33 Days

Lindsey Vonn has regained the lead in the World Cup standings, even with an injured arm, by winning two downhill races in a row, on Friday and Saturday. She has not lost a downhill race since February 2009. U.S. snowboarders Gretchen Bleiler and Kelly Clark have both earn spots on the Olympic team. Hannah Teter and a few other women will compete for the final spot in two weeks.

Of the 33 total medals won by Korean athletes (both North and South) in Winter Olympics events, 30 have been won in short track speed skating events. Similarly, 20 of China's 33 Winter Olympics medals are from the sport. Korea and China cannot be counted out in short track speed skating, but you can also bet that both China and Korea will be winning medals in figure skating in Vancouver. (Yu-Na Kim for Korea in ladies figure skating and pairs team Shen and Zhao for China, both front runners in their respective events.)

The first snowboard was created in 1965, when an engineer watched his daughter try and stand up on her sled while going downhill. He then took a pair of skis and attached them to create a snowboard for her. 33 years later, in 1998, snowboarding became an Olympic Sport at the Nagano Olympics.

34 Days

The U.S. won a record 34 medals at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, the most they've ever won at a Winter Games. That's more than double their previous high, which was 13. Four years later, in 2006, American athletes won 25 medals in Turino.

You know a course is tough when thirty-four of the best competitors (82 in total) in the world cannot not finish a ski course. That's what happened at the first of two runs on the men's giant-slalom course at the 2006 Olympics. American Bode Miller finished both races and placed sixth overall, in a race at which he was hoping to medal. Neither of the other two American medal contenders, Daron Rahlves and Ted Ligety, were able to finish. Austrian Benjamin Raich won, with Hermann Maier in bronze. Joel Chenal of France won silver.

35 Days

Liechtenstein is a small country made up of only 35,000 citizens. They became the smallest nation ever to produce an Olympic gold medal in 1980 when Hanni Wenzel won the slalom and giant slalom events. She also won a silver medal in the downhill at the same Olympics and had previously won a bronze medal at the 1976 Winter Olympics. The country has won nine Winter Olympic medals in total, all in alpine skiing, which gives Liechtenstein the record for most medals per capita, with one medal for every 3,888 citizens.

American Kristi Yamaguchi is the 1992 Winter Olympic Champion in ladies figure skating. (She's the Dancing With the Stars Champion as well. Totally the same thing.) At the beginning of her career, Yamaguchi split her time between solo skating and pairs skating. She competed in pairs skating with partner Rudy Galindo. In 1989, Yamaguchi became the first woman in thirty-five years to win two medals at the U.S. National Championships - silver in singles and gold in pairs. Shortly after that, Kristi stopped pairs skating to focus solely on her singles career (which was clearly a wise move). Her partner, Galindo, later went on to win the mens National Championships in 1996 and won the bronze at the World Championships that year as well.

36 Days

Nike has unveiled a new sneaker in honor of the 2010 Winter Olympics, the Dunk Hi in red, white & blue and gold. They will be available beginning in February to coincide with the Olympics. What do you think?

The most medals ever won by one nation at one Winter Olympics is 36. Germany holds this record from the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games.

Handball debuted as an Olympic sport in the 1936 Summer Games and then was removed from the list of Olympic events right afterwards. 36 years later, it returned to the Olympics in 1972. Four years after that, in 1976, Women’s handball became an Olympic sport as well.

The Royal Canadian Mint has put 36 limited mintage Olympic and Paralympic themed collectors coins and sets into circulation to honor their home country Olympics in Vancouver.

37 Days

Figure skater, Sasha Cohen basically swears she will compete at the National Championships next week, and make an attempt at qualifying for the Olympics. She hasn't competed since the 2006 Olympic season (she won the silver medal in Turino) and missed her two Grand Prix events this fall due to injury. At 25, she's considered an old timer in the world of ladies figure skating. She is definitely on the list of all time beautiful skaters, but she's never really been able to perform all of her jumps error-free. Only two U.S. women will make it to Vancouver this February, and no one really has any idea where Cohen stands in the mix of competitors, since most of them have only been competing on the Olympic level since she's been gone.

Even with an increase in television coverage, from the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics to the 2006 Turino Winter Olympics, NBC saw a 37% decline of their prime-time viewers. Reality shows like American Idol and Dancing With the Stars stole many viewers away. The decline was also partially due to the time difference between the U.S. and Italy, as opposed to the Salt Lake City Games where much of it was aired live.

On the speed side of things, hockey is the fastest Olympic team sport, where players can skate up to 37 mph. On the individual sporting events side, speed skaters can attain maximum speeds of 60 km/h in some of the shorter distance races.

