More 2018 Miscellaneous Winter Olympic Musings

Updates!

The U.S. women's hockey team beat its arch rival Canada in the gold-medal game at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics . . . just after their male counterparts were eliminated by the Czech Republic.

Before you start talking about girls ruling and boys drooling, let me remind you that the National Hockey League's refusal to let its best players compete in the Olympics hindered the U.S. men's team, and the Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR) men's hockey team - medal favorites - should never have been allowed to play.  Since the Russians are such obvious cheats - and the women's OAR team prove that cheaters never prosper - I'd rather see the American men lose to the Czechs than to the Russians.  (Funny how the U.S. men's team beat the Slovaks and not the Czechs - if Czechoslovakia were still one country, I wonder what the dynamic would have been in these Games.)

Lindsey Vonn was first in the downhill run of the woman'e super combined . . .but made a mistake in the slalom run when sh missed a gate and did not finish.  (I saw the former run but missed the latter.) Vonn still gets credit for being one of the toughest and most durable skiers in the history of the sport, having come back from so many injuries.  Mikeala Shiffrin win the silver in this event, behind gold medalist Michelle Gisin of Switzerland.  Breitbart News couldn't be happier; now Vonn can't refuse a White House invitation she obviously isn't going to get, because she's not a gold medalist this time (and we all know how much Trump loves gold).   It's now up to the women's hockey team to refuse an invitation to the White House.

And, while all of that was going on, American bobsledder Elana Meyers Taylor and her partner Lauren Gibbs won the two-woman bobsledding silver medal, edged out for gold by Mariama Jamanka and Lisa Buckwitz.  Too bad Meyers Taylor, a star at these Games, and Gibbs didn't win gold; they could have refused Trump's invitation too!

Four-man bobsled coming up.  Go Latvia! Praise Janis Kipurs! :-D

Lindsey Bronze

The women's downhill ski race at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics is over, and Lindsey Vonn has won . . . the bronze medal. 

She finished behind her friend Sofia Goggia of Italy, who became the first woman from her country to win this event, and to win the downhill, and she was expected to take silver until Ragnhild Mowinckel of Norway - Norway again! - came in second.

Lindsey Vonn was very emotional about it, and she knows she'd done the best she could, but she also knows that this will be her last Winter Olympiad.

She's not done yet.  She and Mikaela Shiffrin will both be competing in the women's super combined slalom/downhill.  I managed to see the downhill race, but I might have to miss the super combined.  Other commitments, you understand . . .

Miscellaneous Winter Olympic Musings 2018

Gimme a C!

You may have noticed that I changed the spelling of the South Korean city hosting the 2018 Winter Olympics from "Pyeongchang" to "PyeongChang."  I capitalized the C when I saw that the South Koreans had done the same.  Apparently the locals in PyeongChang did so when their town got confused with Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.  I heard an anecdotal story about how a Kenyan on his way to PyeongChang in 2014 for a conference ended up in Pyongyang instead.  Not fun for him, I hear.

Be that as it may, Pyeongchang - which had changed its name from Pyongchang by adding an "e" in 2000 in an earlier effort to avoid confusion with Kim Jong Un's hometown - decided to capitalize the "C," although most sportswriters haven't reciprocated and have continued to use a lowercase "c."  Me, I chose to respect the Koreans' wishes.  I tried using the new spelling, with the capital C, in my tags, but Blogger.com kept changing it back to the old one.   I had to check all of the posts I used the tag on and change them all to conform the tag to the new spelling . . . and I inadvertently reverted one of posts (my January 24 post about inter-Korean dialogue because of the Winter Games) to an unpublished draft in the process.  For those of you who may have been looking for it, there's your explanation.  Of course I republished it. 

Anyway, the competition.  Canadian ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, gold medalists at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and the silver medals at the 2014 Sochi Games, won the title again last night, and even though ice dancing is a subjective sport, based on judging and not who crosses the line first, it is more fact than opinion to say that they earned the gold medal over everyone else.  I saw it myself.  Maya and Alex Shibutani, the so-called Shib Sibs, came in third for the bronze. The Shibutani siblings are probably the most popular American brother-sister act in figure skating since the Carruthers siblings at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics . . . and maybe even the most popular brother-sister act of all since the Carpenters.    

Despite the Russians, the U.S. men's hockey team made it to the quarterfinals after beating Slovakia in a rematch, 5-1.  They may, however, have to face the official non-official team from Russia again.  And even thought the U.S. women's team has been more successful against their Russian counterparts than the U.S men's team has been against their Russian counterparts . . . I still say that neither Russian hockey team should be in PyeongChang at all.

