Your PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics anticipation thread!

It's never too early to feel the warmth!

https://thelibertarianrepublic.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Parallel-Lines-Diverging-Lives-Revisiting-Korea%E2%80%99s-DMZ_main.jpg

But at least PyeongChang is a little farther from the DMZ than Seoul.

Official site

And we got mascots! Please enjoy Soohorang the white tiger and his bud Bandabi the Asiatic black bear. (The latter is the mascot for the Paralympics Games.)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f3/Soohorang_and_Bandabi.jpg

Anyway, let's just enjoy some drama out of the gate:

https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1057211/ioc-reveal-crunch-december-executive-board-meeting-will-make-decision-on-russian-participation-at-pyeongchang-2018

Mixed doubles in curling has started, we are under way!

I for one admire your relentless enthusiasm about this foolish charade called Olympics. And I genuinely mean that in the nicest possible way.

Mixed doubles seems like a pretty sweet mix-up of the format. Shorter, fewer, different team dynamics.

Curling <3

I for one admire your relentless enthusiasm about this foolish charade called Olympics. And I genuinely mean that in the nicest possible way.

First Olympics I ever remember seeing on TV was 1980 Lake Placid. Some things are just ingrained.

Couple of hours until the opening ceremony is GO. Tomorrow though, cross country and biathlon, the real deal.

<3 the Japanese figure skaters performing to Yuri On Ice.

Looking forward to the ski jumping tomorrow.

Some really neat shit happening in this opening ceremony, but I guess Americans will get it delayed for prime time

Bermuda will regret their shorts decision. Poor flag bearer looks miserable.

Having the nations do their walk in Korean alphabet order is a nice touch. That music in the background though...

I take it back, there's 'Likey likey'!

Feared we'd just get Gangnam Style at one point

Jamaica <3

This is nice, North and South Korea together. Surely no leader of the free world will put them in harms way.

Who is the Korean Bill Bailey?

Kim Yuna is the greatest... of all time!§

So a simple question: where the hell can I stream a replay of the opening ceremony as is? (Because NBC did do that, very nice, only I was, quite logically, asleep, and they're not offering it for replay yet, thanks guys.)

They're airing it tonight, might not want to offer up a replay before that. Just guesswork. I'm in Europe though.

The North Korean athletes/musicians at their Olympic welcoming ceremony. They don’t seem too impressed with a South Korean breakdancing (to “A little less conversation, a little more action” no less) pic.twitter.com/egssLISeJQ

— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) February 8, 2018

xpost -- No worries, found a feed. (With Canadian commentary rather than none at all but I'll take that.)

i am watching the incredibly crappy livestream at: http://stream.nbcolympics.com/2018-winter-olympics-primetime-show-feb-9

is this what people are saying on tv? are people paying to see this shit? this is fucking awful

a third of the screen is dedicated to a series of the least interesting trivia possible

https://i.imgur.com/Bx7V7U2.png

for serbia they literally just listed the three languages spoken there

another 10% is dedicated to letting you know what you're watching

apparently the stadium is packed with people and the light show just makes it appear like no one is there. the seats closest to the floor are reserved for the ~2,000 athletes. but that stadium holds 35,000, and no matter how the light flashes across the seats, it looks like the stadium is mostly empty

this is weird

Yeah it was a little odd.

what is a little odd is this cover of imagine

Indeed

Already looking like a classic Olympics for over-hyped British athletes falling flat on their faces - quite literally in many cases. Few things in life are funnier than Team GB failures.

Shame about Katie Ormerod though

Feel sorry for the athletes, obviously, but hard to suppress a giggle when listening to some BBC correspondent solemnly reporting another sporting disaster.

Speed skating is a bit like greyhound racing, the one who gets to the first bend in the lead usually stays there while the rest take chunks out of each other in behind

what kind of maniac looks at skeleton/luge and thinks ‘yeah i could do that’

luge gives me the phear

what kind of maniac looks at skeleton/luge and thinks ‘yeah i could do that’

um

do tombots dream of olympic luge

luge control to major tom
take your clenching skills and put your helmet on

i heart the biathlon - it’s like a james bond event

^ Specifically The Spy Who Loved Me

Parachute off a cliff to end the race or nothing.

"The bronze medallist couldn't actually be here but..."

Egg on my Bond-fan face, it was of course For Your Eyes Only that featured the undercover biathlete henchman Erich Kriegler

http://www.007museum.com/Eric_Kriegler.jpg

i could get with curling more if there wasn’t so much shouting

^^^ I was watching this with the sound muted last night because the amount of shouting from the Canadian mixed doubles team was stressing me out

The yelling is what makes it fun!

it is very similar to lawn bowls & i am kind of into that aspect

plus all the competitors look like league ten-pin bowlers 😂

I had it on at about 4am because I couldn't sleep and I was kind of groggy and this guy was sweeping so frantically it was like I was having an anxiety dream where I was forced to play a sport with incomprehensible rules while someone bellows at me

lol

the whole sport seems like an snl sketch with the brooms & shit but it is kinda engaging once u lock in

The long distance short track speed skating looks deceptively easy, like they are strolling. And the way they stick their legs out at the end is comical.

