Bob Sledding

​​We watch the Olympics throughout most of the day, so that you don’t have to.

The U.S. has only two Olympic medals in its history for cross-country skiing, men or women.  And both now are for…my fave, Jessie Diggins!  She won a Bronze medal very late last night (or very early this morning) in the Individual Sprint.  This was the first-ever individual medal in cross-country for an American.  Much as I enjoy watching her race, even I'm not nuts enough to stay up until about 3 in the morning.  However, I recorded the broadcast and then fast-forwarded to watch the two qualifying and then final race.  The U.S. almost got two medals, as Rosie Brennan finished fourth.  First place wasn’t in doubt, the Swedish racer Jonna Sundling was far out ahead almost the entire race.  But Diggins, who was fourth for much of the race, once again (like four years ago when she came from behind to win the Gold medal in the two-person relay) came from back to barrel through and win the Bronze.

That expression of joy – which she even had at the beginning of the race before it began, though not this wide – is just one of the reasons she’s a fave.  And here is video the end of the race.  That’s Jessie Diggins on the far left, wearing number 5.  Just the slightest arms-bump as she crosses the line.

NBC had a dueling conflict of sorts on Monday.  That’s when NBC was airing the men’s figure skating short program with Nathan Chan competing, while their sister channel USA Network had the U.S. women’s hockey team playing their huge rival for the Gold Medal Canada – at the same time.  Chen did better, taking a solid lead going into the free skate.  The U.S. women had far more shots on goal than Canada (by a whopping 53-27 margin), and controlled the puck pretty well, but were lackluster in getting good shots, and were especially ineffective when they had a player advantage during power plays (even giving up a short-handed goal), and ultimately lost 4-2.  However, this wasn’t a medal game, nor did it affect who would play in a medal game.  It was just an early contest for important bragging frights.  It’s still likely that they’ll face each other again in the Gold Medal game.

The luge coverage is using an absolutely wonderful shot that I’ve never seen before for luge or bobsled races – the best way I can describe it is like the helicopter shot you see when the news is following a police car chase on the freeway.  It gave the viewer such a far-better view of the racer and the course than the normal, closer shots we always see and give limited sense of perspective.  But…they only would use it for about five seconds.  It was great to see and frustrating to see so little of at the same time.  I don’t know if the layout of the track with its overhang didn’t allow for more usage, or what.  But it was so terrific that I hope that they can figure out a way to use it or build tracks that give more viewing access like this in the future.

You likely have seen the name “ROC” used for the Russia and wondered specifically what the Russian Olympic Committee meant in terms of how it affected the team.  The short answer is “not much,” which is the polite term for next to nothing.  Indeed, the “penalty” Russia got for a doping scandal so egregious that even the IOC couldn’t ignore it is one of the bigger scams of the Games.  The only real “penalty” (if that word can be used without laughing), though, is that no Russian officials could attend the Olympics – unless they’re invited by the host country.  And the team has to use a special Olympic flag.  But…well, that’s pretty much it, honest.  As for the rest, the initially long penalty got reduced to only two years (though that’s covered three Olympics), athletes could compete, they could compete under a name that referenced Russia, they could use the Russian flag’s colors on their uniforms, and if a Gold Medal was won, the official music played would be clearly and famously Russian (Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1.)  And, oh, for good measure, China did invite Vladimir Putin to attend.  So, yeah, really big penalty for a massive doping scandal.

And at last– at last! – NBC ran a featurette on how curling actually works.  A few problems.  The first is that it was introduced by the host saying that curling “was sweeping the nation.”  Even accepting that the pun was perhaps intended, they repeated that insistence of curling’s huge growing popularity without giving a single fact to support those questionable statements – viewing numbers, new clubs around the country, massively more members, anything.  And once they began explaining the sport, it was not only in the most cursory way imaginable (basically, that players each get two throws a round and try to get as many stones as possible close to the center…which is somewhat like giving the rules of baseball as “You get three outs an inning and try to touch home plate as often as you can”) – but they found two experts who seemed so uninterested in being there that the gentlemen made the rest of curling seem exciting.  But still, it was good to at least see NBC try.