Rec’ing on…Arrivederci Torino

On the whole, these have been a sort of run-of-the-mill Winter Olympics. Not much great happened, but not much bad, either. I’m just going to jump in and look at the second week before adding some closing comments.

Bobsleigh – What can I say? Boring. When I was a kid, I used to enjoy seeing the bobbers come down the run because you were never sure if they’d make it all the way down the run. My mind’s eye was filled with up-turned sleds and multi-man vehicles launching themselves off the track into the country-side. On a report on famed Italian sledder Eugenio Monti, they showed a clip from runs circa 1966. THAT’s what I remember. Sleds flying. Tracks wide enough that the four-man sled of the day could almost fit sideways. That was exciting. Now? It’s like having guides on a bowling lane so you actually have to make an effort to roll a gutterball. Not the same at all.

Speed Skating – There is little more to talk about than the Hedrick/Davis "feud". At first, I was on Hedrick’s side as Davis definitely wasn’t being a team player. This wasn’t helped by Davis’ mono-syllabic answers during a post-race interview after he’d won the gold in the 1,000 meters. As the week wore on, it was obvious that both athletes weren’t behaving any better than spoiled children. They may have won medals, but for me, they both flopped as Olympians.

On the flip side, we get someone like Joey Cheek who is giving his medal bonuses to a charity founded by former Olympian Johann Olav Koss, Right to Play, which uses sports to promote a healthier lifestyle for children in poor countries. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge anyone keeping their bonuses…for many athletes this is going to be the first "real" money they’ve seen after years and years of very hard work. It does make Cheek’s character stand out, though, especially in contrast to his brattier teammates. I’m very proud that his fellow athletes elected to give him the honor of carrying the flag for the closing ceremonies.

Short Track – I think the model of how to handle adversity and triumph has been Apolo Anton Ohno. He was always polite, suffered the media with aplomb, and behaved like I think we hope we would if we were in the same circumstance. It speaks a lot to his character, and the values that he was taught. I liked that his gold medal in the 500m wasn’t marred by controversy. Finally.

Figure Skating – I’m a little disappointed that Sasha Cohen didn’t win gold. I’m not disappointed in her, after all, that’s skating. I’m just disappointed that the performance she gave in the short program wasn’t matched by all of her long program. Looking at the three medalists, I think hers was the best overall balance of technical and artistic elements…on paper. Arakawa is certainly a great skater; it’s just that her pair of slow routines left me a little uninspired.

Freestyle Skiing – Though I enjoy the X-games as much as the next guy, I got to say that I still have a hard time embracing aerials and moguls as Olympic sports…aerials more than moguls. I don’t know, aerials just seems a little too "Johnny one-note"…sort of like ski-jumping, but I’ll talk about that next.

Moguls, per se, I don’t have a problem with. I hark back to the very early days of moguls competitions (in the dark days before snowboards existed) when everyone involved was trying to figure out how to do the sport. Then, the moguls weren’t just equal-height bumps on a more-or-less straight course. No, a balance had to be found between number of various-sized moguls (often crossing the slope) hit and time, combined with aerials. There was more strategy, less pure reaction involved. Now, though the sport is undeniable difficult to do at any reasonable speed, it isn’t big on the strategy. I think that would make it more universally embraceable.

Ski Jumping – As with aerials, I feel this is a dull little sport. However, when it’s combined with cross-country (in an event imaginatively called Nordic Combined), it becomes more exciting. Even so, it isn’t quite up to the…er, caliber (sorry) of biathlon. I’d propose that the ski-jump and cross-country portions not be held as separate events, but as one continuous event. You jump, you ski (with time penalties based on the jump), you jump, and then ski to the finish. Fatigue becomes a real factor in strategy. Too hard, you say? I don’t think so. These athletes are supposed to be Olympians, after all.

Alpine Skiing – I think my favorite events on the Alpine program are Slalom and Giant Slalom. It just looks like skiing to me. The long glides and wide turns of downhill and Super-G just don’t quite get my blood going in the same way (though there have been exceptions).

The flap between Picabo Street and Julia Mancuso? I’m torn. I agree with Picabo that it’s nice to see professionalism, but on the other hand I did enjoy Mancuso’s sense of whimsy. I do smile at the fact the Mancuso’s gold came in a race where she didn’t wear any tiara or cat ears. I wonder if there’s a correlation?

Bode Miller. I think he’s simply a bad example for the younger skiers on the US Alpine Team. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he seems like in immature teenager in a grown man’s body who thinks that the fact that he didn’t get "too drunk" while at the Olympics is cause for praise. Despite his comments to the contrary, his actions spoke to, at best, an indifference about where he was and who he was representing. He might not mind not representing his country to his maximum potential, but somehow I think Nike’s executives might have some comments that will get his attention.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how happy I was with the men’s Giant Slalom. No, not for the performances, but because it was the one Alpine or snowboard race where the path wasn’t marked out with that attrocious blue paint. What? Are skiers dumber now? Since when did they need a track painted out on the snow? I vote we go back to pine boughs–at least they aren’t so ugly.

In closing – I wish I had posted these things earlier, because now it comes off as prediction after the fact, but a couple of weeks ago a friend asked me how many medals the US would win. I said, "I don’t know. Twenty-five or twenty-six…but I’m thinking twenty-five." Lo and behold, the USA won twenty-five medals. The USOC predictions of surpassing the number of medals from the Salt Lake games was never realistic.

After Sasha Cohen’s short program, my mom asked me if I thought she’d win the gold. I said no, that I thought she’d fall, and either two-foot or touch the ice on another jump. And that’s what happened. (However, so that I don’t get too full of myself, I also thought Slutskaya would win the gold.)

I think this was a good Olympics. Not much memorable comes out of it, and maybe that’s a good thing. As usual, favorites imploded from expectations, and new stars exploded onto the sports map. That’s why they actually hold the competitions. Judging from a lot of the young talent on exhibition at Torino, I think the Winter Olympics in 2010 in Vancouver will be something to see.

Arrivederci, Torino! Grazie!