50 Days

On November 11, two days after I started this blog, I received the following g-chat message from my friend Avi Z.

if you make it until 50 i will buy you an ice cream cone

Well Avi, I like chocolate syrup and rainbow sprinkles...

However, in exchange for the ice cream, I'm going to give a shout-out to Avi's favorite Olympian, Australian snowboarder, Torah Bright. Bright grew up in Australia, where she still trains during Southern Hemisphere winters and spends Northern Hemisphere winters training in Salt Lake City, Utah. At the age of 19, she placed fifth at the 2006 Winter Olympics in the half-pipe event in Turino, Italy. She has also won gold and silver at the X-Games, and became the first Australian to win gold in that event in 2007. She's considered a gold medal contender at the upcoming Winter Olympics in Vancouver, having won a recent World Cup event in November. Australia has never medalled in snowboarding at the Olympics. Bright will face stiff competition in February from the American ladies, Gretchen Bleiler, Hannah Teter and Kelly Clark, all of whom are previous Olympic medalists. Good luck to them all.

Fifty years after the 1924 Winter Olympics, an error in the scoring of the men's ski jumping event was discovered. American Anders Haugen, who had initially placed fourth, was found to have actually placed third. He was awarded his bronze medal in 1974.

I have no idea how biathlon seems to make it into all my posts these days. Nevertheless, the biathloners'... biathletes'... (what do you call them?) shooting targets are 50 meters away. Depending on the type of race, for each shot missed there is either a time penalty or another lap added to the race.