Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Post-Olympic Hangover

Final thoughts on the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Petter Northug led Norway to a come-from-behind silver medal in the cross country relay. He passed two skiers who had a big lead on him when he started his leg. Al Trautwig, calling the race for NBC said “Here comes Northug with his world class pole push.”

He also won the gold in the 50k, the so-called marathon of the winter. I haven't watched this race yet, but I will, hoping for more gold like that.

*****

Tanith Belbin roomed with Johnny Weir in Vancouver. She says they have the best-smelling room in the Olympic Village.

Tanith Belbin and Johnny Weir

*****

Even a curling novice such as Mrs. Poop could easily identify the difference in skill level between the teams in the medal round and the U.S. team. Canada’s Cheryl Bernard could pass a curling stone through the eye of the needle then get cougar-iffic on a couple of 22-year-olds at a bar later that night.

*****

NBC really has to figure something out about their coverage for 2012 and 2014. Both of those games, in London and Sochi, Russia will take place several hours ahead of U.S. time zones. If NBC continues to insist on packing every important event into a primetime show the ratings will get even worse.
At Beijing Michael Phelps's races were scheduled for 10am local time so they could be shown in primetime here.
In Vancouver figure skating ended late, but at a reasonable enough time for a lot of people.
With Facebook, twitter and the web everyone knows the results of anything important by the time NBC shows it. I think they have to re-evaluate and show live events throughout the day on NBC.

*****

Donald Sutherland looks like a homeless man, not a famous actor. During one of the curling games the cameras caught him blowing his nose. Not sure why I found this so funny, but I did.

*****

Great showing by the U.S. hockey team, beating Canada, having an astounding outburst against Finland then scoring in the final minute to send the gold medal game to overtime. They didn't win but they were certainly fun to watch.

*****

For some reason I loved these games more than any Olympics I can remember possibly dating back to Calgary in 1988. The U.S. wins the most medals of any country ever, and Canada wins the most golds, maybe making it a little more excting. Plus a DVR makes it easy to watch all the events I want to see while eliminating those I don't care about.

Bring on Sochi!

3 comments:

Juice said...

Great 2 weeks...the advances in HD technology doesn't hurt either...

Reissberg said...

I watched Peter Northug's 50K race. That guy has some stamina. He really "hung" in there.

Paul said...

These Peter Northug jokes never get old do they?

And the best part is, no one yet has asked me to explain.

Either more people than we think get the joke or they used Google to figure it out. I sure hope they didn't use Google.

One more post on Northug coming up before I stop writing about the Olympics for another two years.