OK, whose new favorite sport is snowboard cross? Just watching the qualifiers was super exciting. The course on it's own is nuts! In the qualifiers, the snowboarders run the course by themselves which looks like a crazy event on it's own - even the 2006 Olympic champion, American Seth Wescott wiped out, and that was without having to fight the other racers off. But then, having 4 competitors race the track at once, and watching Wescott start out in last place in the final heat and win the gold, that was pretty exciting. Wescott became the first snowboarder to win back to back gold medals at the Winter Olympics. (Also, what's with the siren that went off each time the racer would pass one of the turns in the qualifiers? You'd think that would be a little distracting.)
Figure skating factoid of the day: Newly crowned pairs champions and married couple Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao live in separate rooms in their training dormitory in Harbin, China. Compare that to non-married American couple Amanda Evora and Jeremy Barrett (both pairs skaters but with different partners) who do live together in Florida. By the way, can someone please tell the skaters that you're not supposed to fall at the Olympics? Just sayin'. Special shoutout to both American pairs who didn't fall, especially to Evora and Mark Ladwig for getting the highest scoring element in the entire competition with their last lift.
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1) Its hilarious that we noticed the same exact thing. Um, the married figure skaters live in separate rooms. That is not ok!!!
ReplyDelete2) Scott Hamilton (who gasps a lot and you don't know if it means that what they just did was very good or very bad)or the lady (I have no clue who she is) said that the reason why they fall so often in the long programs is b/c they add so many elements in b/c they want the extra points that its difficult to even practice the entire program on any given day and that's why its so hard for them to skate a clean program. Seems sort of silly to me, but I guess I'm not an Olympic level figure skater.
Zehava - the "lady" is Sandra Bezic, a Canadian choreographer. I love Scott Hamilton but I hate Scott and Sandra as commentators and I blame them and their biased and awful commentating for the 2002 pairs scandal in Salt Lake.
ReplyDeletei agree, he gasps too much with unclear implications.
ReplyDeleteSara, how is commentating responsible for the judging scandal?
ReplyDeleteZev - Obviously the cheating French judge had something to do with it too, but I think the commentators' on-air outrage sparked North American-wide outrage which definitely hand a hand in spinning the situation out of control.
ReplyDeleteI love Mark Ladwig
ReplyDeleteSerious, WTF is up with the siren? It's on when the snowboarder is at precisely the same portion of the course. It's. Driving. Me. Mad. Anyone know why??
ReplyDelete