May 22, 2012
NY Times: Longing for the Return of Dueling Pistol
The New York Times picks out 10 past Olympic events that should be brought back. The title focuses on Dueling Pistol. Although they have that as #4 on the list, not sure if it was supposed to be a ranking. Dueling Pistol was in the 1906 Olympics but did not involve shooting people, just a dummy.
The sports range from the crazy long (12 hour bike race, cross-country run) to legitimate (softball, cricket). Maybe then I’d finally understand cricket. I’m still at the point where I was on board with Family Guy making fun of it in their season finale. It’s not on Hulu yet but it pointed out that it made no sense who was wearing helmets and someone hit the ball out of the park but they had no idea if that was good or not. Finally, there are some odd ones (tug of war) and odd looking ones (2-handed javelin).
Of the 10 on the list, one stands far above all the rest: 200 Meter Swimming Obstacle Course.
6. 200-meter swimming obstacle race, 1900
How to make the 200-meter freestyle more exciting? Make the competitors climb a pole, swim under a row of boats and clamber over another row of boats.
Now, that’s in 1900. The possibilities are endless with underwater cameras. When imagining it, I just have trouble resisting turning the event into Wipeout, The Challenge, or Ninja Warrior.
Found on Uni Watch.
March 24, 2010
I’m catching up on back issues of SI. I need to mention that because the story isn’t exactly timely since it relates to the Olympics. Although, I think Olympic sports should be talked about year round.
The story was ‘A Tale of Two Lindseys.’ It discussed Lindsey Vonn and Lindsey Van. You know Vonn, but who is Van? She’s a female ski jumper. I mentioned how ridiculous it was that there was no woman’s ski jumping in the Olympics in the last IDM. I wasn’t aware of the fight over the idea. The IOC says it’s not competitive enough. In the article, they compare the woman’s ski jumping world championships, which had 39 competitors, with the woman’s skeleton at the games, which had 26 competitors.
I really don’t understand what the issue is. They’d have to buy a few extra medals? That’s all I can think of.
February 28, 2010
The Winter Olympics are all done. Time to take a look at the final ICH Standings. Only two other people made picks. Evan spent some time making his picks. I really just picked one country per discipline and picked that country for all the events. Check out February’s IDM featuring a recap of the Winter Olympics.
February 17, 2010
NBC opened their afternoon coverage talking about how terribly Norway was doing. Great. I’m not sure if Norway is rubbing off on me or we were both meant to be miserable this week.
I decided I want to visit Vancouver. That isn’t new, I’ve wanted to go to Vancouver for a while. Now I want to go there in two weeks. Right after the Olympics. With Spring Training starting up I’m growing concerned that winter is going to be over soon. I want to take a trip, but unlike normal people going south for Spring Break, I want to go north. Although, Vancouver is warmer than it is here, it’s still wintery if for no other reason than it hosted the Winter Olympics.
I’m disliking figure skating more and more each day. NBC seems to love it. They love it enough that they show almost everyone live and push speed skating to late night. Here is my idea to move things along. With widescreen I think you could show 6 skaters going at the same time. As each one stumbles or falls, they get dropped from the screen. By the end, you only have 1 or 2 on the screen. How much time would this save? Would you miss anything?
Biathlon – Women’s 10k Pursuit
Are there any other olympic events where you are rewarded by your finish in a previous event? I feel like the second medal should only be worth half as much.
5. BERGER Tora – Started 33rd, made up almost a minute.
8. FLATLAND Ann Kristin Aafedt – Started 10th.
Biathlon – Men’s 12.k Pursuit
7. BJOERNDALEN Ole Einar – Started 17th. Made up 50 seconds.
8. SVENDSEN Emil Hegle – Started 2nd but struggled in the standing shooting.
17. HANEVOLD Halvard – Started 24th.
23. BERGER Lars – Started 46th.
Boarder X
4. Helene Olafsen – She made it to the finals and was getting a lot of chatter. In typical Norway fashion, she slipped up and fell and finished last in the finals. No medal.
Curling
Men lost 7-6 to Canada but in the late session, beat the USA 6-5. To top things off, have you seen their curling pants? http://www.ctvolympics.ca/news-centre/newsid=41700.html
Hockey
Trouble against Canada, losing 8-0.
Day 6 has 7 medal events scheduled:
Women’s Downhill
Cross-Country – Women’s Individual Sprint
Cross-Country – Men’s Individual Sprint
Speed Skating – Men’s 1000m
Luge – Doubles
Short Track – Women’s 500m
Snowboard – Men’s Halfpipe
Thankfully, Norway does not have any team events.
Today is going to be difficult. I need to avoid finding out about the Downhill. Then the Halfpipe finals don’t start until 10:15.
538 has been doing medal projections. They expect 17.4 more medals for Norway, which would be good enough for 4th.
February 16, 2010
I tried avoiding results yesterday, which is nearly impossible. I would go to MSNBC and see a picture that looked like the olympics and panic before letting it sink in. In my panic, I’d go to my homepage, which is SI. So I’d have to panic again. I made it through work but while I was at home I managed to see the USA finishes for the two events I cared about (Downhill and Boarder X) before I got to watch. I should have made it to the Downhill but NBC didn’t put that on until primetime, even though it started at 1:30. Hopefully today will be better. I think NBC only has 2 hours of coverage this afternoon. I imagine that will cover Biathlon and Boarder X Qualifiers.
Cross-Country – Women’s 10k Individual
The announcers kept talking about the disappointing day for Norway.
