Biathlon is the single, most photogenic sports. Plenty of beautiful nature (well, on the World Cup at least: that recycled golf club of Korea in the dark with freeways and trucks in the back isn’t exactly the greatest exhibit of nature’s beauty), and crazy drame in between.
And that psychological aspect of the last bullet (“la craquante” as well call it in the Doubs region), wonderfully exposed yesterday by Kuzmina on the women mass start. It’s a sports that shows the whole aspects of the human nature.
Edit: that’s one ugly-ass watermark. Thank you, demoware
Edit 2: bought the damn thing, good job, watermark
Is it possible to watch a full, unedited curling match in the US? I’m completely fed up with NBC cutting out the first half of each End. Do I need to find a stream from some other country?
Curling has undergone a shift toward fitness, moving out of the days when a facsimile of an Olympic curling team could be plucked off four bar stools. In 2014, Canada won the Olympic gold medal with what Drobnick called, “one of the most physical fit teams in the world.” The victory convinced other countries they were ceding an edge by not embracing conditioning.
The change can be seen in the physiques of top curlers. In PyeongChang, they have shown up with chiseled torsos and bulging biceps. Kennedy’s veins run up his arms like roads on a map. The male Japanese curlers have attracted particular attention from certain corners, it seems. Gone are beer bellies and twig arms.
Yeah, used to be you could pick out the Curlers in the Olympic Village pretty easily. “Who’s the dude with the pint in one hand and the cheese curds in the other?” “Oh, that’s one of the Curling Team from…”
Now it’s a bit more athletic. Especially the women’s teams…there are some very nice looking female curlers out there.
That’s kind of a shame. I watched all the women’s curling back in the Nagano games, I think it was, because I watched the Olympics on CBC that year. I actually loved the fact that here were these Olympians that all looked like housewives and grandmas.
That explains a lot. When I first heard the news it didn’t make any sense to me, but I suppose a sweeper might run out of elbow grease by the end of the match.
And I find it strangely appealing when a woman stares intensely at an object 5-20 meters away while screaming gibberish.
Hmmm…could be we’ve identified a new fetish. Quick, to the internets to hire some models, create a website, and make our fortunes! =)
“I’m going to need you to stare about 10 feet past the camera, and scream gibberish. And if you could dress up like a Sailor Moon character too, that would be fantastic.”
Are we sure that doesn’t already exist? Or better yet, actual curling porn? (Autocorrect wanted that to be curling pork, which also probably exists.)
Back to actual Olympics, I watched the women’s hockey semifinal games. Well, parts of them. After about the first two periods in each case, the US/Canada were so dominant that I moved on to other things. Not surprising, of course, but it would be nice if other countries would start to catch up. The final should be quite the spectacle, though!
Caught some of the big air and halfpipe skiing and snowboarding, too. The actual runs are fun to watch, but the scoring is just inscrutable. Even the announcers are sometimes at a loss to explain why a score was so low or high. I can’t imagine being one of those athletes who just barely misses out on advancing or a medal by fractions of a point that were only in a judge’s mind.
I noticed in the Big Air events that the women heading down the hill towards the jump start off by going sideways on their snowboard at first, which keeps their speed low before switching it to go full speed. I guess they are not comfortable going down all the way from the top to the jump at full speed, as it could end with hitting the other side of that slope at a bad angle or too far away from the hill.
Again, as an SSX fan, I enjoyed the event. I’m looking forward to seeing the final on Thursday.
I watched a lot of the big air events as well over the weekend. I think the USA advanced 3 women to the 12 person finals. Right now snowboarding events and some of the less traditional skiing stuff seems to be where the majority of Team USA medals are coming from. I saw a lot of events over the 3 days that had US medal hopefuls fall short, placing 4th-8th or so. It’s probably just my perception of things, but it seems like Team USA is having an off year where we’re just barely missing the podium more often than not.
On the other hand, I love watching athletes from smaller countries win medals. I saw a Polish guy win in Ski Jumping and it was awesome. The announcers even said before he jumped how the Prime Minster of the country came to see the team off and embraced the ski jumper saying “you are our best hope for a medal”. No pressure! Glad to see he came through, and will be a hero back home.
Also, the girl from the Czech Republic who came from nowhere to win the Alpine Skiing (despite being a snowboarder) was awesome! She was totally adorable, she didn’t actually believe she’d won at first, then her face just became all smiles and her eyes teared up…it was fantastic. And how about Kazakhstan with a Bronze medal in Freestyle Skiing! So cool!
There’s already Sailor Moon figure skating, so it’s only a matter of time before it spreads to other Olympic sports. (I didn’t search for this. It just popped up as a Youtube suggestion. I’m not sure if that’s more or less embarrassing.)
According to Jason Blevins of The Denver Post, Swaney has been competing in World Cup halfpipe events since 2013 with the approach of not performing any tricks and simply getting through the course without falling. With so few women competing in these events, Swaney was able to earn enough top-30 finishes with this style to be eligible for the Olympics.
I saw that on the CBC broadcast the other day. The announcers were at a bit of a loss on her first run, but on the second one she did actually do a small trick and they got pretty excited. I like these kind of Olympics stories…Not everyone has the talent to compete for medals but they still want to inspire others from their nations. Who knows, maybe some Hungarian girl will be the next great in the sport!
She’s actually American. Yes, you too can still fulfill your dream of becoming an Olympic athelete if you figure out how to game the system.
The answer is a bit complicated, but it involves a little dedication and lot of circumvention. Swaney has been freestyle skiing for five years and her goal was to make it to the Olympics, even if she had to snake her way in. The 33-year-old American isn’t stupid – she has a graduate degree from Harvard – and so she worked out a scheme to make her Olympic dreams come true, at least for one day.
Knowing that she likely would never have a chance at making the Winter Games while competing for a spot on the very-competitive United States team, Swaney instead decided to ski for Venezuela (her mother’s home country) before switching over to represent Hungary, where her grandparents were born, in 2015.
Skiing for Hungary gave Swaney a better chance at meeting the International Ski Federation’s requirements and qualifying for Olympic participation. All she needed to do was show up at a bunch of international events and complete her very basic runs without crashing and she would slowly score points and work her way up the rankings.
Nathan’s skating suit was specially designed by Vera Wang I believe. I don’t think he cared if he did well or not. It seems this is all celebrity promotion and marketing this year. NBC is terrible at this.
EDIT: Maybe “didn’t care” is too strong a term. Perhaps the word “unfocused” should be used instead.