The 3 hours of snowboard qualifications this morning was a treat, despite British results.

watching snowboarding now
sweet moves bros 🤙🏻

1620’s make me feel so old
what a world we live in

Was watching the semis of the men’s 1500m short track. I like how the judges can just keep adding people to the final after they get clattered. The final today is going to have 9 skaters.

short track is so nuts

Going to watch some of the team figure skating stuff later while listening to this, as it's also happening right now:

http://kzsu.stanford.edu/dayofnoise/

So my artistic conclusions might not be that of the judges.

nice

i am still in my pyjamas :D

first day of winter lympics is like christmas

Rightly!

about to watch something involving a chap called Max Parrot

pronounced pa-roe

~canada~

chap called Carlos Garcia Knight just crushed his first run

as tt just said to me, some of these people have had to grow into their names by becoming snowboarders

Just watching Skiathlon makes all of my muscles hurt, god these women are machines <3

Max Parrot cruelly denied and the Yank* takes it, who knew

*just kidding y'all I love you really

Max Parrot’s qualifying performance was so good, he is so precise

We stayed up to see Medvedeva's record short program score! Spectacular stuff. tt was raving about the Israeli competitor but we hadn't yet adjusted to just how good they are nowadays

re snowstyle: Red Gerard looks like a blond version of the paperboy from Better Off Dead “GIMME MY TWO DOLLARS”

god that last round was brutal, the snow looked like concrete on those jumps, so many dudes ate it!!

Lovely night in the team figure skating for sure. Favorite performance probably the Italian pairs, that was damn fun.

Bradie Tennell had some bonkers spin moves going on

Bradie is a lovely skater but she looks like she’s kept underground, she’s so alarmingly pale lol

Medvedeva’s short program was breathtaking, just beautiful

oh god i just caught the Italian pairs
they KILLED
incredible

Gah, spoilers. I guess this is inevitable given that it's going out at 2am here. At least "the yank takes it" doesn't specify which yank... 8)

The American snowboard gear is full on NASA, space helmets and all. And I can't tell if the Canadian kit is actually knitted or just a print that looks like stitches.

The place gets only 9cm of real snow per year so it's all artificial. Which makes it very consistent but also hard.

(ah, there was only 1 American qualifier from yesterday)

Question. I don't have cable or any subscription service that will show the olympics. Should I pay $25 for Sling TV or etc so I can binge? Are there any promos that I can later cancel?

I really get into Olympics but haven't had cable for 20 years and therefore nada.

Not sure about promos, but Sling has been working well so far.

https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/reflectingsoulfulbantamrooster'">https://thumbs.gfycat.com/ReflectingSoulfulBantamrooster-max-1mb.gif

OK NBC announcer guy, if an athlete has suffered a catastrophic injury, then they should not be competing in the Olympics again less than a year later. If in fact the injury or injuries could be accurately described as catastrophic, then said athlete would be in the Paralympics, where he or she could compete with other victims of actually catastrophic injuries.

"Multiple severe injuries" would be a better use of language that suits what you are attempting to describe. Also, fire the infobox text writer who keeps making pronoun errors.

I was just wastching women’s hockey, and the Russian team is being referred to as “Olympic Competitors from
Russia” (or something to that effect). No flag either - just Olympic Rings.

NYT as always with the most quidditious angles

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/08/fashion/winter-olympic-uniform-russians.html

So strange. I knew about the doping, but had no idea about the “independent particants” thing.

who is the announcer on the men's 5000m speed skating replay?

YouTube TV is free for a week. Been using that since yesterday. It’s good you can record unlimited amount of content.

i can’t watch much speed skating, the sounds their skates make on the ice makes my skin crawl

men’s biathlon was bananas - the heavy favorites ended up finishing 8th and 31st. The czech silver medallist had only podiumed once ~5 years~ ago. Bonkers.

Skiathlon was NUTS, like the best Tour De France stage you can imagine
Krueger, 7th seed, crashed at the beginning and went to the very back — makes up all his lost time & goes on to win by 11 seconds. Norway with gold silver bronze - the favorite finished in 10th.
I need a lie down!!

That was awesome

the wind has really shaken up the playing field for these events, def makes for good tv!!

The luge is decided on hatefully narrow margins. Rare bullshit Winter Olympic event imo

I mean it's visually exciting and there's a non-zero chance of death* I guess

*this probably makes it worse rather than better?

i dont get luge & i don’t like it

its basically a track event

a track event where they need a photo finish to split the first 6 competitors

track events are good though
luge is full of such micro-exertions that it’s impossible to tell who is skilled without being told

"Oh a fatal error there!" *loses by 0.02 seconds*

*loses by 0.02 seconds and finishes fifth*

And now, VG busts out her altered Fear cover: “I Don’t Care About Luge (Fuck Luge).”

Anyway while we wait

https://www.sadanduseless.com/2018/02/funny-olympic-figure-skating/

as I understand it, luge skill is about twitching in the exactly correct way in order to regain control of the sled while it and the track are conspiring to break all of your bones

the Austrian men's winner (David Gleirscher) had great comments afterwards. Apparently after yesterday he and his coach went and drank schnapps. after he won he told the press "now I go to Austria house and have to drink more schnapps."

figure skating long program is frequently like a job interview where by the answer to the 2nd question you know the person has no chance in hell of making the grade but you all still have to go through the motions for the remaining time.

man i've watched my share of adam rippon and that's as good as he's ever been.

