It’s 7:35 on Thursday, February 10, and here is where everything stands before the live competition starts again in Beijing. Going back to my medal predictions, I think this is the first time all 5 of the countries predicted to be at the top are near the top. The Surprise country right now is Austria at the actual very top with 13 medals. They might just have a stronger first week of the Olympics based on the event schedule or maybe they are actually pulling a lot more medals than expected. Only time will tell.

The USA was taking its time to get in the top five, we weren’t even in the top ten for a while. We’ve had some surprise medals but probably even more disappointments. I’m definitely getting a little worried about my prediction of American athletes ending in fourth place.

I’m hoping the team as a whole hits a slightly higher gear heading into the weekend.

• SHAUN WHITE, get that last medal and go out on top like you deserve. Go Off King.
• MIKAELA SHIFFRIN, we all love you and support you. Get that gold. Go Off Queen.
• SUSAN DUNKLEE, you are doing the 7.5KM Sprint Biathlon. I know nothing about you or your chances but I believe in you. Go Off Queen.
• BEN OGDEN, you are doing the 15KM Individual Cross Country Ski and starting precisely at 2:00:30AM East Coast Time. I also believe in you if you have a precise watch. Go Off King.

Folks from across the country and continent (whoop whoop South American friends) have shared some great questions, fun facts and trivia that I want to share with everyone in a new series of posts. Because sharing is caring and I love the enthusiasm from everyone.

Here’s today’s contribution:

How do you become good at luge? – Amy from Oregon

Great question Amy. Watching the event you might think it’s an adult version of sledding, but from the number of crashes we’ve seen, there’s clearly a lot more to it.

Starting at the top, they need tremendous upper body strength to launch themselves out of the starting gate for maximum speed that will set the tone for their entire run. And it’s not just biceps for gym selfies, hand and forearm strength are just as important because their fingers are what is making contact with the ice. They wear gloves with spikes on the fingertips, kind of like what Spiderman’s hands probably look like.

For the run itself, the two important pieces are steering when necessary and remaining as aerodynamic as possible. To steer they use subtle shifts in their upper body and can also flex their calf muscles that are touching the runners on the ice to make small adjustments in direction. To be aerodynamic they need to remain as flat as possible and be very aware of every aspect of their body. Both of these things require a high level of overall fitness and control. A single run down the track can be under a minute but they basically need to be doing a full-body flex the entire time.

And from what my research shows me, the most important qualities of becoming a champion in luge are no fear of crashing, love of adrenaline & thriving on speed. Think Fast & Furious 17: Ice Tracks of Fury.

Jokes aside, that is actually what coaches have said about who they pick at an early age to be part of training programs. As fancy as I tried to make all the above stuff sound, it’s basically just getting into really good shape overall, obtainable by most. But what you can’t force someone to do is love barrelling down an ice tunnel at 87mph in spandex while wearing death gloves.

And for doubles luge, I think it’s all of the above…but preferring a buddy for activities? It definitely seems like a drunk night at the luge track that turned into an ongoing inside joke that escalated into a bet of who could pitch the event as a new Olympic sport without laughing to the old men of the Luge Association and to everyone’s surprise, they said yes.

If you have a question, observation, fun fact or something else I should share, you know where to find me!

I don’t think anyone predicted Italy would win, and if they did, no way they said they would go undefeated during the entire tournament. Madness. I watched one of their first matches and thought “they seem fun but a little all over the place, no way they are a contender”. Wowzer, we were all so, so, so wrong.

I think they came in ranked 11th in the world so maybe their secret is just having some fun. The same concern level as my curling team when we are losing by 8 and counting down the minutes until we go broom stacking….aka drinking at the bar (you stack your brooms in the corner so you can hold your beer, get it?).

Or maybe the secret to their success is Amos’ biceps just crushing the ice while sweeping…I’m just going to go with that one. Congrats Italy!

Quick shoutout to the US team of Vicky Persinger and Chris Plys who didn’t have the tournament they were hoping for, finished 8th, but still played their hearts out. Chris will be returning to the ice as part of the Men’s team that starts round robin this morning. Vicky’s Olympics are over.

MUST WATCH: AMERICAN ROCK STARS

It’s Curling Dudes being Curling Dudes with Nick Offerman as narrator. Just watch it to get hyped for the Men’s Curling Tournament. And I’m just going to say it here to get it out of the way, John Shuster better skip this team to something magical for keeping the man below out of the Olympics.

And a Silver Medal for the USA

Colby Stevenson won silver in the Freestyle Skiing: Big Air last night. I think I’m supposed to talk about his car crash in 2016 for 45 minutes first and then talk about how the Big Air Arena is a “Dystopian Nuclear Powerplant Hellscape” and then actually get to Colby’s accomplishment. F* that noise. Here’s an Instagram post of him playing golf with his buddies in Halloween costumes instead.

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A post shared by Colby Stevenson (@colby_stevenson)

Lindsey Jacobellis, Queen of Snowboard Cross, finally brings home the gold medal

I LOVE that Lindsey Jacobellis won USA’s first gold medal of Beijing. It was also her first Olympic gold, an incredibly long overdue honor for her. She won silver in 2006, should have won gold but had too much fun near the end and gave away the win. Since then, she’s won MANY world championships and X-Games golds but can finally add Olympic Gold. Her reaction after winning shows how much it means to her. You can watch Lindsey’s full gold medal run here.

