I’m catching up on the day broadcast (2-4pm) from a couple of days ago. Cross Country Sprints are so exciting to watch.
Klaebo is unbelievably good. Watching him have the strength to distance himself from everyone in the field on a steep uphill section is just awe-inspiring to watch. Is this guy the Hulk? What the hell? The Vikings are generally very impressive to watch in the Winter Olympics.
I watched our young American athlete perform the first quadruple lutz in Olympic history last night. Pretty crazy. He seemed nervous though and the rest of the routine seemed a bit shaky.
I also watched Lindsey Jacobellis lose the women’s snowboard cross for what may be the last time.
Did you catch the piece they did on Lindsey Jacob-Ellis a couple of days ago, in the preliminary rounds of that race? She seemed to be pretty zen about the whole thing, and in a good place mentally. I was pulling for her to medal last night, but it was nice to know she’s going to be fine when she lost. It’s too bad the one medal she has, the Silver, was one where she should have had gold.
I really enjoyed both the snowboard cross events. The more traditional one-at-a-time approach that many events use is ok and all, but I find the multiple-competitor races to be much more interesting to watch. That finish of the women’s final was nuts!
I also really like the snowboard cross when they are doing multiple contestants. Needs a Run DMC “It’s Tricky” soundtrack, though.
I thought all of the heats leading up were nuts as well. What a crazy event. People falling, wiping each other out, etc. One announcer called it the NASCAR of snowboard events, it certainly had that feeling.
Me too, bud. She seemed like she was the one to beat. One of the announcers made a comment though during one of the early heats about how badly a few of the other people really caught up to her on the lower part of the course and mentioned something like, "Lindsey really needs to focus on that bottom part or it will cost her in the final. And he was very right, it did. She led for most of the early part, only to get zoomed by in the end.
What really perplexed me about that snowboard cross event is just the physics of where the bursts of speeds by some of the riders is coming from. In SSX you get it by pressing the boost button and it magically comes out of nowhere. Where the heck is it coming from in real life? The commentator mentioned it was a question of the wax on the snowboard or something like that. So you had different levels of friction on different boards during the race, which should make a big difference I guess.
I noticed a lot of them lost speed on the curves, I’m assuming not taking a good line. But yeah, when people pulled ahead at the end, it was mostly jumps and straights. How do you gain speed in the air?
Body position and aerodynamics? That’s my guess. I’ve never seen a snowboard in person :)
Good point. I know drag is one of the big things for the ski jump, requiring perfect form and whatnot. But on the snowboard cross, that seems hard. Plus it really bugged me they had to wear pull over team vests which flapped around. That would negate some of those aerodynamics, right?
They must have a boost button in the fingertip of their gloves.
I’d presume the landing. You see this in the trick events where if you fuck up the landing you lose speed and have to do an easier trick on the next jump since you won’t get enough air to do the harder ones.
That was crazy. Did anyone else see that run by the Czech Snowboarder doing Super-G for the first time? Ester Ledecka is currently going to win Gold.
@Paul_cze, are you watching this?
Yeah I saw it, I teared up when I saw that time :D
On the U.S. broadcast, just like they did with the men a couple of days ago, they had switched away after all the top riders who they thought had any chance of medalling had all gone down the hill. They’d done this in multiple events, and they’re always right. After they switch away, no body medals unexpectedly, I’d noticed. So I was thinking last night when they switched away, “I hope one of these days, one of these riders who no one is expecting to put together a good run wins”. And sure enough, an hour or so later, they had to go back to the venue and show Ledecka’s gold medal winning run. Very neat.
I read up more about her this morning. Apparently her dad was a Czech pop star, and her mom used to be an Olympian, a member of the ice hockey team. Everyone has been pushing her since she was a kid to either pick skiing or skateboarding, but she insists on doing both.
In other news, it was great to see the Japanese figure skater win again. After seeing the story they did, showing his dedicated Japanese female fans, it would be heartbreaking for them if he’d lost. I imagine there’s not many figure skaters with dedicated fans who follow him around to see all his performances around the world like that.
Slope style skiing on tonight. It’s fascinating that very few of the skiers are blowing their landings, while a lot of the slope style snowboarders did. Different conditions today? Different amounts of risk-taking?
No wind apparently?
It’s a little disappointing that Team USA isn’t doing as well as in the past, but I can’t complain. The foreigners have stepped up their game, and all I can do is be happy for them.
It’s nice to see some familiar faces finally achieving their full potential: Nagasu, Savchenko, Fernandez, Fontana, Krueger. Yuzuru Hanyu deserves to hog that gold medal one more time. And I’ve been especially pleased by the figure skaters who didn’t quite make it into the running for the podium but put on great performances, like Valentina Marchei, Vanessa James, and Adam Rippon.
Luge racers are just plain crazy…
The men’s mass start biathlon that just finished was an incredible race, literally a photo finish. I’ve heard that biathlon is a very popular sport in Europe and I can see why, it’s got great drama. Only really get to see it here in the US when the Olympics comes around, though.