And Mirai, holy shit. Man what an evening.

yeah she was awesome

I've realized that I want a skater to do an Olympic routine to Kiss’s “Cold Gin,” *with* a bootleg Paul Stanley live intro. Imagine:

*skater holds opening pose*

“AWRITE NOW LISSEN!”

*skater begins routine*

“I HEAR SOME OF YOU PEOPLE OUT THERE LIKE TO DRINK—“

*triple Axel*

“—*TE-QUI-LAAAAA!”

lol

Mirai’s triple axel was life affirming god that was rad

But seriously, Zagitova was next level
FIFTEEN with those moves & that poise
fuuuuuuuhuuuuuck

if i hear “shibsibs” and “vlog” in the same sentence one more time i’m gonna flip my tv UGH SHUT UP

Skating Twitter -- English language at least -- does not like Zagitova due to her backloading her jumps for points. But Tara and Johnny seemed good with it.

figure skating scoring is so wacky idk how you could blame anyone for gaming it. the main problem for ladies imo is that there are no real risk jumps other than the esoteric triple axel. everyone lands their triple-triple combos.

Question. I don't have cable or any subscription service that will show the olympics. Should I pay $25 for Sling TV or etc so I can binge? Are there any promos that I can later cancel?

I really get into Olympics but haven't had cable for 20 years and therefore nada.

Do you have a television and can you watch live in the evening? Buy an HD tuner. NBC is showing the core primetime coverage (3+ hours per night) at 5 PM and an encore at 8/8:30 PM every night (if you are in the US...). I was cord cut for many years and the basic over the air channels you get with a tuner (in full HD) were more useful for major events than I imagined.

Women’s snowstyle was intense & brutal. Holy shit, give all those women medals.
you could watch that event & never be afraid of doing anything again.

I like that the standard issue Canadian team kit includes a lumberjack flanno.

The weather did seem to adversely affect the slopestyle. maybe they should hold the winter olympics in the summer when the weather's better...

(everybody gushes about the snowboarding at the olympics but there are other competitions on pretty much all through the year and these are never shown on tv. seems like a missed opportunity)

((ok, ski sunday has some coverage. and channel 5 used to do x games and winter x coverage at 2am, but they stopped))

You just can't make this up.

NBC opening ceremony coverage. Katie Couric talks about why The Netherlands is so good at speed skating as The Netherlands enters the stadium.

And this folks is why Americans are less bright about the rest of the world as they spread fake news! pic.twitter.com/7YC5deTl2w

— Jos Duijvestein 🇳🇱 (@JosDuijvestein) February 10, 2018

First French medal! In women’s biathlon. We are all about biathlon chez nous.

France got gold in the women's moguls (as they often do)

Oh I missed a gold in women’s moguls! But still. Yay Anaïs Bescond!

Another French biathlon medal, a gold this time, though it’s no surprise, it’s Martin Fourcade, our flag-bearer at the opening ceremonies.

on boss les bosses

korean womens hockey team in two games:
outscored 16-0
outshot 102-27

did they at least rack up some penalty minutes?

some notes

1. The streaming replays are great. You get the whole event, PLUS, they are all apparently presented by antipodeans, and all sports are better with an Australian or Kiwi doing the talking. Our Roku has paid for itself so many times over, but especially during these Olympics (and we're barely into it). Oh and the replays don't permanently fill 1/3 of the screen real estate with static overlays typed up by an intern.

2. Luge coaches are some dour motherfuckers. If you go slower than the current 2nd best time, your luge coach will make a face like you just ran over his flower bed.

3. Women's Luge is the exact opposite of professional League of Legends. How do I know this? Because the South Koreans recruited a German to play for them.

4. My Olympic sport in the "why would anybody ever fucking want to do that" category is anything involving cross-country skiing. Fuck an endurance sport that also happens to be in the cold. And the biathlon, where you have to stop and control your breathing while you try to load and shoot tiny bullets one by one, and then go back to endurance racing? All these people are nuts.

also these kids on the snowboards at the Olympics have grown up in a world that has always had snowboarding at the Olympics.

biathlon is amazing, those athletes are uber-humans

let us have a moment of silence for the destroyed knees of all mogul skiiers

also: i have decided that i like individual figure skating but i can’t get with couples skating

I think if your knees can be destroyed you quickly get selected out of a career in moguls. The people you see moguling at these things have different knees than you and me

hmm that seems otm.
it hurts my knees to watch them

i don't know anything about snowboarding but i know that chloe kim is incredible at it

also: i have decided that i like individual figure skating but i can’t get with couples skating

― Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, February 12, 2018 8:44 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ice dance can be good if you just give yourself over to how beautiful it is and stop trying to figure out who's good at it. pairs sucks tho. they put you in pairs if you can't hack it in individual skating.

america, not content with building red gerard, has built chloe kim

swear to god, the MIT labs have some answering to do

that wasn't even meant to be a Boston Dynamics reference but

no idea why you're blaming snowboard cyborgs on beantown. colorado has three national labs in boulder alone, plus the renewable energy lab outside denver and the aerospace r&d center in colorado springs.

uhhh my dudes chloe’s from Cali, let’s give the west coast some credit for her badassery

she was made at JPL obv

Chloe rules, all is well.

