Let the Games begin in Torino!

[bste_lax]

Gretchen Bleiler is the 4th snowboarder. She won Silver in the halfpipe, and she's kinda good looking.

Yes, yes she is.

I concur.

[JW]

Thank you Matt for giving me that visual here at work. Definately makes 5 am a lot easier to bear (or is it bare).

[DanGenck]

Instant Karma strikes Jakobellis. Put her name up there with Leon Lett...

[Brent Burns]

Instant Karma strikes Jakobellis. Put her name up there with Leon Lett...

I am sure most of us were taught that once we are ahead, we should not look back. That was exactly my thought last night as you were correct that someone furiously ran after Leon and chopped his hand to knock off the football loose when he was so close to a TD.

That is really a golden flub.

[UofMLaxGoalie11]

I just watched a french man (and member of the french army) come back from a fall on the homestretch to overtake the norwegian in the lead in a great sprint in the biathalon persuit. My one question about it was "since when does france have an army?"

[Wade]

Does anyone else think that the Half-pipe should not be an olympic event? I was watching it last night with my girlfriend and we both agreed that there really isn't anything exciting or extremely difficult about it. Maybe if you compared it to curling or figure skating...

Interesting to read some of the things written here about snowboarding. It's been the only thing in the Olympics I've followed, except I didn't get to see much of it on TV since I was on a snowboarding road trip the entire time.

Kinda cool being in the small towns the athletes call home as the world is watching them and the locals are fired up for their neighbors.

A lot of Olympic sports are obscure to say the least. Has anyone ever met a person who has even tried skeleton? Or biathlon? (Yeah, I'm sure at least one of you has, but honestly, the US only sees these sports once every four years.)

Half pipe may not involve the 90 mph speeds of downhill but try dropping into a super pipe with 18 foot walls and then tell me how difficult it is. Add in how big the guys are boosting (guessing, but 15 foot plus (?) above the lip) and your dealing with some serious hight off the ground.

It basically looks like a spinning contest. Just who can fit the most 1080s into a run.

I'm personally more a fan of BIG clean airs, but the spins are tough and being able to "stomp" (Brent - you can leave "stick" to the gymnasts) them cleanly is impressive. People were talking about throwing 1260's but if you can't pull it off with style you aren't going to win.

As for SBX, it shows the lag between the Olympics and what people are actually doing. As much as I appreciate sports that don't rely on judging, boardercross is on the fringes of snowboarding. The comment however is that it appeals to the average American NASCAR fan because it has the bumping and crashes.

It is possible that some of you have already seen (I haven't seen it) a movie called First Descent, a movie about 4 snowboarders being helicoptered to the top of the mountain and left them there. It appears that the plan is for them to go downhill on their skis. Two of them are Shaun White and Hannah Teter.

First Descent was a cool movie. Good balance of snowboard history with some excellent cimematography of recent contests and sweet Alaska footage. Terje Haakonson boycotting the '98 Olympics set the precedent for riders attitudes to the games (ducking a rope for some powder runs before the biggest contest of their lives; skateboarding a halfpipe the night before an Olympic qualifying event). But, um, it's not about them getting dropped off at the top and "leaving" them there to "ski" down the hill.

Instant Karma strikes Jakobellis. Put her name up there with Leon Lett...

Yeah, that's a tough way to lose the gold, but it's pretty standard for someone with a good lead to throw a little style into the last jump. I differentiate the two b/c I think in football it's a little more disparaging to the opponent to showboat into the end zone than to throw a method on the final jump of a snowboard race (but that's just my opinion.)

I guess one thing I love about snowboarding is that if you spend some time up on the hill you run into these people and may even ride the chair with them a few times. I'm not sure how often you see hockey players in their everyday life, but go to Mammoth Mountain in November and you will be riding with basically the entire US snowboard team, plus a lot of the international riders.

Now lets hope we can see a US v. Canada hockey gold medal game!

[Brent Burns]

I'm personally more a fan of BIG clean airs, but the spins are tough and being able to "stomp" (Brent - you can leave "stick" to the gymnasts) them cleanly is impressive. People were talking about throwing 1260's but if you can't pull it off with style you aren't going to win.

Thanks for the quick SBX vocabulary lesson, so I will try to remember to say "stomp" because I immediately knew that I was stuck with what word to call it. That was why I said land and knew "stick" is only for gymnastics.

[Wade]

Thanks for the quick SBX vocabulary lesson, so I will try to remember to say "stomp" because I immediately knew that I was stuck with what word to call it. That was why I said land and knew "stick" is only for gymnastics.

No problem, I'll gladly act as the snowboard ambassador to the message board.

[Brent Burns]

Wade,

You will be thrilled that Shaun White (he was recently featured on Sports Illustrated) so far has received the most votes for a favorite gold medal performance when I was checking Yahoo! He received about 2300 votes for 27%; Joey Cheek and Shani Davis both came in at 17% behind Shaun.

[Saul C]

Shani Davis should be put out to pasture for the way he acted on TV during Saturday's post race Q&A. That was the worst and most painful thing I have ever watched.

[Jay Wisnieski]

I know. I felt sorry for Melissa Stark. She wasn't even asking him anything inappropriate, and he was being a total jerk to her. I enjoyed it when she asked him, "Shani, are you mad about something?". With this and the fact that he didn't want to compete in a team race because he wanted to rest himself for the individual race in which he eventually won the Gold Medal, a lot of people are upset with him.

Even with him acting like a jerk, I think the people that are posting racist and hateful comments to him on his website are morons.

[Danny Hogan]

i missed the boat on this one. what did he say that was jerk-like and who is posting what on his website? i'm out of it.

[mbuff]

A lot of Olympic sports are obscure to say the least. Has anyone ever met a person who has even tried skeleton? Or biathlon? (Yeah, I'm sure at least one of you has, but honestly, the US only sees these sports once every four years.)

I've actually done the biathlon or the Bundeswher version of it. While in the army and stationed in Germany, we would go down south with a German Army unit and XC all over the place and shoot things. It was the same training area that the German Biathlon team trains upon. Comming from the world of downhill skiing, it's actually pretty cool the first time you "ski" up a slope. I would guess that anybody stationed with the 10th Mountain at Ft Drum or up in Alaska would do the same training.

Of course we didn't wear skinsuits and had about 65 lbs on our backs but it was basically biathlon since we were competing for beer.

As for curling, it was below freezing here on Saturday so if our game was cancelled due to road conditions, I guess we could have lined an icy street, grabbed some trashcan lids and brooms and called it a bonspiel!

[JustLAX]

Here's an interesting article on Shani Davis

http://www.suntimes.com/output/mariotti ... jay17.html

[laxfan25]

i missed the boat on this one. what did he say that was jerk-like and who is posting what on his website? i'm out of it.

In the interview right after his race, he had a real p.o.'d look on his face and gave bascially one word answers - it wan't the kind of interview you'd expect with someone who just won gold.
Shani has his own website and supposedly there were a lot of racist postings on there. It's obvious there's a lot of politics going on on the speedskating team and I would be reluctant to criticize him for not wanting to join in the team pursuit right before his main event. Hendrick was partially upset because he was trying to beat Heiden's medal count, so he was being a little selfish himself. Shani also had a good point - would Chad have done the team pursuit if it was the event before his main 5K meter race?
Mr. Davis has spent his life building up to this event, so without skating a mile in his mocassins I will give him the benefit of the doubt. I'm sure we'll continue to see this story emphasized as the two medalists face off at other distances.