Bob Sledding
We watch the Olympics throughout most of the day, so that you don’t have to.
I have a nice video at the end which is worth jumping to, if it happens that none of the other Olympic folderol is of interest to you. But otherwise –
Over the weekend there was a lot of cross-country skiing, which oddly I like – but in part that’s because one of my favorite winter athletes, Jessie Diggins, competes in it. The U.S. traditionally doesn’t do well in the sport, but Diggins – who tends to downplay her skills, and refers to herself as the team cheerleader -- is regularly competitive. She didn’t get a medal in this first race, a relative short one, 15,000 meters (about 10 minutes), but did finish sixth, with several more races to come, both individual and team.
This brings to mind the team event four years ago at the Winter Olympics in in PyeongChang, so we’re going to dive back to yesteryear for a Golden Oldie here, and this is what I wrote about the race on February 21, 2018 --
"I get chided for not only getting up early to watch the Olympics, but also watching offbeat events which often are considered boring. Including cross-country skiing, a field which the American women have never won a medal of any kind, ever. Well, nyah, nyah, nyah to those people -- because early this morning, I watched the women's Team Sprint, and when the great and joyous Jessie Diggins made the switched off on the final leg from teammate Kikkan Randall...they were actually in third place, in contention for that first-ever medal. But more than that, on this furious final leg, Diggins (having at one point made it to first place but by then fallen back again to third as they entered the stadium) broke away on the final turn...and didn't just get a medal, but fricking won the race, and the U.S. women's team got a Gold!!! And by a whopping .19 seconds. This is not just the first medal of any kind by the women cross-country skiers, nor only the second cross-country medal by any American (the first was Bill Koch 42 years ago), but the first Gold Medal by any American in the discipline.
"Announcer Steve Schlanger gave an enthusiastic call, but it was of course his maniacal analyst Chad Salmela who I thought would have his head explode. I've written often how he goes bonkers screaming at anything exciting for any country, but this pushed him off the Richter Scale. (His cry of 'HERE COMES DIGGINS!!!!! HERE COMES DIGGINS!!!!!' reminded me of the famous call in the 1960 Rome Olympics when little-known American Billy Mills came from nowhere to sprint past the world's best -- 'HERE COMES MILLS!!!!!' -- and win the 10,000 meter race.) If you see they are going to replay the end of the race, do yourself a favor and watch. For the race and the call. But this photo below says it all."
I should note that Jessie Diggins was selected to carry to American flag at the Closing Ceremony in 2018. Hey, when I pick a favorite, I don’t screw around.
By the way, if you want to get a sense of Jessie Diggins joyful and enthusiastic personality, she appeared as a guest on Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me! for the ‘Not My Job’ segment that I posted not long after the 2018 Olympics ended. It’s a great deal of fun – especially the portion where they deal with panelist Paula Poundstone having trashed cross country skiing only weeks earlier – and the entire U.S. cross-country team knew about it. (Paula’s “Oh, no…” is a hoot) And it builds from there. If you’re interested, you can listen to it here.
A few days ago, I wrote about watching the European figure skating championships and noted that “a young Russian skater Kamila Valieva seems to be the favorite. At the European championships after the short program, she wasn’t only in first place ahead of the reigning Russian champion…in a sport where a few points making the difference between medaling or not, she was 20 points ahead of second place! She was the first ever to pass 90 points, the next best was like at 71.” If you watched the team figure staking event on Saturday, when they had the women’s short program, you saw what I was talking about. That was Kamila Valieva who not only finished first, but broke 90 points and was over 15 points ahead of whoever was in second place. And who analysts Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir were using superlatives like “perfection,” “spectacular” and “the best skater I’ve ever seen.” And then she came back in the free skate to win by 30 points (!) over second place – and had to be comforted by her coaches because she missed a jump. Hey, we tries not to steer ya wrong.
The U.S. women’s hockey team had another good match, beating the Russia Olympic Committee team 5-0. Someone online commented about this win, noting that while it wasn’t at the level of the famous Miracle on Ice by the men in 1980, it was always great to see. And It was a very good win. Though for perspective, it's never been a miracle for U.S. women to beat Russia in hockey. U.S. women have been one of the two top ice hockey teams in the world with Canada for 24 years, when it became an Olympic sport. (The only year they finished as “low” as third was when they got beaten by Canada and knocked out of the Gold medal game.) Russian women have never won a medal.
And following up after that game, the U.S. women returned to beat Switzerland 8-0 on Sunday, for their second shut-out in a row. That makes the hockey team 3-0 in preliminary games, outscoring their opponents 18-2. There’s only one preliminary game remaining – but it’s a very big one: against Canada on Tuesday – although that’s local time in Beijing, here in the U.S. the game will be broadcast Monday night.
Finally, biathlon is the only Olympic winter sport for which the United States has never won a medal. And for now, that still holds – but they came very close to breaking that streak this morning in the women’s 15K event. That’s when Deedra Wilson had the highest finish for any American in any individual event, coming in seventh. Even more remarkable is that her previous best in an international competition was 55th! And this is all the more impressive considering that she’s only been the sport for four years. What’s fascinating, too, is that when the race was over she had no idea about how special her race was, until the NBC interviewer for the USA Network coverage told her. Her reaction at learning this stands out, as does her breaking into tears and emotional response. Thanks to DVRs, I reran the video and recorded it off my phone –
More to come…
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