Gee this super combined looks so simple and safe! *crashes immediately*

Omg mindblown that I’ve been figured out https://t.co/G2UMxxPlAR

— Mirai Nagasu (@mirai_nagasu) February 12, 2018

Stina Nilsson!

Gah, moving the end of the men's halfpipe qualifiers to a different channel at 3am is a dick move. Nobody's following it live and the people who care enough to video it aren't there to change the channel.

Spoilers on the news is annoying me too.

that Luge crash was about as bad as i've ever seen.

What. Is. Shaun. White.

this is amazing

never in doubt lol

wonder if the other dudes hate him. crazy he only did 5 hits compared to their 6.

The documentary the Crash Reel painted White as a coldhearted competitor - ie cut off his friendship with Kevin Pearce when Pearce became a rival

but snowboarding culture is so much abt having fun and broing out that steely-focused competitors stand out & seem like freaks so maybe it’s hard to keep friendships in that world when u decide to be serious about yr career idk

i def get the feeling it’s like winning the only thing that makes him happy? whatever, dudes pretty fkn good at it so whatever works

that being said he does give off a douchey vibe & it is kind of weird to see him really only interact with his “posse” behind the scenes

sorry that was a bit too shaun white .xls than was needed lol

He’s fkn amazing to watch tho. Jesus Christ.

lol i've been looking into this and find myself sympathizing w/shaun white. pretending to be friends with people is terrible; focusing on winning is not. the idea that there's anything special about snowboarding culture does not ring true.

not sure i get douchey vibes completely. just seems like theres something there. hes incredible, no reason he wont be back in 4 years.

Well...there was this, apparently.

https://deadspin.com/here-are-the-penis-pics-that-lena-zawaideh-says-shaun-w-1785367526

ok, that doesn't seem great

yeah there’s also that

btw super not clicking that link

def comes off as a jerk there

btw Ayumu Hirano is a FREAK

Scotty James too 🇦🇺

fuck that was a great final
i love snowboarding

hell yeah. watching it now. this is awesome.

wonder if the other dudes hate him. crazy he only did 5 hits compared to their 6.

― they call me melo gelo (Spottie), Wednesday, 14 February 2018 04:19 (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

iirc Hirano's best run only had five as well

was just gonna say. the people doing 6 hits aren't going as high or as long.

the between-heats videos here in england said that shaun had mellowed since losing in sochi. he stepped back a bit then got a new trainer and he's been actively nice to fans and press recently. probably realises that this is his last olympics. the helmet throwing triumphalism was a bit much this morning though (quickly followed by him saying 'can i have that back?')

(does he still skate in the x games? i first noticed him there, i think, when he was 17 ish (oh, internet says snowboard X in 2000, skateboard X in 2003, but the uk coverage was always sketchy))

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wwi3E1hrVk

That lovely daft Swiss fella who was mumbling all sorts of wonderful 'for USA, for China, for Korea, for Russia, dot the world!' nonsense before his run...well, he also threw his helmet in celebration (and ended up coming like sixth)

...becoming my Athlete Of The Games in the process

Not helping

https://deadspin.com/shaun-white-brushes-off-sexual-harassment-lawsuit-at-pr-1822988245

man i know i was hating on pairs the other day but now i'm sucked in; figure skating is no question the best of the fake sports

Great gold medal performance in the pairs and Shiffrin begins her rampage with her own.

i am excited for snow cross weee

I was excited for the snowcross but the 10 hours of Olympics I recorded over night didn't contain 1 second of it. It was on the other channel, the one without a published schedule...

Oh, it's on now. From the semi finals at least. So now I know how it finishes..

Is that iron man?

i am excited for snow cross weee

here i make a 'don't eat the yellow snow' post out of the sense of duty which comes from seeing the word 'snow' next to the word 'wee'

lol

snowcross was fun but goddang it was all over in a nanosecond

that's why i'm happy watching all the qualifiers etc: 18 rounds in total, over 4 hours

https://www.pyeongchang2018.com/en/game-time/results/OWG2018/en/snowboard/daily-schedule-date=2018-02-15.htm

still, women's tonight and the ski version on 21 and 23. ski slope and big air (indoors!) to look forward to too.

it’s like snowboarding christmas

but christmas is every year

i said LIKE

what's the controv with the uk skellington bob suits? they look like all the others.

There like the UK cycling skin suits they have ridges sewn into them to improve aerodynamics

UK Sport has taken a very systematic approach to increasing the gold medal tallies it goes something like this.

1)Find an ignored Olympic sport, preferable one that is amateurish.
2) Bring a previously unheard of level of professionalism, sports science and training to it
3) scour suburban comprehensives for kids who embody whatever weird physiological or psychological traits required for the sport
4) bung them lottery money so they can train full time
5) spend previously unheard of amounts of money on optimising the kit to give them an edge

Also in recent years UK sport has targeted women at sports that just equalised their media rallies or were forced to open up to women’s competition.