And then there's skiing sweetheart Lindsey Kildow Vonn . . . 

. . . currently appearing in a Bounty commercial showing her in a house built on a slant to play on her living life on a slope . . . 

. . . in one of the slinkiest ski outfits I've ever seen! :-D 

Just remember, when the Summer Olympics are on, one of my ladyfriends enjoys checking out the posteriors on male divers, so please hold your comments about how misogynistic I am.  

Anyway, Madame Vonn skis for gold in the downhill in South Korea Wednesday morning . . . which is tonight in the U.S., and so it will be broadcast live tonight.  It's too bad I won't get to see it - I have to go out tonight for a standing commitment.

Oh well, I missed Mary Lou Retton's perfect ten in 1984, as well as other legendary Olympic moments, so this is nothing new for me.

But I hope Lindsey Vonn wins tonight.  Because if she does, she'll be invited to the White House, and she's already made it clear that she will refuse the invitation because Trump nauseates her.  Breitbart News is already rooting against her for it.   So go ,Lindsey, go! :-) 

A gold medal would be a real quick-picker-upper for her. :-)

Medal Drought

If not for the real problems affecting our country (relax, I'll get to the Mueller indictments later), overpaid television commentators would be talking about the United States' current fifth-place showing in the Winter Olympics medal count as a national crisis comparable to expensive gasoline.  The athletes from Nordic and Slavic countries keep winning all of the skiing medals - wow, big surprise! 

Actually, there was a big surprise - Ester Ledecká of the Czech Republic won the women's Super G slalom, dethroning leader Anna Vieth of Austria and preventing a sweep of the Teutonic Alpine countries (Tina Weirather of Lichtenstein, once a favorite in this race, had to settle for bronze, and Switzerland's Lara Gut had to settle for fourth place.  Ledecká shocked everyone, including herself, by taking the gold by one one-hundredth of a second . . . on skis borrowed from Mikeala Shiffrin.  It was a "Dewey Defeats Truman" moment for NBC, which had already declared Vieth the winner and had to break into coverage of another event to report that Ledecká had won.

Lindsey Vonn, another favorite in the women's Super G, came in sixth after a solid run that was compromised by a mistake toward the finish line.  Meanwhile, Nathan Chen, despite a strong comeback in his second performance in men's figure skating, didn't come close to a medal of any color.  (The winner?  Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan.)   All disappointing, yes.  But a national tragedy?  No.  So, if you're taking these losses in skiing, including the women's cross-country, as seriously as our withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, lighten up.  Especially if you're part of the overwhelming majority of Americans who only pay attention to skiing when the Winter Olympics are on - or dismiss men's figure skating as to effeminate.  

Maybe this medal drought is Trump Karma.

Want to make America great again in the Winter Olympics?  Encourage your kids to take part in winter sports.    

Skiing and Sledding

More from Vancouver:

Lindsey Vonn had a dismal run in the women's super-combined skiing race on Thursday, but she turned out to be grateful for her bronze medal in the Super G run. Julia Mancuso more or less batted about .500 (to cop a phrase from another sport) as well, in reverse order. After winning the silver medal in the super-combined event (behind Vonn's German friend Maria Riesch), she failed complete the Super G run. I'm sure many Americans are happy that the darling duo of American women's skiing won medals just the same.

Even if they don't know what the difference between super-combined and Super G is. :-D

Meanwhile, the bobsled races have started. Finally - my favorite sledding event! :-) I've always considered bobsledding to be the safest of the three sledding sports, comparatively speaking, if only because bobsledders have steel protecting them on three sides and they're sitting rather than lying on their backs. The two-man races are underway. One American team got off to a slow start and almost lost control of the sled, but finished the race, and almost took the lead in record time. :-)

Downhill Delays

The PBS NewsHour reported the results of the women's downhill skiing race at the Vancouver Winter Olympics before NBC had the opportunity to show it, so I watched it knowing that Lindsey Vonn had won, getting the gold medal, with the perky Julia Mancuso taking the silver medal. (Elisabeth Goergl of Austria won the bronze.) Three other skiers, including Sweden's Anja Paerson, crashed, but no one was hurt. The crashes were the big surprise.

I'm pleased that Vonn won, since she had injured her shin and took advantage of the delays of this event to nurse herself back to form. Normally, knowing the result of an Olympic event would discourage one from tuning in to see it on tape, but to me, watching the Olympics on tape delay is like watching a movie I've already seen. I love it when I know the ending. :-)