Let the Winter Olympic Games Begin!

S

Starseeker

Vault Senior Citizen
http://www.vancouver2010.com/

As some of you might have known (or noticed when using google today), the winter Olympics games officially began today.

As the survivor of craziest media fest/party Beijing has ever seen in 2008, I am not sure anything can top that craziness. It's always interesting to stay in a Olympics hosting city though, since there always seem to be some kind of giddiness/excitement in the air.

Any medal predictions? Or Winter sports fans? :D

I still can't believe that 2 of the cities I live in both hosted Olympics back 2 back.

edit to add: And tomorrow is Lunar New Year's Eve!

Let the party begin!
 
Kicked off with a sad start as a luge competitor got KTFOed.

They dedicated the opening ceremonys to him, which was a nice touch.

Really, I just can't wait for this to be over so that I can go back to living in a boring and apathetic metropolis.
 
Bit annoying with the lack of snow. I mean..it is raining. No matter. Curling is all that matters anyway. Gonna be hard to beat the canadians.
 
The English have a really good curling team.

The only sport I really follow is hockey. I expect Canada to medal, but Russia and Sweden both have very good teams.
 
Goddamnit, becuase of the time difference between Canada and Finland, all the broadcasts from Vancouver start like 4 A.M. or so.
 
Did RUSH play in the opening ceremonies? I knew it was a rumour and I dvr'd it, but haven't watched it. Might not if they don't.

I do like the winter Olympics better than the summer one.

Hockey FTW!
 
What's the point of hockey without the fighting and the contact? Olympic/International style hockey is too much finesse and not enough mayhem. It's like watching women's hockey. Give me Whalers Vs. Nordiques circa 1980s over Swedes Vs. Fins any day.

BTW, do they let Don Cherry do Olympic broadcasts in Canada, or do they lock him in his cage when the foreign contingents show up?
 
Cimmerian Nights said:
What's the point of hockey without the fighting and the contact? Olympic/International style hockey is too much finesse and not enough mayhem. It's like watching women's hockey. Give me Whalers Vs. Nordiques circa 1980s over Swedes Vs. Fins any day.

BTW, do they let Don Cherry do Olympic broadcasts in Canada, or do they lock him in his cage when the foreign contingents show up?
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Hockey kicks ass. I still agree with you though. The fights and the anger on the rink sure helped the sport kick ass. Still, Hockey is my favourite sport.

Now if we want to talk about wtf Olympic sports. The biathalon.
 
The main problem with international hockey is the size of the rink, which won't be an issue at GM/HC Place.
 
Sure, bigger surface is more conducive to finesse and less collisions. Are you saying they're going with an NHL size?
 
Cimmerian Nights said:
Are you saying they're going with an NHL size?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_Place

That's the hockey rink of the Vancouver Canucks, now temporarily renamed Canada Hockey Place. They don't have the money to make a new ice surface so they are using this one.

Cimmerian Nights said:
Sure, bigger surface is more conducive to finesse and less collisions.
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I don't know that that is true. I've watched some of the SEL when it was broadcast over here. It seems that the larger ice surface leads to more defensive systems in line with the NZT/LWL and plenty of hooking.
 
I see the Norwegians are getting destroyed in cross-country skiing. Heads are going to roll! :mrgreen:

Being from the U.S., the American I'm hoping will fail most of all is that annoying Lindsay Jacobellis. After humiliating herself and disgracing the nation with her stupid stunt in Torino, she already has a bunch of commercial endorsements, even before she competes this time. Keep your mouth shut and redeem yourself before you start cashing in, you stupid cow!

I'll be watching hockey and The Flying Tomato. And Biathlon, because it has guns.
 
IMissLark said:
I don't know that that is true. I've watched some of the SEL when it was broadcast over here. It seems that the larger ice surface leads to more defensive systems in line with the NZT/LWL and plenty of hooking.
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NZT puts me to sleep...

Got to say that Canada/USA game last night was some awesome hockey, some nice hitting.
 
Norway finally got a gold in skiing. After allot of losses. Allmost think we have deserved it being as cooky as we have been recently.
 
Finland has been doing its best to suck ass this time around.
Kind of depressing to see such huge winter sport nations such as Kazakhstan get as many medals as we do.
Hell, even UK got a gold medal, an achievement we have failed to accomplish in these Winter Olympics.
 
Well, triple triple Kim, the Korean golden girl beat everyone over the head with it, as expected.

Triple axe Asada pulls off a second with 73 pts, but Kim's 78 will be tough to beat.

Rochette also pulls off third and a personal best with a 71.3, but Ando hasn't skated yet. Pretty awesome considering her mother just died of a heart attack couple days ago.

Edit: Ando just skated, 64 pts at fourth, so the ranking was almost expected. And yet it was a pretty bloody competition.

The free skate will be interesting.
 
One of the things I have noticed in my limited viewing of the games is that most of the U.S. woman's bobsledders are former collegiate athletes in other sports (e.g. softball, soccer, etc.). So they are basically pretty good athletes that couldn't excel to the top of whatever they were doing before so they took a shot at bobsledding. Which leads me to wonder, does anyone grow up practicing bobsledding since the sled and time on a track have to be quite the premium commodity?

Should there even be Olympic events that some poor kid can't practice (to some extent) on his own with some minimal investment in equipment (e.g. skates, skis, etc.)? Is bobsledding only an event because it's fast and a traditional event and they have trouble coming up with winter events? Where should the line be drawn in determining when equipment is too expensive? I am pretty sure you could discard the downhill part of bobsledding and make it rocket bobsledding and it would be even more exciting.
 
lol, as I said in another forum, sport is such a microcosm of life.

You train for years, putting in all the blood, sweat and tears, and you finally made it to the Olympics, and then you start after someone younger than you who just broke a world record.
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Olympics is also where the interesting things happens. Ladies figure skating is a great example. The last 2 gold medal winners were completely unexpected. A lot of people that are expected to win in Olympics don't. Weatherspoon, Kwan, Plushenko (was so expected to win, but didn't) and etc, etc. What about Bradbury? The guy trained hard, but wasn't expected to win at all. He was last in the final heat, which was pretty good considering it's probably the top 25 in the world. But he won a gold due to a huge pile up and he was too far behind/slow to get caught up in it.
 
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