Skeleton appears to be the red-headed step child of sliding sports, possibly because the big Germans that dominate the rest of the sliders think going down head first is just too crazy and IIRC women’s competition only started at Sochi making it the ideal winter sport for teamGB to carve out a niche.

great post

uk attitude to olympics as exemplified in coverage and social media response is the worst fucking jingoistic nonsense

mind you look at us, a couple of old westminsters carping at this inclusive get-medals-quick scheme. good god, why isn't fives an olympic sport? bring back the bally corinthian spirit

the focus on medals, on gcse results, on statistical supremacy...this is why our country is a shithole

All well and good

But that routine just there was incredible

And there's lots of things that make ye a suitable tbf

> UK Sport has taken a very systematic approach to increasing the gold medal tallies

you say that, but women's bob has been running since 2002 when we got bronze, silver in 2006, gold in 2010 and 2014. that's 8, maybe 16, years for other countries to notice and do something about it.

> scour suburban comprehensives

they all seem posh to me.

St Michael's Preparatory School - posh

born in Cambridge and brought up in Bath, being educated at Hayesfield School Technology College, Beechen Cliff School and the University of Bath. Her father is a professor of chemistry at the University of Bath - posh

participated in equestrian sports, particularly eventing - posh

University of Bath seems to be a common thread

i hope laura deas is better prepared than http://www.lauradeas.co.uk/

TBF I based my selection criteria on my knowledge of track cycling.

I think the Winter Olympics always plays second fiddle in the eyes of the administrators, so there isn’t the same focus on getting and maintaining an edge.

I’m not sure there are many countries that plough as much state/lottery money into Olympic sport.

lol I swear I didn't know how to answer this and it told me that my best fit is the luge (followed by bobsled)

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/winter-olympics-quiz/

Just finished watching the men's figure skating and my god, Yuzuru Hanyu is an actual alien.

How did he do THAT after three months off recovering from an ankle injury? It's unreal.

Am sad for my boy Julian Yee, did really well in his Olympic debut but missed out on qualifying for tmr's free skate by one spot. :/

Hanyu was something straight out of Fantasia, my god. Like a fairytale prince. Wow wow wow.

I felt sad for Chen, how lonely & weird it must be when you can’t stop your nerves & then sitting on camera forever with no words, ugh
I hope he got to have a good cry or receive a hug

yeah it was painful to watch. The pressure on him must have been insane, poor kid.

Hanyu has 5 quads planned for tmr. O_O I remember no one put on two clean runs at Sochi, I wonder if he'll manage it this time. Even without Chen, between Hanyu, Javi, Shoma, and Jin, it feels like a much more competitive field this year.

lol I swear I didn't know how to answer this and it told me that my best fit is the luge (followed by bobsled)

i for one support tombot's seemingly fated journey to the 2022 winter olympics in beijing

good luck buddy you're gonna need it

i got freestyle skiing which uh seems optimistic at best

i got figure skating

ilx winter sports cru UNITE

i'll warn you now i am not gonna be a pretty sight in lycra

Had to miss last night's coverage due to higher purposes (ie Black Panther) so running the morning catchup now at work. Yipes at the sound of what happened to Chen.

i’m putting together a routine to Bertie Higgins Key Largo its gonna be LIT

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTjy71fVxcTv9Fca2ds4ltppCt30mJ0_5Hpm_7dvn3kFIcCr1sDuQ

The OAR badges amuse me, they are like the plain cigarette packaging of logos

The design of the OAR kits is much better than the standard Russian Winter Olympics ones in most years but it doesn’t look like you can buy them anywhere.

The kits appear to vary per event - the American snowboard cross team wasn't wearing the NASA style kit the slope style and half pipe team were.

Loved those stripey bottoms the Italians were wearing, usefully distinctive.

i've always had a soft spot for the russian kits - all those paisleys everywhere, they've been reliably bonkers compared to other countries

The Ester Ledecka story is awesome. I need to go back and watch the super-g now

Well done Mr Atkins for having been born in Birmingham, meaning UK get a second medal.

Elise Christie aka Paula Radcliffe on Ice.

The Ester Ledecka story is awesome. I need to go back and watch the super-g now

― El Tomboto, Sunday, 18 February 2018 2:03 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ILX doesn’t seem have a lot of love for alpine skiiing but the course for downhill and super-g has produced some reallly good racing.

who the fuck are these bell-ends doing commentary on the ski-ing on bbc1 right now? For a man brought up on the patrician tones of Barry Davies, this is hard to stomach

"This guy loves skiing... like the Colonel loves chicken"

"He couldn't look any more American... look at him, he looks awesome"

If you keen the freestyle bros. They are on again and should shut up.

i sorta.. like him ツ)_/¯

i think his bombast suits the events and he is v knowledgable. maybe it's that something as relatively esoteric as super-g is getting the same scorchingly breathless treatment as, say an FA cup final from the commentator

Fourcade reverses Sochi and a nation rejoices

Can't get enough of people's reactions of Ester Ledecká's gold medal run. Including her own reaction: https://www.nbcolympics.com/video/ester-ledecka-i-dont-know-what-happened

I hope she does great in snowboarding too.

