The Winter Olympics

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Anyone watching these? Yog should be proud, Norway heads the medal race, although America has the most gold at the moment.

My favorite events are snowboarding and ice skating, but to be honest when it's the Olympics I can sit down and watch everything.

[Jedi Master Carr]

I have seen bits and pieces, Winter sports just don't interest me as much as the summer ones. I see Russia and Germany are catching up usually you can count on those two countries to be in the top 5 in the Winter Olympics.

[Atreyu]

Not really interested. What can I say - Australia doesn't really have much snow and so 'winter' sports are not very big here (we didn't even win our first gold medal until Salt Lake City).

[Lilaena De'Ville]

You had a pretty good female snowboarder that competed last night, she made it to 5th place I think..

[Oriadin]

I enjoy the winter olympics more than the summer olympics. I don't think the the main events are as big, but its more exciting and more interesting to watch in my opinion. I love the ice skating and the bobsleigh.

[JMK]

I don't have much interest in either, but I do enjoy the winter olympics more. The speed of the winter events blows the summer events out of the water.

[Morgan Evanar]

I love the winter Olympics but don't have any time to watch. They're so much faster and smoother than the summer olympics.

[Anbira Hicchoru]

I'd watch but I just don't watch TV consistently anymore.

[jjwr]

I'll watch off and on depending on which events are on.

I saw the local Vermont girl Teter win the gold in the half-pike the other night, that was great to see.

[CMJ]

I was up till 5AM watching coverage and woke up at 10 this morning. While I haven't done that every day it's safe to say I'm the person they had in mind when they went to the nearly 24 hour broadcast. ;)

[Dutchy]

We (the Dutch) have won 1 gold and 2 silver so far. In speed skating, and we have more to come!

Tomorrow we have a fair chance of winning a medal in men's team pursuit.

Plus we have good chances on doin' well in any individual distance that's still to come. Especially 19 year-old Ireen Wüst, who already won gold on the 3000.

Today Chad Hedrick lost his chance of winning five golds after the USA was eliminated in the quarter final of the team pursuit. He still has a chance of 2 more golds in 1.500 and 10.000. On the latter I think and hope both Kramer and Verheijen have a better chance, after losing the gold to Hedrick on the 5.000. On the 1000 Hedrick does not have a chance on gold. That prize is waiting for Shani Davis to be picked up.

[CMJ]

I see that Dutchy posted. No doubt he spoiled results like he did during the last summer Olympics. I will not read this thread until tonight after we see all the coverage.

Dutchy despite the fact that the US has coverage nearly around the clock, alot of it is tape delayed. Please, please don't spoil it for those of us who are trying to stay spoiler free.....

[Dutchy]

Hehe, okay. For once we're ahead of the US. ;)

[Atreyu]

Originally posted by Lilaena De'Ville
You had a pretty good female snowboarder that competed last night, she made it to 5th place I think..
I'll have to eat my words - we've already won a gold medal (don't know what it - men's skiing or something) and our 2 gold medalists from 4 yrs ago have yet to reach the finals in their sports (one probably won't have a chance though - he's the one that won because the 3 skaters ahead of him all crashed just before the finish line).

::read's CMJ's post about spoliers::

I don't think my stuff would be spoiler though as this happened a day or 2 ago.

[CMJ]

You're fine Atreyu. :)

Dutchy's thing was the first event broadcast on tonight's primetime coverage. Sort of upsetting that Davis didn't help the team out at all. Not that we were gold medal favorites or anything, but with him I think we could have medaled.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Snowboardcross is an awesome sport. :D:thumbup

[CMJ]

I'd have to agree on that.

Our women's hockey team just lost to Sweden. Huge upset, but great for the sport. With the 2 dominating powerhouses of Canada and the USA it was in danger of being taken off the Olympic rotation. New countries vying for gold and silver will keep it around surely.

[JMK]

A high ranking member of the IOC said that changes were coming for women's hockey because it was too one sided with the U.S. and Canada beating the crap out of everyone. I don't know what they can do other than push the other countries to catch up some.

Maybe after this shocking upset by Sweden they may soften their stance a little.

I was able to watch the last half of the 3rd period, overtime and the shootout. It was great to see a huge upset like that...plus, it almost assuredly gives Canada the gold! ;)

(I don't want to say that too loud, the hockey gods will hear me and Finland will upset us as well!)

[jjwr]

I know its huge in USA & Canada but a lot of other countries have great mens programs so you would think they would promote their womens programs as well.