3. BJOERGEN Marit – 3rd Olympics. Silver in this even in 06. Also a Silver in the 4x5k Relay in 02.
8. STEIRA Kristin Stoermer – In 06, had 3 4th places and a 5th. So close. Hopefully a medal for her this year.
22. SKOFTERUD Vibeke W
49. KRISTOFFERSEN Marthe
Cross-Country – Men’s 15k Individual
What a disappointing day for Norway in Cross-Country. They have the #1 in the world, and the best finish was 28. It wasn’t even him!
28. GJERDALEN Tord Asle
33. JOHNSRUD SUNDBY Martin
41. NORTHUG Petter – #1 in the world.
42. HAFSAS Ronny
Men’s Downhill
A 2nd Silver for Norway.
2. SVINDAL Aksel Lund – Competed in 06. Best finish was 5th. Finished 21st in Downhill.
These two tied for 31st. Kind of crazy for two from the same country to tie. The top 3 were a record for how close they are, so ties can happen.
31. JANSRUD Kjetil
31. MYHRE Lars Elton
46. KARLSEN Truls Ove
Boarder X
I will continue to call this Boarder X. Norway had 2 qualify for the quarters, but it doesn’t look like they made it out of that.
No Norway in Speed Skating or Pairs. Speed Skating got all screwed up because of the ice yesterday. Pairs wound up being the first event I skipped over most of. Figure Skating is looking to be my least favorite event. I don’t think I’ll watch any Ice Dancing. We’ll see about the singles.
Norway Totals: 2 Silver 1 Bronze
Day 5
Norway’s Men’s Curling debuts with a morning match with Canada and a night match with the USA. They also start up Men’s hockey, facing Canada this afternoon. Norway has 0 NHL players. Ole-Kristian Tollefsen was traded by the Flyers last week to the Red Wings. The Red Wings put him on waivers and no one picked him up. So he’s in the AHL now. I don’t feel a good day coming on for Norway’s team sports.
6 medal events scheduled for the day:
Biathlon – Women’s 10k Pursuit
Women’s Boarder X
Biathlon – Men’s 12.5k Pursuit
Men’s Super Combined
Women’s Luge
Speed Skating – Women’s 500m
February 14, 2010
Biathlon – Men’s 10k Sprint
I don’t think I’ve ever watched an entire event before, but it was a lot more interesting than I expected. It was a little difficult to keep track of who was in the lead because they did the leaderboard at each shooting area. So someone would be at #1 but he had already had a penalty at the next stop, so that #1 didn’t really matter. It would have been even more exciting had anyone who started later had a chance. It rained and snowed so the people that didn’t start early had no shot.
2. SVENDSEN Emil Hegle – Finally, a medal for Norway! In 06 he finished 6th in the 15k Mass Start. I don’t know what that event is yet, but I think I’ll find out this week.
17. BJOERNDALEN Ole Einar – All sorts of Olympic experience in 98/02/06. Totals: 5 Golds, 3 Silvers, 1 Bronze.
24. HANEVOLD Halvard – Had no shot starting 73rd. 40 years old, I didn’t see any reference to previous Olympics on the site.
46. BERGER Lars
Nordic Combined – Individual Normal Hill
9. MOAN Magnus H. – In 06 won Bronze in this event and Silver in the Large Hill.
17. TANDE Petter L. – In 06 finished 4th in this event and 6th in the Large Hill.
23. SCHMID Jan – 4th in the Team Large Hill in 06.
32. KOKSLIEN Mikko
Speed Skating – Women’s 3000m
8. HAUGLI Maren
Luge – Men’s Single
No competitors from Norway. I noticed they refer to themselves as ‘sliders.’ I guess they got sick of the luger jokes.
Men’s Moguls
So far my favorite events have been the moguls. I think their closest competition will be from Boarder and Skier X. The announcers have been solid as well.
Monday features 6 medal events.
Cross-Country – Women’s 10k Individual
Alpine Skiing – Men’s Downhill
Cross-Country – Men’s 15k Individual
Snowboard – Men’s Snowboard Cross
Figure Skating – Pairs
Speed Skating – Men’s 500m
February 14, 2010
A few of my friends decided to pick countries and keep track of their performance during the Olympics. It’s not a competition. I’m not even sure how it will work. My country is Norway.
On Day 2 (Saturday), there were 5 medal events. Norway did not compete in the Women’s Moguls or the Men’s Short Track 1500m. This is disappointing because these were by far my two favorite events of the day. In each of the three events they did compete in they at least finished in the top 10. In the Men’s Speed Skating 5000m, all three finished in the top 10, but no medal.
Ski Jumping – Individual Normal Hill
9. JACOBSEN Anders
12. HILDE Tom
18. BARDAL Anders
23. ROMOEREN Bjoern Einar – Won Bronze in Team in 06
Speed Skating – Men’s 5000m
4. BOKKO Havard – Competed in 06 but DNF 1500m and DNP in Team Pursuit, but I’m pretty sure he made the trip to Turin.
8. CHRISTIANSEN Henrik
10. HAUGLI Sverre
Biathlon – Women’s 7.5k Sprint
What I gathered from watching this was that if you missed a shot, you had to take a penalty lap, which costs about 30 seconds. I didn’t realize it was such a severe penalty. I thought they just added a few seconds and you kept going.
10. FLATLAND Ann Kristin Aafedt
33. BERGER Tora – Competed in 5 events in 06. Best finish was 5th in the 4x6km Relay.
70. EIKELAND Liv Kjersti
Five medal events are scheduled on Day 3. Norway will compete in …
Biathlon Men’s 10k Sprint (4)
Speed Skating Women’s 3000m (1)
Nordic Combined (3)
Not competing: Luge Men’s Single and Men’s Moguls
My knowledge is limited to what I found on the Vancouver 2010 site.