After the luge and skeleton those bobsleighs look like juggernauts going down that course.

Ed and Tim, the extreme commentators, are a lot of the reason I enjoy those things. They must do 10 hours of commentary every day.

(They got chastised last time and have toned it down slightly)

I can watch low-key Canadian announcers talk about curling as teams go insane all day.

i really liked the team that was doing all the snowboarding commentary (names escape me), but I don't really like the color-guy for the freesytle skiing, he's a bit dull? idk.

Here was Elizabeth Swaney's...interesting run down the half pipe in the women's Freestyle Skiing #WinterOlympics pic.twitter.com/4SpsDTPPrI

— Tomasz Mortimer (@TMortimerFtbl) February 19, 2018

the fuck was that

apparently the field was not that deep so she qualified for the olympics without ever actually winning or podiuming any of the leadup events - basically just by not-quite-losing

weird

lol

bunch of reasons to do it: to get instagram famous---infamous, if you will---or to party in the olympic village or find a mate there or just to say "lol I was an olympic athlete"

kind of a good idea!

details here

https://sports.yahoo.com/bad-american-skier-games-system-make-olympics-070235305.html

that woman sounds like an entitled sociopath from hell

the commentator is doing a beautiful job

"dropping in trying to get in to the right wall for a nice
just getting up to the top of the wall
going for these paths
a safety grab you'll see there
opting for another just breezing up to the top of the wall
showing the judge she can make it down this halfpipe clean"

she paid for her trip herself & she isnt technically hurting anyone so idk

carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre Olympic halfpipe skier

that was hilarious to me.

the new 'big air' competition was so bad, cant believe that got approved to be an olympic sport. the jump isnt even as high as the slopestyle jumps!

VG I was referring to the details further down in the article where she got on the Hungary team via some ancestry.com crap, ran for governor of california, etc.

oh yeah that was pretty O_o

no way this lady sounds awesome

Croatia has by far the coolest looking bobsleigh livery

Commentator does read out at least two other competitions she's been in.

Eddie the eagle still dines out on his ski jumping...

Bah, keep missing Scotland the UK in the curling.

have we discussed Robert Johansson yet

amazing stuff on the two man bobsled results

imo Bode Miller is very bad calling skiing. so dry.

yeah his technical info is good but he’s hard to listen to for a long time, v flat

even his technical info is way too 'inside baseball' for me, he's gotta realize 95% of people listening dont know what he's talking about and dumb it down a hair. learn form weir and lipinski.

i love weir & lipinski, they are v good color commentary

whats the snowboarding color guy, i like him the best

but i always picture them rolling their eyes at each other like mean girls in high school when they talk abt other skaters

weir & lipinski i mean

even his technical info is way too 'inside baseball' for me

Miller is flat, but I like the wonkery...there's not nearly enough technical info in TV sports commentary for me. I want less inspiring heroic narratives and more "here is the little technical things that make this person that little bit better than that other person."

i dont disagree, i liked the inside stuff, just feel like he doesnt get it stuff across in an interesting or enlightening way

a little variation in voice would go a long way

the nz skipipe family is fun

Ivett Toth skating to a medley of "Back in Black" and "Thunderstruck" is my idea of absolutely fucking brilliant.

Yes! And Johnny Weir has the full Hunger Games up-do tonight, LOVE IT.

Toth was rad

What about the woman who chose the score from EWS though? And Johnny actually said “Really awkward moments like these are why sometimes I wish everyone just went out there and danced to Swan Lake.” Classic.

https://deadspin.com/bode-miller-is-the-worst-sports-commentator-who-ever-li-1823188620?utm_source=recirculation&utm_medium=recirculation&utm_campaign=wednesdayAM

I freely admit I stopped watching skiing coverage because of his dumb ass.

This part made me laugh and makes listening to him sound more fun than it is:

To hear Miller describe it, the outcome of an event like the women’s downhill—contested last night to his crushing, terminal disdain—has been determined by the time the skiers get out of bed in the morning, and possibly was determined by the time the youngest of them was born. The medal-winning runs happen because of a combination of favorable external conditions and fixed personal attributes over which the skiers have no real control or recourse and into which genuine insight is impossible. The early contestants post good times because they went early and did just enough not to squander advantages that all but guaranteed their spots on the podium, not because they raced brilliantly. The later contestants are wasting everybody’s time, because no matter how well they race the developing course conditions have doomed their efforts. You are watching the rote, bloodless recitation of a script written and published at the dawn of time. It’s like having the games narrated by Anton Chigurh, only without the enlivening possibility that he will murder someone.

matt chilton for the bbc, bombastic as he is, has been great fun. he had a particularly good moment in the esther ledecka race, after he'd been giving her a full-throated commentary all the way down, and she's stunned, in that famous moment we all know now, and she finally approaches the camera and all she can say, with a weird half smile on her face, is "no. no." and chilton, invisible, on voice-over - only we can hear him - replies directly to her, on our behalf: "yes. yes!"

didnt read the article but otm. last night one of the contestants was doing well (i think it was whoever got silver) and he was like "her skis must be running great" taking all credit away from the skier. what an asshat. add all this to his sexist joke about Anna Veith racing poorly cos she got married and i cant see a way he is invited back in 4 years

Big air snowboard qualifiers. Only half watching it tbh - if I miss a 1440 they'll be another one along in a minute...

