Down, Down, Down

I'm watching Winter Olympic team luge as I type this, but I want to talk about skiing.

The high winds in the Korean mountains subsided enough yesterday to allow skiing competition , and while the women's regular slalom is still yet to be held, the giant slalom went without a hitch.  Mikaela Shiffrin (below) won the gold.

Unfortunately. I missed it.  I tuned in too late for her first run, and her second run didn't take place until after I went to bed.  But I did see the men's downhill (Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway won), and I saw it live.  NBC has had the luck of being able to broadcast early-afternoon events live during evening prime time in North America, the time difference between the U.S. East Coast and Korea being fourteen hours.  I've found myself not rooting for any one skier or any one country in any particular ski event.  Because ultimately, you see one skier go down the hill, then another . . . then another . . . then another . . . down . . . down . . . down.

And in the slalom, it's down, curve, down, curve, down, curve . . . but then you have the super giant slalom, or Super G, which is down, curve. down, curve . . . Good Lord MAMA! - Jesus Christ and General Jackson!  - Uncle Albert and Admiral Halsey! - down, curve, down. :-D

Ha ha, you get the idea.   

Miller Time

Johnny Spillane became the first American to win a medal in the Nordic combined ski jumping and cross country event at the winter Olympics, earning the silver medal and just barely losing the gold to Jason Lamy Chappuis of France by four-tenths of a second. Meanwhile, a Canadian finally won an Olympic gold medal, winter or summer, at an Olympiad held in Canada by winning the gold medal in men's freestyle moguls - Alexandre Bilodeau, of Quebec, won that event yesterday.

But the big news is - Bode Miller finally won another Olympic medal!

Everyone's favorite sot from the 2006 Winter Games, who had won two silver medals in Salt Lake City in 2002 but got wasted in Torino and went home empty-handed, won the bronze medal in the men's downhill skiing race, missing out on a higher podium position by less than a second. (Didier Defago of Switzerland took the gold medal and Aksel Svindal of Norway took the silver. Mller's was just .09 seconds behind Defago and .02 seconds behind Svindal.) Miller credits his unlikely comeback - more incredulous due to the abysmal season he had last year - to a more serious attitude and a simple desire to race. The fact that he became a father two years ago might have also taught him some responsibility.

I don't know how many other races Miller is entered in, but it looks like he's on his way to fulfilling his Olympic promise of four years earlier. It's nicer to know that he's back, but, dude, what's that going to do to my Vancouver coverage? I'll have to look elsewhere for satire!

I've been going over my commentary on Torino from four years ago, by the way, and I think I peaked in terms of Winter Olympics ridicule. And apparently, Miller was a primary source for a good deal of that ridicule. :-O