I’m kind of…over it? I haven’t watched too much these games but it feels like the winner is who can avoid crashing out and not who is the most athletic or skilled. I could be entirely wrong but even one of the announcers seemed to hint at a similar sentiment by saying “these games have more unexpected results than usual” after the fourth crash out in a row during qualifying heats.
I remember the excitement of Apollo Anton Ohno days and an occasional crash spicing it up. It kept you on your toes! But a crash every race and judgement call on whose fault it was and who is advanced automatically is just a slog.
There is a decent amount of chatter about the ice conditions for both figure skating and speed skating because they use the same rink and alter the ice near daily between events. Maybe that’s why Ilia fell so many times? Or an Ancient Greek Olympian ghost who got stuck in Italy and is upset everyone is competing with clothes on, who knows.
But even if I’m not a huge fan at the moment, the US team could still win a medal and that would be fun. Any medal at this point really. Sweden about to overtake us in golds and we can’t have that.
Royer's Olympic Blog 