2010 Winter Olympics: Week One Recap

The first week of the Winter Olympics has been pretty fun, as long as you weren’t part of the crew that worked on the Opening Ceremony.

It had everything you would want in a first week.

You had prime athletes elevating their games to win medals, also-rans wilting under the pressure, questionable judging, and lots of lost sleep.

So, let’s do a little rundown of the first full week of the Winter Games.

Snowboarding

I’m getting this out of the way first. Shaun White deserved the gold medal he won. No question in my mind. The tricks, the air, and the technical ability were all much better than everyone else.

However, I have a problem with the judging.

For every boarder, the judges were knocking off points for the smallest little things, but when it came to White, they became simpering fan-girls who could only see him through rose-colored glasses. I think White could have fallen and they still would have scored him in the 40s.

As for the snowboard cross, only one thing disappointed me about the Lindsey Jacobellis debacle: I didn’t get to see it live. I like to make fun of people’s failures in real time. It’s more fun that way. Thankfully, since she imploded, I don’t have to see her anymore. Seriously, have you seen that girl? She looks like a guy in a bad platinum blonde wig most of the time.

Luge

While it was tragic that the luger from Georgia died on a test run, I was getting tired of NBC beating the story into the ground. Every time they would head out to the track, they would tell us once again that a luger had died.

What was even worse was when Bob Costas told us that they would not show the clip of his death. I mean, we had all seen it by then. I had seen it earlier that day on NBC Nightly News. Doing this was like drinking a 12-pack of beer and then saying you’re not going to drink that night. The cat’s already out of the bag on this one.

On a lighter note, I still giggle every time I see a clip of doubles luge. Yes, I have the mentality of a third grader.

Skiing

Did you know that Lindsey Vonn has an injury? I guess her leg is injured or something. You would think they would bring this up.

Watching the skiing coverage is like watching an episode of House. They continually brought up the Vonn injury, like her leg is going to fall off at any minute. Based on the coverage, it seems like it would be noteworthy if she was healthy.

Anyway, I’ll be rooting for Julia Mancuso. Her childlike enthusiasm warms my heart, and I always like the underdog. Plus, I think she’s the only one that hasn’t nearly wiped out on the course.

Figure Skating

Earlier when I was thinking about it, I was glad that, so far, the figure skating has been without controversy. I mean, the gold medals have been awarded to the best performers. Then Elvis Stojko rained on my parade.

Elvis Stojko, a former Olympic skater who was better left on the trash heap of Olympic history, wrote an article today basically saying that Evgeni Plushenko was robbed and figure skating was dead. Obviously, Elvis was watching something completely different than the rest of us.

Evan Lysacek absolutely killed on Thursday night. He was pretty much flawless in his routine. He didn’t throw a quad jump, but he did pair together his jumps well and did them throughout the routine.

Plushenko, on the other hand, looked like a wounded duck through most of his jumps (somehow landing them cleanly though). He did throw in two quads, to his credit. His footwork, minus what Stojko says, was pretty basic. We had plenty of time to study it, too, since Plushenko didn’t throw a jump at all in the last minute of his routine.

See, I listened to Dick Button and concentrated on Plushenko’s feet and not his crazy arm movements that make it look like he’s doing something. While Stojko was probably distracted by something shiny, he missed the fact that a 10-year-old could have pulled off Plushenko’s movements.

Stojko needs to remember that figure skating isn’t just about who can make the biggest jump, but who can consistently hit all the elements. NBC was more than happy to point out (thank you Scott Hamilton) that Lysacek’s jump combos nearly had the same difficulty level, points-wise, as Plushenko’s quads.

Anyway, enough picking on a guy who couldn’t quite get it done in the Olympics. At least there was no controversy in pairs figure skating this year.

Curling

I was watching curling the other day, and the Duchess walks in and sits down. She looks to grab the remote to change the channel and suddenly becomes enthralled by the action. Before you know it, she’s screaming at the USA Captain because she can’t make a simple hit.

I think she’s searching online for places we can go curling. Once again I’m shown I picked the perfect wife.