BS: Winter Olympics 2010

Subject: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: gnu
Date: 16 Feb 10 - 06:00 PM

So... Canada and Norway on the ice tonight eh. Missed the curling.

What are you following?

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: catspaw49
Date: 16 Feb 10 - 08:25 PM

Well the USA started off poorly in Curling with a loss to both teams but all is not lost yet! At least I get to watch some damn curling!!!


Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: Beer
Date: 16 Feb 10 - 08:50 PM

Skating is starting to have some problems due to warm weather.
Beer (adrien)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF4phdbFEyM

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: gnu
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 03:11 PM

Skating isn't a prob for Canuck hockey. 8 to 0. Poor buggers (Norway).

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: GUEST,bankley
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 03:28 PM

I'm watching the ice gators

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: gnu
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 03:30 PM

Hahahahaaaa. Good one!

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: Raptor
Date: 18 Feb 10 - 10:50 AM

i'm triing to catch whatever I can.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 18 Feb 10 - 11:01 AM

Someone 'splain to Bonzo that luge and bobsleigh (bobsled) are two different sports...

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 18 Feb 10 - 12:27 PM

I hope Spaw checks in here again, because he won't want to miss this story about curling (fashion).

~ Becky in Long Beach

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: bubblyrat
Date: 18 Feb 10 - 01:48 PM

Watched part of the Womens' Downhill last night,and there were quite a few "Fallers"----some of the girls looked quite frightened. Then,in today's papers,it says some people were injured at an Olympic music venue when a stage or something collapsed ; all does not seem to be going smoothly in "Vonncouver" !

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 18 Feb 10 - 02:06 PM

I am confused why a city that lives in perpetual springtime (i.e. drizzle year-round) hosts winter Olympics...although I guess stuff is at Whistler and indoors and they looked at weather records for Whistler etc. from dozens of years back...mg

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: catspaw49
Date: 18 Feb 10 - 02:32 PM

I've already seen those stupid pants on the damn Norwegians.

So many Olmpic sports are just the worst for sad stories. The Women's Downhill had both the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. And whille the two who fell at the bottom were tragic, that French girl who fell coming out of the gate has got to be ready to shoot herself.

You train your ass off for years getting ready for that one Olympic run and then you fuck up within the first 5 seconds????

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: gnu
Date: 18 Feb 10 - 02:40 PM

I felt bad for her too, Spaw.

As for the pants... ahhhh...

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: Soldier boy
Date: 19 Feb 10 - 08:40 AM

I've enjoyed watching the snow boarding in the 'half pipe' (I think that's what they call it)....and the fact that the teams have spent a small fortune on those baggy teenage-inspired outfits.

Wouldn't they achieve greater heights, faster speeds and maybe fall over a little less if they were all in the latest figure hugging thermal lycra like every one else?

Chris

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: Bob the Postman
Date: 19 Feb 10 - 10:29 AM

I'm told that the Norwegian curling trousers may have been inspired by an outfit worn by Leslie Nielsen in the movie "Men With Brooms".

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 19 Feb 10 - 12:17 PM

Is a skeleton what everybody else would call a tea traY?

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: katlaughing
Date: 19 Feb 10 - 12:51 PM

Soldier Boy/Chris, the article said they were really made of gore-tex, just faked to look like flannel and jeans.

We haven't been watching any tv, but I do like to see some highlights online and see what you all have been watching.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Feb 10 - 05:34 PM

The mens singles skating final was high drama. Lysacek of the US deserved the close win over Plushenko of Russia. He put everything he had into his performance.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: Soldier boy
Date: 19 Feb 10 - 09:17 PM

I know katlaughing, they are talking serious gear here.
The gore-tex material specially treated to simulate denim and flannel and then the cost of design work/ national colours/logo and printing/weaving makes them very expensive outfits indeed.

But why are the snow boarders dressed in the 'traditional' image of the American/UK street skate boarder?
It does look kinda 'cool' and in keeping with the image and all that BUT are they all that practical in terms of aerodynamics and stuff?

Chris

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: Rasener
Date: 20 Feb 10 - 04:12 AM

Well done Amy Williams for winning the gold medal for Great Britain in the women's skeleton.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: Raptor
Date: 20 Feb 10 - 08:44 AM

I'm enjoying the figure skating. But as pointed out by a friend, A sport is where there is a direct compition between two teams or competetors where they have to DO THE SAME THING and the one who gets more goals or points doing THE SAME THING wins. A competiton is where contestants perform and are judged based on how they looked doing it and how hard it was doing it. Like a Dog Show. Therefor Figure Skating is not a sport any more than a dog show. It is athletic and those guys are amazing but are not sportsmen but performers.

Discuss...