38 Days

This isn't really Olympics related, but it's cool. Liquid Image Co. has created a pair of ski goggles with a built in video camera at the top so that you can take videos of yourself skiing. LED lights inside the goggles alert the skier to the mode of the camera. The goggles can take still images as well and will be available in the summer of 2010 for about $149.

Whistler Mountain, home of the skiing and snowboarding events at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, boasts 38 lifts: 18 chair lifts, 16 surface lifts and 4 gondolas.

Canadian athletes have won a total of 38 gold Winter Olympic medals. (8 in ice hockey, 6 in speed skating, 5 in short-track speed skating, 4 in alpine skiing, 3 in figure skating, 2 in freestyle skiing, bobsled, cross country skiing, biathlon, and curling and 1 each in snowboarding and skeleton.) Canada is in seventh place in the overall medal count, but ninth in the gold medal count. The host country is hoping to improve those numbers by having a great showing on their own turf in Vancouver in February.

Every Olympic host creates pictograms which represent the sports included in those Games. Here are the 38 pictograms for the 2012 Summer Games in London. I'm not sure these images are any less deserving of a "wooden spoon" than the 2012 Olympic logo is. (See 83 Days.)

39 Days

While we still don't know how many hours of Olympic coverage NBC and it's affiliates will air, there are new announcements from NBC's Olympic Sport's channel, Universal Sports. Throughout the two weeks of the Vancouver Olympics, the sports channel will air 5 hours of Olympic coverage from 10 am to 3 pm daily, showing news, highlights, previews and medal ceremonies. They will also have a 24 hour news ticker. I am so not going to have enough room on my dvr.

Alpine skier, Lindsey Vonn lost her lead in the World Cup standings this weekend after missing a gate in a slalom event and failing to finish the race. Vonn is still recovering from an injured arm.

39 of the 2985 athletes who participated in the 2006 Winter Olympics were representing Latin America and the Caribbean. The majority (2069 athletes) came from European countries.

In 2006, Canadian Duff Gibson became the oldest individual Winter Olympic Champion at the age of 39 when he won the skeleton event in Turino, Italy.

40 Days

In Albertville, France, in 1992, Kjetil André Aamodt became the first alpine skier from Norway in forty years to win Gold at the Winter Olympics. He won a bronze there too and competed in the next four Olympics, medaling thrice (I love that word) in 1994, winning two more golds in 2002 and one more gold in 2006. With eight Olympic medals he is the most decorated alpine skier at the Olympics. Aamodt also has the distinction of being both the youngest and oldest male alpine skier to win a gold medal at the Olympics. (He was born in Sept. '71 - you do the math.)

NBC and it's affiliates aired 40 more hours of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turino than they did the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Here's hoping for 40 more hours this time around. The last time I checked, which was a while ago, I couldn't find the exact number of hours NBC plans to air of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Anyone want to help me out on that one?

41 Days

Shout out to Kevin Pearce, a U.S. Olympic hopeful in snowboarding. In Park City, Utah the other day, Pearce fell and hit his head while practicing on the half-pipe. According to ESPN, Pearce had to have surgery to relieve fluid buildup on his brain. No word on how this effects his chances to compete at the Olympics. We seem to be hearing of a lot of injuries this season, leading up to the Olympics. I'm not sure whether these athletes are unlucky or if winter sports have gotten to the point where they are just too demanding.

A study conducted by the University of British Columbia found that Canadian medals increased by 41% in the time since Vancouver won the bid to host the 2010 Winter Olympics. Medals increased at the Olympics, World Championships and other international events, largely due to Canada's "Own the Podium" program promoting winter sports.

42 Days

At the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, Tara Lipinski and Michelle Kwan first and second place finish made them the first female figure skaters from one country to do that since 1956. Forty-two years earlier at the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina D'ampezzo, another set of American women won the gold and silver medals: Tenley Albright and Carol Heiss. As an aside, Lipinski who was 15 at the time is the youngest Olympic figure skating champion in history.

Australia has competed in every Winter Olympics since 1952. Previous to that, they had only competed at the 1936 Winter Olympics. In Turino, Italy in 2006, with 42 athletes representing Australia, they won two medals, the most medals they have ever won in one Winter Olympic Games. (They won two medals at the 2002 Winter Olympics as well.)

Whistler Mountain, home of the ski and snowboard events at the 2010 Winter Olympics, was developed into a resort city with the intention of hosting the 1968 Winter Olympics. In 1968, Grenoble, France won the bid to host the Winter Olympics, but forty-two years later, they have finally received the chance to host the Olympics.