Bob Sledding
We watch the Olympics throughout most of the day, so that you don’t have to.
On Friday, they had to cancel the Team Alpine skiing event because of high winds, which was to be Mikaela Shiffrin’s last chance for a medal, in remarkably her sixth event. The question was if it could be rescheduled – and it was. The event is dominated by Europeans, but the U.S. came down to a tie-breaker and finished fourth, out of the medals by a few tenths of a second. She skated every race cleanly and well, though most of the time had to ski on the “red” course, which was so much a slower course than the “blue” that no skier of any country was able to win their two-person race there. Still, her being on the course at all forced their opponents to use their better skier to race against her, in essence “wasting” a blue course race. Afterwards, all the members of the U.S. team made gracious comments, but it’s not surprising that hers were the most gracious of them all, praising her teammates so movingly for their support, and saying they were her best memories of the Olympics.
I’m very happy to write that, once again, the wonderful Jessie Diggins won yet another medal in cross-country skiing. The race was the 30k freestyle, which is almost 19 miles in the bitter, 19-degree cold and swirling wind. She got the Silver Medal, far behind the leader Therese Johaug of Norway who swamped the field, winning by 1-minute 43-seconds… but Diggins herself was far ahead of third place by 50 seconds. And when she crossed the finish line, she threw her arms up in exultation – and then collapsed to the ground, totally wiped out, even staying there for several minutes, finally having to be almost carried off by team officials. I guess that skiing for 19 miles in the bitter cold and wind will do that to you. Especially if you had food poisoning the day before! This is Diggins’ second medal of the Games, and her third career medal – which now gives the U.S. ski program in its history (men and women combined) a total of…three medals. Yes, all Jessie Diggins. And it’s worth noting that the two races she won medals in this year – one was the “sprint” and the other 19 miles. That’s versatility.
This is 2-minutes and 30 seconds of sheer exhaustion (stick with it...), followed by an interview – with, of course, her glitter.
It's recorded off the TV with my phone, so the audio isn't high quality, but it's fine.
It’s pretty hard to find anything exciting in curling, but the other day, U.S. men’s team made a shot that was otherworldly. It stunned even the announcers. And though a lot of it was totally lucky, the end result was still amazing. It’s hard to describe it, but I’ll try. In the second to last round, with the U.S. up by, I think, two points, their opponents had a stone in the center, pretty well guarded by another stone, so they were almost guaranteed a point because the U.S. only had one play left. The U.S. player skid the stone down the ice, and when reaching the “bullseye” home area, it knocked a Chinese stone out of the way…then ricocheted off, slid down where it hit a U.S. stone – and then bounced back up…to hit that their opponent’s stone in the center and not only knock it out of the way – but wound up in the center itself, where it stopped! So, the Americans ended up winning the round. The announcers were laughing that he should do that more often, and even the U.S. player struggled to contain himself from laughing.
And no, nothing changed. As much as I normally love doing so, I still won’t be watching the Closing Ceremony. A great deal was wondering in the Games. Too much wasn’t.
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