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: Raptor
Date: 20 Feb 10 - 08:45 AM

As pointed out by another friend that goes for Snowboarding freestyle competition as well as ballroom dancing.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 20 Feb 10 - 02:09 PM

Not just snowboarding but all sports where form is taken into the scoring.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Feb 10 - 03:19 PM

"Citius, Altius, Fortius" (faster, higher, stronger).
Not on how much I liked your triple "Lutz"!
I take nothing away from the athletic ability of sports where the judges interpretations come into effect. But, how your fall on your "Lutz" just might have more of an impaact on a male judge as opposed to a female judge!

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: GUEST,3refs
Date: 20 Feb 10 - 03:22 PM

Forgot to log in again!

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: catspaw49
Date: 20 Feb 10 - 04:30 PM

""There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games."

........Ernest Hemingway



Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 20 Feb 10 - 07:18 PM

Perhaps they should include dog events in the Olympics as well as human events and horse events.

For the luge and suchlike they could use crash dummies.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 20 Feb 10 - 08:05 PM

Something I would never watch but my wife who has never curled was entranced-
The Curling competition las night, womens, Canada and Switzerland. How rocks were placed so precisely and the tactics of the skips has her still talking about it today.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: GUEST,bankley
Date: 20 Feb 10 - 08:19 PM

so it's called a half pipe, cuz if it was a full pipe, the snow boarders would be stopping to eat snacks all along the course..

remember this is BC, which won the world championship in weed growing several times....

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: Beer
Date: 20 Feb 10 - 09:56 PM

They also have some great mushrooms. So I'm told.
ad.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: gnu
Date: 21 Feb 10 - 04:35 AM

I understand the best shrooms grow in cow pastures, so I would assume the Ottawa Valley.....

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: Rasener
Date: 21 Feb 10 - 06:31 AM

Wow
Holland have another Gold. Well done Holland.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: 3refs
Date: 21 Feb 10 - 08:14 AM

"I understand the best shrooms grow in cow pastures, so I would assume the Ottawa Valley....."
In years gone by they used to have a hell of a time keeping the pickers off the grass out at the Vancouver airport in Richmond. Don't know why but they grew like crazy between the runways!

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: MikeL2
Date: 21 Feb 10 - 08:56 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: Raptor
Date: 20 Feb 10 - 08:44 AM

Hi

<"Therefor Figure Skating is not a sport any more than a dog show. It is athletic and those guys are amazing but are not sportsmen but performers.">

What about Ice Dancing ??? maybe we start a new slant on the sport with Morris on Ice....


Cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: gnu
Date: 21 Feb 10 - 12:59 PM

3.... urea is used to de-ice the runways and roadways. Snowblowers and plows spread the urea on these areas. Better'n bullshit but Ottawa has far more bullshit than all the urea at all the airports in all the world.

I went huntin with a buddy while at uni. We were crossing a field and he started eating shrooms... right then and there! I said, unload your gun, we are leaving RFN. I woulda left him there if he hadn't. Never went anywhere with him after that.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: gnu
Date: 21 Feb 10 - 01:06 PM

I assume Spaw is glued to the TV. Curling. Canucks vs Yanks.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: gnu
Date: 21 Feb 10 - 01:26 PM

OUCH! I would brought the heat at second mate, if not first.... the Canucks read the ice early and playing catchup means taking big chances. Even one woulda been better and she mighta blanked and hoped.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 21 Feb 10 - 05:23 PM

The big problem I have with winter sports are that they are not truly universal ( eg. name three great African winter sports athletes); also, in some countries ( UK for example) it is very much limited to people with the money. No working-class kid will make as the winter sports star in England.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: 3refs
Date: 21 Feb 10 - 06:30 PM

Tell that to the Jamaican Bobsled Team!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: Rasener
Date: 22 Feb 10 - 01:59 AM

Wow
Great Britains men curlers sucure a vital win against USA. Now that's something to shout about.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: Hrothgar
Date: 22 Feb 10 - 02:05 AM

:... that French girl who fell coming out of the gate ..."

At the summer Games a few years ago, the Australian cyclist who was odds-on favourite to win his event missed getting his foot on the pedal at the start. A skinner for the books.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 22 Feb 10 - 04:35 PM

Mixed feelings from the Original Dance competition: good that couples had to skate to folk music; not so good that they were allowed to choose from another nation - and there was some controversy over the Russian's interpretation of "Aboriginal dance". As I've said here, e.g., positive nationalism is good for humanity - including Olympic competitions.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: PoppaGator
Date: 22 Feb 10 - 06:04 PM

The Russian men's-singles figure-skating silver medalist (Plushenko?) was and is able to do "quad" jumps (four full revolutions in the air) and incorporate at least one or two of them into his routine. The American gold medalist Evan (drawing a blank on his last name) only did triples in his routine, but his overall performance was judged to be (slightly) better.

