Bob Sledding 2026

​We watch the Olympics all day so you don’t have to.

In Liu of other things to write about...

Okay, last things first.  A few weeks ago, I wrote that I didn’t know anything about figure skating scoring – and I don’t.  But I also said that after watching the U.S. Nationals, even though she came in second, Alysa Liu was my favorite skater to watch.  And in every interview I saw with her, she just seemed to radiate total joy.  And I wrote about that several times.  And after retiring for two years at the age of 16, Alysa Liu came from third place and won the Gold Medal.

And now, first things second.  What an exciting Free Skate competition.  For starters, Amber Glenn, the three-time U.S. National Champion, who’d had a deeply disappointing Short Program, by virtue of missing one rotation on a jump, and was in 13th place – gave a tremendous Free Skate and jumped all the way to fifth.  Isabeau Levito gave a very good program, but underperformed and had a rare fall, dropped from eighth place to 13th.  And Alyssa Liu was…just wonderful.  She always says that she came back because she loves skating and does it for the art, whatever place she ends up in.  And it showed.  Just a…joy, the best word you can use to describe her and her skating.  The two Japanese skaters ahead of her, Ami Nakai and the great Kaori Sakamato, a three-time world champion (a streak broken this year -- by Alysa Liu), both skated very well, but each had slight misses.  And the top three were so close that that made the difference.  And Alyssa Liu won the Gold Medal.

This was the first women’s figure skating medal for an American woman of any kind in 20 years, and their first Gold Medal in 24 years.  And even after skating, Alyssa Liu showed why I like her so much – while waiting in the most-tense moment possible, for the final score to find out if she would win the Gold Medal, instead of staying in her “leader’s chair,” she left it to go find Amber Glenn and stand with her.  Only at the last moment did she return to the official chair.  And then, after finding that she’d won, rather than immediately finding her coach and choreographer, she instead went to the young Japanese skater, who had been in first place, to placate and celebrate their medals, together.   Only then did she find her team.  (In fairness, after her skate, when all attention was on her and cheering, she drew repeated attention to her coach and choreographer.)  I’m sure that Amber Glenn can’t help but wonder the result if she hadn’t left out that one rotation – but I’m equally sure she feels she had a redemptive skate with her great program and finishing fifth.  And coming away with a Gold Medal in the Team Event, just as Alyssa Liu got one of those, as well – and ended up with two Gold Medals.

The big hurdle for me was that much of the figure competition overlapped with the Gold Medal women’s hockey game between the United States and Canada.  Thank goodness for being able to watch both live on the big screen and on my computer.

And what an amazingly great Gold Medal game women’s hockey between Team USA and Team Canada was, intense rivals who have met in seven of the last eight Olympic Gold Medal finals.  Most of those Gold Medal games – and other times the two teams met during the Olympics in earlier rounds -- won by Canada.  And this time with, perhaps, a slight political edge thrown in on Canada’s part.  The game was incredibly tight – in fact, through the first two periods, the only goal was surprisingly scored by Canada when they were short-handed during a USA power play, only a minute into the second period.  And it stood that way, 1-0, until there were about 2-and-a-half minutes left in the game, when the U.S. pulled their goalie early, giving them an extra skater, but leaving the goal empty.  And about 20 seconds later, team captain Hillary Knight, considered perhaps the greatest player in U.S. women’s hockey history, in her fifth and perhaps final Olympics, scored to tie the game, which is how it ended in regulation, 1-1.  The game went into overtime, when the teams play with two fewer players, 3-on-3.  And four minutes in, Megan Keller of the U.S. took a long pass, made a great move…and scored, giving the U.S. a 2-1 win and the Gold Medal.  This had to have been a difficult loss for Canada – not just from a political standpoint, and normal rivalry, but seeing a Gold Medal so close, just two minutes away.  How emotional was the win?  As the U.S. women were going crazy on the ice celebrating, their coach John Wroblewski could be seen wiping tears from his eyes.

How much did the figure skating and hockey overlap?  When the U.S. women were getting their Gold Medals…Alyssa Liu skated onto the ice!  Ice hockey lost out at that point, though I did record the rest of the ceremony and National Anthem.

In speedskating, Jordan Stolz had won the two short sprints, the 500m and 1,000m, and tried to go for and unprecedented third medal in the longer 1,500m.  The challenge was that a Chinese skater had set a personal best and Olympic record.  Stolz got off to a slow start, and didn’t get another Gold, but had a blistering final lap and got a Silver Medal.  He has one more race to go, the Mass Start.

They had a new Olympic event today called Ski Mountaineering, and it’s definitely offbeat, and more than a bit too manufactured a sport for my taste, but still interesting and fun.  They’re only doing the Sprint, though – there are other SkiMo disciplines, like the Vertical (which I don’t know how that works, but it sounds grueling – even more than the Spring, which is grueling enough).  In the Sprint, it’s like a combination of cross-country skiing (where competitors slog up the hill, going through a few diamond-shaped obstacles), the 100m dash (where they take their skis and run up steps) and the Downhill (putting their skis back on and skiing to the finish, with a little jump tossed in).  It takes between 2-1/2 to 3 minutes.  My only quibble is that it’s a bit hard to follow the placement of the skiers, and those who jump off to the lead seem to hold it.  There was a great story with one of the Spanish contestants, Ana Alonso Rodriguez.  Only a few months ago in October, she was training on her bicycle when she got hit by a car.  She broke an ankle, and tore both her ACL and MCL.  She chose to have no surgery so that she could hopefully compete in the Olympics and made it.  After her first heat, where she qualified, she dropped to her knees and began weeping.  And she also made past the second heat to the finals.

More to come…