(It's very slight as sport goes, but entertaining enough. And the second heat did step it up a bit)

Can I be mean & say it wouldnt be the Winter Olympics without Lindsey Vonn crying

sorry

but she always cries!!

heh, I thought the same. I am finding it a bit annoying, but that's the cynic in me. I mean, to cry *all the time*? That can't be right.

She did good though, and it was nice to see she was accepting of winning bronze instead of gold.

yeah, it can't be easy with all the expectations and pressure you put on yourself as well

Big air snowboard qualifiers. Only half watching it tbh - if I miss a 1440 they'll be another one along in a minute...

(It's very slight as sport goes, but entertaining enough. And the second heat did step it up a bit)

― koogs, Wednesday, February 21, 2018 12:28 PM (thirty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

big air is hella lame to me compared to how good it should be. and compared to big air skateboard/bmx

Snowboarding and skiing sports that are about 'tricks' or 'entertainment' instead of speed and have juries to decide the outcome aren't sports and don't deserve to be at the Olympics at all. /controp

boooo

Whereas I find people doing exactly the same as everybody else at a slightly different speed very dull.

This female snowboarder had to start first yesterday. She did an 'element' really well, but the jury didn't give her the maximum score, because, and I paraphrase "maybe someone after her will do it even better". Lmao, fuck that shit man.

xp It's all dull, but at least it's an objective way of deciding who's better.

And I rue the day X games started showing big air. It's very much a one trick pony. It's the kind of thing I always assume American TV companies have introduced because it leaves lots of advert time. (Or because American sports fans all have the attention spans of newts)

You've Americans posing as Hungarian to make it to the Olympics. Of course it's because of the said newt's attention span of Americans.

big air bmx is insane and awesome imo

The first person does seem to have a disadvantage, yes.

The luge commentator kept talking about how a lot of it was due to having the best equipment. Is that fair?

(didn't bmx / SK8 big air replace best trick? That's mostly why I took against it, I used to like best trick, it was more varied than tricks that were just BIG)

Equipment should be equal imo. How you treat it is a different matter though. I saw a report about the Norwegian squad having their own weather man in their midst, who's an expert on all things snow. He measures the snow on the slopes every day. Not sure what he measures. The snowiness of it idk. But they base how to wax the ski's or the boards according to his info, at any given time of the day. That, I respect.

The photo finish pics of the pointing at the finish line in ski cross tickle me.

It's tough as a judge to score events for which the factors that make up a strong performance are multiple, complex, and/or impossible to measure. You don't get to go back and lower the score you gave competitor A when competitors B through G do all the same things even better. The first athlete up is always at a disadvantage because judges have to leave room for the possibility of having to award higher scores later.

Lindsey Vonn going all out. Her run was so aggressive, it was stressing me out.

Hingham represent!

I'm going to be a total stereotype but I hope our Canadians girls wipe the US girls out into oblivion in this gold medal game (and for all the next gold medal games in history).

it's a great game so far!! so much speed on both sides

dammit, what a sweet tip

poulin is such a baller

really exciting game

is Kessel the sister of Phil?

yes! i think she scored a ton in college

dope siblings.

i didn't know america had identical twins on the women's team, great they can have their own sedins

the joys of the larger ice i swear to god.

when will the nhl wake up to the fact that the larger ice is a superior product.

US had a hell of a 3rd

Huge pressure from US, but they just can't seem to score.

oh my god

why are these games always so completely fucking insane

Ugggghhbb, 5 more

Woooooooo!!!

usa!

totally deserved, outplayed canada the whole 3rd and OT

some nifty moves in the shootout; can't believe that canadian's forsberg goal

that was craazy

lamoreaux's ankle breaker was too

CBC is soothing us with a montage of gold medals past

damn, what a game! i have an adrenaline rush from watching that.

What a game

I cried myself to sleep and just woke up and see the medal ceremony

Come on boys it’s on you now

They should penalise athletes who flaunt the logos on their skis / boards / helmets. We can see them, you don't need to wave them in our faces.

All that and the US men's curling team makes the gold medal round...over Canada.

Also, I did like this

Gold medal comes with a promotion 👀 pic.twitter.com/3RaifjMVqe

— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) February 22, 2018

okay i know the (men's hockey) rosters are weird without nhlers but how did germany beat sweden *and* canada

olympic hockey is just training for us

this was a couple days ago but this is easily a US top ten all time sports call

UNBELIEVABLE!@kikkanimal & @jessdiggs earn the first ever cross-country #gold medal for @TeamUSA, with a pass that will go down in American Olympic history! #WinterOlympics #BestOfUS https://t.co/4YMw63E4C3 pic.twitter.com/bfHoGnPCWw

— NBC Olympics (@NBCOlympics) February 22, 2018

Call by Chad Salmela btw

They should penalise athletes who flaunt the logos on their skis / boards / helmets. We can see them, you don't need to wave them in our faces.

