Men’s Super-Combined
Upsets continued to abound….
Not only is Bode Miller America’s most decorated Alpine skier, he’s the defending Olympic champion in this event. What’s more, after finishing out of the medals in the Downhill, there were great expectations that he would vindicate his skill and fame by capturing one here. He finished 6th.
Remarkably, the Americans have won only 1 of the 12 medals awarded in this sport so far. Which makes a mockery of their boast, coming into these Games, of being the best Alpine skiing team in the world; not least because that one medal is the lowly bronze Julia Mancuso won by the skin of her teeth in the Women’s Combined. Ted Ligety, who won gold in this event at 2006 Torino Olympics but finished 12th here, probably spoke for all Team USA skiers when he summed up his performance as follows:
To put it simply, I choked — for sure. That’s disappointing.”
(The Associated Press, February 14, 2014)
On the other hand, it might be that their high-tech Under Armour racing suits, billed as the fastest in the world, are actually slowing these skiers down too. This, after all, is the excuse their highly touted Speedskating teammates are proffering to explain their failure to win any medals at these Games so far.
According to three people familiar with the U.S. team, these suits — which were designed by apparel sponsor Under Armour and billed before the Games as a major advantage — have a design flaw that may be slowing the skaters down. These people said that vents on back of the suit, designed to allow heat to escape, are allowing air to enter the suit and create drag that keeps the skaters from staying in the ‘low’ position they need to achieve maximum speed.
(Sports Illustrated, February 14, 2014)
This might seem like the kind of laughable excuse Spike Lee’s Mars Blackmon (“It’s gotta be the shoes, man”) would come up with … to get them to switch to Nike wear. It’s gotta be the suits, right? It could be; because, trust me folks, racing suits really can affect performance to a significant degree. This was demonstrated in blazing fashion when whole-body polyurethane suits helped swimmers break so many records at the 2009 World Championship that FINA banned them, especially after Michael Phelps vowed to boycott the 2012 London Olympics if they weren’t.
Perhaps Shani Davis should prevail upon Speedskating’s governing body to ban these slow suits, eh? At the very least the USOC should force Under Armour to explain to the American people why this highly anticipated roll out of their highly touted suits was even more disastrous than the Obama Administration’s roll out of healthcare.gov.
Meanwhile, not only has Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway been the most dominant Alpine skier in the world since the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, he’s the reigning world champion in this event. What’s more, after finishing out of the medals in the Downhill, there were great expectations that he too would vindicate his skill and fame by capturing one here. He finished 8th.
Therefore, it’s fair to say that Sandro Viletta of Switzerland shocked the world by winning gold. But nobody seemed more shocked than Viletta himself; after all, he had won only one World Cup race in his entire career, and that was three years ago. Ivica Kostelic of Croatia won silver; and Christof Innerhofer of Italy added to his silver in Downhill with bronze in this event.
Men’s Figure Skating
I vowed in my Day 6 commentary below that I would have no further comment on this event. Having written so much, however, I thought it would be unsportsmanlike for me to refuse to share the final results.
Most noteworthy is that the Sochi upsets continued. In fact, three-time world champion Patrick Chan of Canada (r) practically ceded gold to Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan. Because he only had to skate a mediocre long program to become the first Canadian in history to win gold in this event. Yet he fell on his ass on one jump and botched two others. I agree with the flabbergasted commentators who gasped — as he was making mistake after mistake — that he was skating like he didn’t want gold.
Sure enough, Hanyu, who merely botched fewer jumps, won gold; Chan settled for silver; and, providing the only thing to cheer about, Denis Ten of Kazakhstan won bronze, giving his country its first medal in Winter Olympics history.
The Stray Dogs Games?
Russians must have found it irritating enough that, in the run up to these Games, the foreign media were dedicating more coverage to stray dogs on the streets of Sochi than to the spectacular sports venues that were all ready and waiting for competition to begin.
But Russians must now find it downright rude that foreign reporters in Sochi are hailing an American Slopestyle skier more for fashioning himself the Mother Teresa of local stray dogs than for winning an Olympic medal. This presumptuous, self-promoting do-gooder (who I refuse to dignify by naming) was all over mainstream and social media today bragging about his intent to have a family of strays cleaned up and vaccinated to take back to America with him.
Never mind that, as the BBC reported today, Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska had already volunteered to fund shelters for all of Sochi’s stray dogs (i.e. the one’s Putin’s street cleaners do not catch and “put down” first).
Frankly, what this American Olympian is doing is not only rude; it’s arrogant, self-righteous, and hypocritical – all reinforcing that notorious image of the ugly American presuming to behave in every foreign country as if it were his own.
But I ask my American friends to consider how they would have felt if, in the run up to the 1984 Games, the foreign media were dedicating more coverage to homeless people (stray humans?) on the streets of Atlanta than to the spectacular sports venues that were all ready and waiting for competition to begin.
More to the point:
- What if the foreign media were hailing some Russian athlete more for fashioning himself the Mother Teresa of these stray humans than for winning any Olympic medal?
- What if this Russian had persuaded a few of these poor, misguided souls to take shelter with his team in the Olympic village, where they were cleaned up, fed, and clothed (in Team Russia uniforms no less)?
- And what if he then seized every media opportunity to broadcast to the world that he was making arrangements with U.S. authorities for them to be granted refugee status so he could take them with him back to Russia for a better life?
Enough said?
Accordingly, I say to this self-styled Mother Teresa (or Pied-Piper) of Sochi’s stray dogs, get over yourself, and leave those friggin’ dogs alone!
Actually, instead of providing the clearance he clearly presumes he’s entitled to, Russian authorities should tell this American skier, in no uncertain terms, that he has even less chance of leaving Russia with those dogs than CIA agents hiding among the Team USA delegation have of leaving with Edward Snowden.
MEDAL COUNT
Norway: 13; United States: 13; Netherlands: 12