Olympic recap.
Feb. 24th, 2014 01:40 pmSumming up the Olympics in a conversation with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aigoos:
Have been following the Olympics, too! Haven't seen all the gala yet (but have it TiVo'd).
Re: The US team uniforms.
Best description: "Keeping grandmas knitting [since 1924]."
Re: The Opening and Closing Ceremonies.
You gotta hand it to the Russians. They understand that ceremonies have to be BIG. And they know how to do BIG. Also, great sense of humor. Also, only the Russians would dangle a 5th grader 100 feet from the floor and expect her to sing. Truly, Russian culture clearly represented.
Me: "Disturbing symbolism, that Russian history ends with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the little girl letting go a red balloon. Putin misses the USSR."
Best answer: "I don't know why he'd miss it. He's done a pretty good job of recreating large swathes of it."
Re: NoSnowChi.
I planned to watch skiing, not water polo. In some ways the melting snow made it interesting, in that you got to see eight out of thirteen world class skiers wipe out. That's ... new. The halfpipe: a combination of the utterly slooow, because of the slush in the bottom, and the frankly dangerous. The Sochi course for the biathlon and cross-country was beautiful. Too bad they couldn't use it beyond the first week, since the snow conditions forced them to schedule ski events at night when it got colder.
Re: Girls in spaaaaaaace!
Yay, women's ski jumping! Now they need to have men and women both in the team event.
Re: Making a grown skier cry.
No one's ever accused Bode Miller of being articulate. So poking him about his dead brother -- who was aiming to make the US Snowboarding team -- is just not on. Was touching though, how protective the other skiers were of him. Not so Bode's new wife: here her husband's having a meltdown, and she hugs him with one eye trained on the camera, her cheek properly angled to the television audience. The other skiers didn't do that; they put their butts to the camera and all their attention on Bode, waving the cameras off.
Re: PUPPIES!
I have officially fallen for Gus Kenworthy and his puppy<3. Three cheers for dog-loving Russian billionaires, too, who rush in and save the day, and build shelters for the dogs who didn't have a snowboarder fall in love.
Re: the house of cards.
Sochi's a Potemkin village that wasn't finished in time for the display. Pay no attention to the unfinished luge tunnels. Putting the journalist hotel rooms last on your list may have been a tactical error, Sochi.
Re: the volunteers are the first to die.
Am I the only person who noticed the Sochi volunteers were a wee bit unprofessional, wandering out onto ski races while the skiers were barreling down at 60mph, cutting off Kim Yuna as she stepped off the ice? Ah, who needs dry runs anyway?
Re: The great snowboarder we forced to defect to Russia.
At least Vic Wild is happy? So weird to hear the Russian snowboarder win with a clearly American, "YEAH!" Google-search-Activate! The Russian press spins his defection as true love, but he's made it clear his reasons for the switch was the lack of funding for alpine snowboarding in the US. Our one Olympic alpine skier had to live out of his truck? No funding for a coach? Jesus.
Re: stunned like a bird who hit glass.
Jeremy Abbott's nasty fall in his short program quad, where he bounced off the ice, slammed into the boards and lay there like a stunned bird as his music played...
... I've seen bad falls like that before. But I've never seen a skater look so clearly like he wanted to give up. Then as he stood and the Russian crowd cheered, he took such heart, he nailed everything else. Tara Lipinski had it right--Jeremy's fragile. His near-telepathic sensitivity to whether the audience is behind him or not (which killed his international success) would make him a great coach. You'll be seeing more from him in skating, I promise. Someone whose last skating experience is a success like that? Yes, he'll stick around. Also, when he finished his freeskate, he looked relaxed for the first time since he took the bronze at Nationals in 2007. So good to see sweet Jeremy back.
Also, I've never heard music play in a pregnant silence before (except maybe Torvil & Dean's Bolero). I can still hear it.
Re: The king is dead.
While I understand, Plushenko, the king of figure skating, was doing fine up until right before the short program, Russia could only have one skater in the men's competition. It would not have played out any other way, I get it. But Plushenko should have stood aside for the next generation.
Re: The Queen is not dead. She's retired.
The lesson I draw from Kim Yuna taking silver is the same one I drew from Plushenko taking silver in 2010: if you want to win at the Olympics, you have to compete all season. I realize she stole the show at 2013 Worlds. But I notice that this year, she made the same mistake Plushenko did in Vancouver: on the technical side, her program was just too easy. Johnny Weir pointed out her harder elements were front-loaded. This program could've been fine-tuned -- would've been fine-tuned -- if she'd been competing all season.
She didn't skate with competitive fire that I could tell. Although she's always an elegant and dignified skater, she seemed to be ... dutiful ... about her attendance at this year's Olympics. Like she competed solely to represent South Korea, but in her heart, she was retired.