The Russian was quoted as complaining that, if the quad jump is not required for a gold-medal performance, then men's figure skating is "not sport, it's only dancing." Sounds a bit like sour grapes to me, and not only (I don't think) because I'm American rather than Russian. The whole enterprise IS "dance," or at least a mix of dance and athletics; the Russians/Soviets would never have become a predominant power in figure skating had they not incorporated their ballet tradition into the training program for this "sport."

I wonder if the quad-jump is some kind of unbreakable "barrier" in the sense that the four-minute mile was once erroneiously believed to be impossible to surpass.

The difference is that times for the mile (or for any running event) can be improved incrementally, a split-second at a time. Skating jumps MUST be increased in 180-degree, if not 360-degree, increments; you can't spin 4.0172 times in the air and come down without stumbling, you have to come down completely frontwards or backwards. The laws of physics just might, possibly, render completely impossible a five-revolution jump by a human being on ice skates, and maybe even a four-and-a-half revolution spin...

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: gnu
Date: 22 Feb 10 - 06:17 PM

One jump does not a champion make. Just like a one trick pony doesn't get the blue ribbon.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: catspaw49
Date: 22 Feb 10 - 07:41 PM

Poppa.....It wasn't all that long ago that the triples were the mark. Over time, triples became incorporated but had it not been for skaters like the "Two Brians" who incorporated them fluidly into their performances than we'd still be talking triples and not quads. If you go back to the time of say, Sonja Henie in the 20's or or Dick Button thirty years later, any double was miraculous.

It takes skaters out on the edge (or would that be edges) to advance anything. Without the athletic performances of them there would be stagnation. But more importantly and to offset all the quad hyperbole, it takes artistic skaters like Tuller Cranston a few years ago and Johnny Weir now to keep figure skating moving forward in that area as well. If you saw Johnny Weir's routine, he not only did triples and the like but he captured you. I guess you'd say he made a statement on the ice. I thought he was unfairly scored......but then scoring takes awhile to catch up too.


Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 23 Feb 10 - 05:29 PM

I had some of the same thoughts as Catspaw while watching the dance competition. Most of the pairs had complex athletic moves but too often flow, fluidity was absent and transitions were jerky and the performance looked more like work than fun. Dance should look enjoyable.
Both the American and Canadian pairs excelled in keeping the transitions fluid; the athleticism was there but did not break the flow. I thought the Canadians were slightly better, but, not being knowledgeable about the minutiae, would not have objected if the 1-2 finish had been reversed.

I also think Cranston was a genius on ice, but he was certainly in advance of the judges of the time.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: gnu
Date: 23 Feb 10 - 05:42 PM

Recall when Scotty did that first back flip? THAT was gooood. Yes, Cranston was quite an artist. I could go on, there are so many, both male and female. For me, Kurt Browning will always be my fav... I watched him do a routine of a drunk skater here in Moncton... never saw anything on ice like it ever. I've seen other routines by him that are amazingly athletic, artistic and unbelievably entertaining.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: PoppaGator
Date: 23 Feb 10 - 06:02 PM

In last night's dance competition, I thought the Canadian pair were wonderful and deserved the gold, but that the silver-medalist Americans (their friends and training partners) were just about equally good. Coulda gone either way

I really thought that 3d and 4th place should have been reversed, though ~ didn't see anything "wrong" with the older US pair's routine, while the Russian pair looked a little herky-jerky to me, and their reliance upon straps built into their costumes for use in their lifts was not only borderline-cheating (commentators said it would probaly be outlawed by next year), but it was clumsy. Plus which, their phony Aboriginal costumes in the previous round were incredibly corny, not to mention in bad taste!

Latest sour grapes from Plushenko: He's now claiming that his men's-singles silver medal is actually platinum, better than gold. (I tried to post a link to the Yahoo Sports report, but the URL is apparently too long ~ blue clicky thingy didn't work for me as it usually does.)

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: gnu
Date: 23 Feb 10 - 06:02 PM

I am glad Matin did not make that shot... it woulda be devastaing for the Chinese. They are behind far enough now without what might have happened. Never seen anything like that at the rink.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter Olympics 2010
From: gnu
Date: 23 Feb 10 - 06:52 PM

Oh my! The Cinese skip had a draw for two and barely hogged it! The poor bugger!

And, that is the first time I have ever seen, heard, Martin be pissed off. And that joke when he was going back to throw last... "Don't give them four."???? Poorly timed joke. Lucky Martin didn't give him a broom up... that was not called for.

I find it kinda neat to hear the Chinese use HURRY! and Whoa! and such.