[JMK]

I guess either lack of funding or 'archaic' gender roles still exist as far as hockey goes. I'm not a sociologist so I don't really know, but I'm puzzled as to why only American and Canadian women play hockey.

There are 160,000 women world-wide that play organized hockey, almost 120,000 come from the U.S. & Canada combined.

[Jedi Master Carr]

Man, USA sure droped in total metals from second a few days ago to 5th, of course the top 5 countries are all within 3 metals of each other, so it should be a close race to which country wins that.

[JMK]

Yeah, Russia, Germany and Canada are all tied for second at the moment with 11 medals. It's still anyone's race.

[JMK]

What a story the Swiss men's hockey team is becoming. They upset the Czech Republic earlier this week, and to that point it was the biggest win ever for their country. This morning they shut out Canada 2-0, upstaging their feat from just a few days ago. Of course, they were BADLY outplayed in each game, but their goaltenders have been absolutely heroic. All the same, they've got 2 wins now, both against the favorites for the gold medal game.

[CMJ]

Great day of coverage. We did pretty well medal wise, plus some good stuff on events we didn't win. Like the biathlon pursuit race was amazing.

[Jedi Master Carr]

Total metals is still pretty close Germany is in the lead with 18 and three countries are tied at 13 for third, including the U.S. This has been a really competive olympics.

[Natia Telcontar]

Well, it's not a big surprise that the Canadian Womens Hockey team got Gold again. As the news said last night, it's good to see one team of Canada's met the expectations set for them so all I can say is GO CANADA!!!

[JMK]

The Men's hockey tournament starts for real tomorrow. Canada has not looked good at all, but they didn't look good in Salt Lake either until it was crunch time.

I'm happy for the women's team, but the result was entirely predictable, and was expected since they last won gold in '02. I'm actually most happy about the Swedish team, they pulled off a huge upset in knocking off the U.S. and guaranteeing themselves a silver.

[Natia Telcontar]

True, it was predictable that the Canadian Women's Hockey team got Gold. No offence to those of you in the US, but I'm thrilled that Sweden beat the US and took Silver.

Hopefully the Canadian Men's Hockey team will pull through again this year like they did in 2002.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I'm sure you'd be just as thrilled if the Swedes beat Canada and took silver against the US. ;)

Yeah right. :mneh

[Jedi Master Carr]

I have one question why is the Media saying the U.S should be disapointing how it is doing medal wise? It looks like we will finish second to Germany but a many in the media say that this Olympics is a disapointment? WTH is that about I mean we finished second at salt lake to Germany and I knew that was best case scenerio for this Olympics. That is typical for those in the media they don't know what the heck they are talking about.

[JMK]

Exactly. They're idiots. I think it's because they were expecting Bode Miller to clean up. If he had won where expected, the U.S. would be near or at the top.

Did anyone catch what Bryant Gumbel said about the Winter Olympics?

[Jedi Master Carr]

Yeah calling the white olympics, Gumble is a moron. Black Athletes don't compete for various reasons and none of them are racist. Heck most of the dominant winter olympics countries are almost 100% white to begin with.

[JMK]

I hope there are consequences for Gumbel, honestly. Can you imagine if some white dude said he didn't watch basketball because there were too many black people? He'd be crucified, and rightly so.

[Jedi Master Carr]

Well he said it on HBO and you can get away with a lot on HBO, so he won't lose his show there. He might be hard press to find work elsewhere though.

[JMK]

Ultimately I don't think this will hurt him at all. Not many people truly care about the Winter Olympics. If his comments were going to get him in trouble at all, they'd still be talking about it on sports radio, but they've hardly spoken about it at all.

[Jedi Master Carr]

I heard about it on two places, once mentioned casually on the News and on Bill Maher, oddly enough which is on HBO. Maher called him a moron but he didn't even talk about it that much.

[CMJ]

I've loved watching the Olympics. But I'm starting to look forward to them being over in a way, if only so my life can get back to normal. Everytime they're on my life basically shuts down so I can watch as much as possible.

:lol :lol

[Jedi Master Carr]

Heh I can tell.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Doesn't Gumbel remember the Jamaican bobsled team? And there's a cross country skier from Kenya this year (I think). It's just hard / next to impossible for equator alligned countries to participate in sports that require ice or snow to train. :rolleyes

[Jedi Master Carr]

Originally posted by Lilaena De'Ville
Doesn't Gumbel remember the Jamaican bobsled team? And there's a cross country skier from Kenya this year (I think). It's just hard / next to impossible for equator alligned countries to participate in sports that require ice or snow to train. :rolleyes

Yeah it is, it is why most of those countries do better in the Summer Games.