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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

Winter Olympics - Turin 2006

08:35 / 24.01.06

Official site.

So ... anyone care about this? To be honest I didn't even know it was coming up until today, although somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that there hadn't been one for a while. Was reading this Grauniad article from last month that got me thinking about what is so appealing about the winter games:

"There is an 'otherness' about winter sports that I find appealing. I love the elegance of figure skating, the brutality of ice hockey, the insanity of the luge combined with the bloody-mindedness of downhill skiing. Cowbells ring, steam rises from hot alcoholic drinks, Finland makes a mark on the world stage. It is unfamiliar, un-British and unerringly magnificent."

It's not something that I obsess over but I like to catch bits of some of the unfamiliar winter sports. Do any barbeloids actually follow it closely? Any advice on events worth particular attention?

Coverage on BBC.

13:22 / 24.01.06

A few years ago I came to the conclusion that there are no "sensible" sports in the winter olympics. Even something like cross-country skiing (a fairly sensible sport, well compared to the rest of the nutters) is made dangerous with the inclusion of guns and shooting to turn it into the biathlon, or worst the nordic event which is cross country skiers attempting ski jumping.

Pretty much every sport envolves hurtling down steep hills or attaching blades to your feet*. And all attemtpted while wearing a body hugging condom.

Not that this stops me watching of course. Talk about your car crash TV (in fact, on a slightly related topic, my nan only watched motorbike racing for the prospect of seeing a crash).

* with the one exception of curling, it has that strange allure inherent in watching bowls, but on ice and with a couple of people frantically sweeping (and I like to think the UK team have a successfully cleaning company for the off-season).

11:28 / 26.01.06

I actually want to watch some of the Winter Olympics - I think it's because I can half-imagine DOING some of those things, which can't be said for the 100 metres.
Skating, hey, everyone can skate - and the skiing looks like fun and it's all just so intense and slightly mad.

23:07 / 26.01.06

I love figure skating & there's something so like opera about Michelle Kwan. Or maybe the opposite of opera. She's like the Flying Dutchman of figure skating.

We don't have TV normally, but we get a TV for the Winter Olympics.

07:51 / 27.01.06

Wow. You get a tv just for this? You are hardcore. I'll expect expert commentary throughout, you know.

09:24 / 27.01.06

What would be ideal would be if I could get a TV and TiVo for this. Between the coverage and the commercials, it's actually an awful watching experience.

07:15 / 18.02.06

*tumbleweeds*

So ... anyone watching? I haven't actually watched that much. I need Persephone to direct my viewing.

Many times though I've been close to booking a ticket to Turin and zooming off with my cowbell. Being in the crowd at the winter olympics seems a lot mroe fun that the summer version.

08:25 / 19.02.06

i happened upon some on telly t'day; saw me some luge. they call it 'skeleton'. fucking crazy...

but not knowing a thing about it, was interesting to note that the winner had significantly - to a lay person such as i was - better form. and won by a lot. funny how someone good at something makes it look effortless yet shows they are supreme even to an unschooled observer, pretty well in any pursuit...

*

17:22 / 19.02.06

All I know about this right now is what assholes people are being about Shani Davis over here.

23:36 / 19.02.06

No, luge and skeleton are different. Luge, you go feet first. Skeleton, face first. Of course to be really good at luge, you need eyeballs on stalks.

07:29 / 20.02.06

Fuck them, Shani Davis rules.

19:00 / 20.02.06

I've been following the fortunes of the Scottish women curlers - not actually going as far as to watch it, admittedly, but keeping an eye on what they're doing. It's quite tense at the moment!
Man, but watching the snowboarding made me feel so old! Watching Hannah Teter be 'superstoked' after winning - wow.

20:06 / 20.02.06

Oh damn, that's the curling team knocked out!

03:10 / 21.02.06

Well shit, ice dancing is my new favorite sport. Now that it's DANGEROUS.

Seriously, it's so much better than it has been. I like it better than pairs now.

03:57 / 21.02.06

see? i said i knew nothing!

ta persephone... so snails would rock at luge, huh?

now, what's all this about ice dancing being dangerous?

16:30 / 21.02.06

Well, they've changed the scoring system for ice skating & it's much more about the math --elements are worth so many points, with additions and subtractions for execution. If you put a difficult element in the second half of your program (when you're more tired), you get extra points. I'm not crazy about how this looks for the skating events, plus now people are throwing quads; so at the moment, the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. I think it will take some time for a really great skater to pull it all together, since this system is still new.

But for dancing, it looks fantastic. With skating when you're coming up to a triple or a quad, you really have to focus on the jump. And you have to rest between jumps. What's been upped in dancing is all the stuff that they're not really doing between jumps right now. And it's more fun to watch than jumps. If you really focus, you can count the skater's face coming around four times --but what have you seen? The dancers are doing a lot more fancy footwork, and fast, and close together & they perform. They were just going all out & four or five pairs totally wiped out, you used to never see falls in dancing. I love it, if you ask me the whole point of strapping on skates is the danger of falling.

16:32 / 21.02.06

Just in case that didn't make any sense --you jump in skating. No jumps in dancing.

13:03 / 23.02.06

Wifey's loves the Winter Olympics, so we've been watching as much of it as we can. I've particularly enjoyed the snowboarding events, especially the half-pipe and snowboard cross. Appeals to my inner skate-rat, I think. Snowboard cross (or, as I like to call it, SnoBoCross) is a new event this year. Downhill race on a winding course with jumps and such. Real edge-of-yr-seat viewing. That's the one event that had Wifey and I cheering and excited. It just looks FUN.

Fuck them, Shani Davis rules.

TRUTH.

OTOH, I can kinda understand his team's disappointment too. My understanding was that he dropped out of a relay (or some type of team event) pretty near the last minute, and if that's the case then that's pretty bad form. That's a decision that should have been made much sooner than arrival at Turino. I understand there's been friction between Davis and his team prior to this, and that there's most likely a lot of background stuff that's not in the reportage getting to the public. And TBH, I'm probably not as informed as I could be on the situation, but that's how it looks to me right now.

But yeah, in any case, he fucking rocked the house and earned that medal. Good on 'im.

pointless & uncalled for

18:33 / 27.02.06

I watched the coverage intermittently, mainly because it's where Canada really has a chance to demonstrate some quality. Rolled up third in over all medals, fourth in golds, athlete with most medals (5) and medals in most disciplines (10 out of fifteen). Glowing pride somewhat tinged by not winning men's hockey (the only one that counts). Also lost most medals per population to pesky Austria.

Apologies all round for that Avril Lavigne thing at the end. I'm fairly certain that when the Italians asked us for a show stopper, this wasn't what they had in mind. Canada, nation of ice monkeys and musicians who couldn't win the Eurovision Song Contest if they tried. Celine Dion did once on behalf of the Swiss, no one knows whose ignomy was worse.