― koogs, Thursday, 22 February 2018 9:39 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It’s interesting because equipment logos ar banned at the summer games but not at the winter games. I guess there’s less money in winter sport so harder to have a whole other set of equipment. The athletes are just doing what they do at every other race but it does seem unolympian.

I bought four Burton snowboards only this morning!

I have found it interesting that moguls skiiers almost all have the same brand of boots as mine but almost none of the other skiers in other disciplines seem to use them. No need for logos though, they are a really distinctive shape.

Logo sizes changed in 2016:

http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/15/news/companies/olympics-brands-rio-usa/index.html

But some of those boards were 4ft of pure nitro advert

And didn't they get around this in 2012 by having iirc distinctly coloured running shoes, like dayglo pink and yellow? (Same way tobacco companies did with f1 I guess, black and gold for jps etc)

Yes, IIRC all the specialized bikes in the London games were a really distinctive orange.

ledecka 'enjoys watching British TV – particularly Red Dwarf. “She has seen it 4,000 times,” says Banks, laughing. “She is aways speaking about it during dinner. And she also likes Blackadder and, of course, Top Gear.'

sick as a parrot eh

still, means another medal for gb, and in a proper sport this time

(atkins' bronze also proper. but now it's time for sleep as they're showing bobsleigh again. h8 the bob/luge events so much)

And hurrah for curling.

Fuck that, Scotland lost out to Japan :(

Didn't hold out much hope for billy given that he qualified 11th and then fell over on his first jump. Shows what I know...

That one bloke had a board that was solid black on both sides, which looked cool. He finished in bottom 3.

Parallel snowboard slalom got ffwded through.

Kids, don't be greedy. That's what I took away from the curling.

my german coworker enthused about the hockey gold game was on point, this is kind of intense

Travel advisory: Germans in Canada should exercise a high degree of empathy. Be nice, don’t gloat, give hugs, buy rounds of hot chocolate.

Just imagine how you would feel if Canada beat us in soccer 😱

🇩🇪 ❤️ 🇨🇦#CANGER @TeamD @CanadaFP @GermanyInCanada @KanadaBotschaft pic.twitter.com/0HlHoxMA7E

— GermanForeignOffice (@GermanyDiplo) February 23, 2018

Final tally after an exciting women's 30km

https://i.imgur.com/479zUF3.png

Was striking how many times I turned on the BBC evening coverage to find a table full of female experts talking about sport. This afternoon, after the closing ceremony, there was the female presenter and 4 others, all Olympians. (Actually not that surprising because we did better in the female sports)

(Woodsy and a couple more blokes had been on earlier)

ok that black & white sequence at the closing ceremonies was epic, and I loved Tara's response to it, too.

Only thing that could've made it better is if they'd been able to get the rights to Prisencolinensinainciusol, which was clearly the original intent.

The only conceivable downside to the erosion of homophobia is people feeling the need to tolerate Johnny Weir.

you're such a grump!

flamboyant twinks at the Olympics are about as edgy as Bob Hope in 1990

edginess, it's what we need in our olympics

4:23 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcYd0yP53Rw

we don't, Tom, but clearly out gays winning stuff and going Full Divine in the booth is the most important thing to happen to our society since Black Panther.

Have you even had coffee yet

yep!

actually i do like some edginess at the Olympics [BlackPower1968.jpg]

I actually watched two mins of the closing ceremony yesterday. It was nice.

That is all.

russian hockey team sang their banned national anthem, that’s... something

First Olympics I missed all of bcz #life xp

Medal winners on the One Show. Billy looks like he'd rather be anywhere else. Currently sitting through a vt on fly tipping...

Will US Olympic Committee change before next Olympics? That might require congressional action, so answer is probably no.

As The Post’s Will Hobson has reported, the USOC is supposed to be a nonprofit, yet 129 of its staff make over six figures, and 14 of its execs are paid more than $200,000.

...The Post’s Hobson detailed the USOC’s inaction on sexual abuse complaints across multiple sports, including gymnastics, swimming, speedskating, judo, and taekwondo.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/the-olympic-flame-has-been-extinguished-the-usoc-should-be-next/2018/02/26/a00648ca-1b05-11e8-9de1-147dd2df3829_story.html?utm_term=.835327a0bd7f

revive.

i want one of those chairs with skis.

the VI downhill (various flavours) seemed to be a single run, no qualifications, no best of three, just one run. uk did quite well out of favourites falling over, but still, seems a bit brutal that 4 years of training comes down to that.

snowboard cross course looks fun. much more compact than the other olympics.

watching blind people ski at like 80mph is giving me crazy anxiety

I have no idea how they do the slalom.

Wheelchair curling is kind of dull without the launching and the sweeping.

Robot legged snowboarders look post-human.

Wow at Iranian snowboarder pretty much climbing down the banked slalom. Currently taken 5 minutes more than the leader's time for a one minute course.

They all look a bit trepidatious about it despite it being based on the snowboard cross course (I think it's been recut a bit and the flags moved to be a bit tighter)

7 paralympic medals for the UK, all down to 2 blind girls

Is there really no olympics thread, or does it just have an unsearchable title?

prob not, been a weird olympics!

there's some chatter in the most generic winter olympics thread. but not much

this one Winter Olympics: Search and Destroy