Re: 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics.
Thank god, they have snow.
aigoos:Have been following the Olympics, too! Haven't seen all the gala yet (but have it TiVo'd).
Re: The US team uniforms.
Best description: "Keeping grandmas knitting [since 1924]."
Re: The Opening and Closing Ceremonies.
You gotta hand it to the Russians. They understand that ceremonies have to be BIG. And they know how to do BIG. Also, great sense of humor. Also, only the Russians would dangle a 5th grader 100 feet from the floor and expect her to sing. Truly, Russian culture clearly represented.
Me: "Disturbing symbolism, that Russian history ends with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the little girl letting go a red balloon. Putin misses the USSR."
Best answer: "I don't know why he'd miss it. He's done a pretty good job of recreating large swathes of it."
Re: NoSnowChi.
I planned to watch skiing, not water polo. In some ways the melting snow made it interesting, in that you got to see eight out of thirteen world class skiers wipe out. That's ... new. The halfpipe: a combination of the utterly slooow, because of the slush in the bottom, and the frankly dangerous. The Sochi course for the biathlon and cross-country was beautiful. Too bad they couldn't use it beyond the first week, since the snow conditions forced them to schedule ski events at night when it got colder.
Re: Girls in spaaaaaaace!
Yay, women's ski jumping! Now they need to have men and women both in the team event.
Re: Making a grown skier cry.
No one's ever accused Bode Miller of being articulate. So poking him about his dead brother -- who was aiming to make the US Snowboarding team -- is just not on. Was touching though, how protective the other skiers were of him. Not so Bode's new wife: here her husband's having a meltdown, and she hugs him with one eye trained on the camera, her cheek properly angled to the television audience. The other skiers didn't do that; they put their butts to the camera and all their attention on Bode, waving the cameras off.
Re: PUPPIES!
I have officially fallen for Gus Kenworthy and his puppy<3. Three cheers for dog-loving Russian billionaires, too, who rush in and save the day, and build shelters for the dogs who didn't have a snowboarder fall in love.
Re: the house of cards.
Sochi's a Potemkin village that wasn't finished in time for the display. Pay no attention to the unfinished luge tunnels. Putting the journalist hotel rooms last on your list may have been a tactical error, Sochi.
Re: the volunteers are the first to die.
Am I the only person who noticed the Sochi volunteers were a wee bit unprofessional, wandering out onto ski races while the skiers were barreling down at 60mph, cutting off Kim Yuna as she stepped off the ice? Ah, who needs dry runs anyway?
Re: The great snowboarder we forced to defect to Russia.
At least Vic Wild is happy? So weird to hear the Russian snowboarder win with a clearly American, "YEAH!" Google-search-Activate! The Russian press spins his defection as true love, but he's made it clear his reasons for the switch was the lack of funding for alpine snowboarding in the US. Our one Olympic alpine skier had to live out of his truck? No funding for a coach? Jesus.
Re: stunned like a bird who hit glass.
Jeremy Abbott's nasty fall in his short program quad, where he bounced off the ice, slammed into the boards and lay there like a stunned bird as his music played...
... I've seen bad falls like that before. But I've never seen a skater look so clearly like he wanted to give up. Then as he stood and the Russian crowd cheered, he took such heart, he nailed everything else. Tara Lipinski had it right--Jeremy's fragile. His near-telepathic sensitivity to whether the audience is behind him or not (which killed his international success) would make him a great coach. You'll be seeing more from him in skating, I promise. Someone whose last skating experience is a success like that? Yes, he'll stick around. Also, when he finished his freeskate, he looked relaxed for the first time since he took the bronze at Nationals in 2007. So good to see sweet Jeremy back.
Also, I've never heard music play in a pregnant silence before (except maybe Torvil & Dean's Bolero). I can still hear it.
Re: The king is dead.
While I understand, Plushenko, the king of figure skating, was doing fine up until right before the short program, Russia could only have one skater in the men's competition. It would not have played out any other way, I get it. But Plushenko should have stood aside for the next generation.
Re: The Queen is not dead. She's retired.
The lesson I draw from Kim Yuna taking silver is the same one I drew from Plushenko taking silver in 2010: if you want to win at the Olympics, you have to compete all season. I realize she stole the show at 2013 Worlds. But I notice that this year, she made the same mistake Plushenko did in Vancouver: on the technical side, her program was just too easy. Johnny Weir pointed out her harder elements were front-loaded. This program could've been fine-tuned -- would've been fine-tuned -- if she'd been competing all season.
She didn't skate with competitive fire that I could tell. Although she's always an elegant and dignified skater, she seemed to be ... dutiful ... about her attendance at this year's Olympics. Like she competed solely to represent South Korea, but in her heart, she was retired.
Re: 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics.
Thank god, they have snow.
