perfect vision win the 1976 Olympic and World Championship."

That's all pretty good writing. The cards are pretty great--almost as great as SportscasterCards.com. You should go back to that website and look at it all again. If Putin and the Russians try to take another jab at our president tonight, I just might boycott Sochi 2014 and instead spend the evening browsing SportscasterCards.com myself.

Innsbruck 1976 medals table:

Soviet Union 13 gold, 6 silver, 8 bronze

East Germany 7, 5, 7

United States 3, 3, 4

Norway 3, 3, 1

West Germany 2, 5, 3

Finland 2, 4, 1

Austria 2, 2, 2

Switzerland 1, 3, 1

Netherlands 1, 2, 3

Italy 1, 2, 1

Canada 1, 1, 1

Great Britain 1, 0, 0

Czechoslovakia 0, 1, 0

Liechtenstein 0, 0, 2

Sweden 0, 0, 2

France 0, 0, 1

I Am Watching the Olympics (Opening-ceremonies Day)

It's opening-ceremonies day for the Summer Games in London, and, back here at home in Madisonville, that means we're breaking out the little paper flags of all the nations to set them up in the living room for the next 17 days.

Now 3 1/2 years old, the daughter is even more juiced for the pageantry than she was back a couple of years ago during the 2010 Winter Games.

We're pretty excited.

Which is not to say that it will be incessantly faster, higher and stronger fun rolling out around here over the next couple of weeks. That first snapshot, of the sweet and smart girl sorting flags this morning and finding the respective countries on the globe (she is so sweet and so smart), was soon after followed in reality by 10 minutes of yelling and crying on her part over whether it was time to get out of pajamas and roller skates to get dressed and brush teeth (it was time). And lest you think I'm trying to present myself as the sage, strike-the-moment/Montessori-ish mentor/dad, I will admit to a lot of missing-the-point rules establishing about the handling and arranging of my precious, yard-sale-find paper flags.

Today, I am alive with hope for unfettered hours and hours through Aug. 17 of reveling with friends and family--in my living room or theirs, on the phone or at the HP--over a glorious Olympiad. I love to root; I love watching sports that I don't normally watch, and I love learning about the different places the athletes are from. Most of all, I love getting excited about the same stuff that other people are getting excited about, all at the same time. Now, I know that the truth is that there will be a lot of missed connections at our end in terms of willingness and readiness to receive the Good and there will be some moments, for reasons competitive or political or logistical, when the Olympics will deliver Bad.

But, hey, I'm going to turn 44 years old in the middle of these games. That covers nine Summer and 10 Winter Olympics that I can remember watching, starting with Innsbruck in 1976. I've been carrying this torch for a long time. Trust me when I can say that we can reasonably expect to have a heck of a lot of fun over the next couple of weeks. And that's saying a load.

Previous reports:

-- watching Day i (July 25)

-- watching Day ii (July 26)