But what is Snowboard Cross you ask? It’s basically wacky racing for the Winter Olympics. Four racers go down a course together, there is jostling and falls and jumps. I don’t think I’ve ever seen all four of them make it to the bottom unscathed and there is always something crazy happening. It’s truly never over until it’s over. At 36, probably for her last Olympics, Lindsey showed she can still hang with the next generation, athletes who she probably inspired to get into the sport when they were only kids themselves.

But also, can we talk about the team USA jackets from the cheering/coaching squad? At first, I was thinking homage to zebras because why not, and then was thinking magic eye books and subliminal messages of gold medals for the US athletes (or penises, wasn’t that always the rumor?), but I think I’m actually going with a subtle form of hypnosis for competitors. Maybe US athletes are immune but when competitors see it during competition, they freeze for a second. You know, kind of like the plot of Zoolander. FASHION.

All Olympic Games have their controversies. Do you remember the cardboard beds to prevent Olympic boinking in Tokyo? Let’s go over a few and give them a drama analysis based on moments from Mean Girls.

Drama: Quarantine Cafeteria Food

So….it’s definitely not what I would order off the menu. I think the chicken piece in the top corner is what puts it over the edge for me. BUT, at least it’s not like Delaware school cafeterias where people had milk in a clear bag where you had to put a straw directly in it and then kids would make milk fountains or throw the bag or someone would slam their fist on the bag. Either way, it always ended up with milk everywhere. Is that the reason I hate milk? We’ll never know.

Anywho, the very poor state of delivered meals in the quarantine hotel has been confirmed by multiple athletes from multiple countries. So this seems real and kinda gross but also easy to fix.

DRAMA RATING: Giving your friend Kalteen bars for a couple weeks. Not permanent but they aren’t going to forget it.

Drama: Leslie Jones V NBC Battle

Leslie Jones does it stay anywhere I’m not welcomed. #uptoyallnow pic.twitter.com/jark0Joc0N

— Leslie Jones 🦋 (@Lesdoggg) February 7, 2022

Leslie Jones is doing her usual thing of live-tweeting the Olympics, bringing wider awareness and new audiences to the games. Sounds great right? Wrong. For a little while, she was being told to stop. The problem is she live streams tv coverage of the Olympics and provides commentary. I’m not surprised this became an issue because the Olympic brand and NBC’s coverage are locked down so tightly. I’m probably a few hours away from getting a cease and desist letter after typing this.

There was a public outcry and NBC claimed some bullshit third-party issue as the problem….rightttt. Either way, it’s over now and Leslie should be back in action!

DRAMA RATING: Secretly threeway calling someone and pretending everything is fine now that the truth is out while pretending to move on, but you know.

DRAMA: Baggy Clothing Bias

This is just unfolding and I’m sure there will be much more to come. In the Olympic debut of mixed team ski jumping, 5 female athletes were disqualified during the finals for having “too baggy” jumpsuits that could give them an unfair advantage in the air. Like a flying squirrel. There are some serious red flags there is something nefarious happening:

• The countries with disqualifications are some of the historically strongest ski jumping countries seemingly targeting likely medalists
• All of the athletes are females and there is a long history of people within the sport being biased and exclusionary towards women
• The athletes are saying their suits were all approved for the games and numerous other competitions throughout the year and overnight the rules seemed to be changed

I was never a jnco jeans kids so I’m not the best judge of what is too baggy but this definitely seems suspicious and I’m eager to find out what will eventually go in the burn book.

DRAMA RATING: Pretending to be someone’s friend but secretly planning their entire social demise and stealing their man in a movie montage. Can’t really come back from that.

Ryan Cochran-Siegle SILVER – Alpine Skiing, Men’s Super-G

Even though he comes from a skiing dynasty family and his mom won gold in 1972 he wasn’t actually expected to win a medal. The announcers kept talking about how off they thought he was for the games, he had a serious crash and surgery a year ago but he shocked everyone with a silver medal. Unlike some other events, the best racers aren’t saved for last so he had to wait around a while with a camera in his face before getting to officially claim the medal. And there were some EMOTIONAL moments. He called his mom and got choked up trying to say “he did it”. He did an interview and got choked up about continuing his family legacy. It was just very touching to see. Congrats Ryan.

Jessie Diggins BRONZE – Cross Country Skiing, Women’s Individual Sprint

You might remember Jessie Diggins from 2018 when she and Kikkan Randall won gold in the team event, the first-ever gold medal for US cross country skiing! Now she’s done it again with a bronze medal in the Individual Sprint (~1 mile), winning the first-ever US medal in that event! Since her historic victory in 2018, she has inspired a new generation of American cross country skiers and opened up about her own struggles with an eating order to create awareness and encourage other athletes to get help. She also gets emotional after becoming the first American to do something, no big deal. Lots of almost tears in the last 12 hours. Congrats Jessie.

This is American Emery Lehman. He’s got a little bit of party in the back and hip/fashion on the side.

He’s from Chicago. He picked up hockey at an early age but that’s not what he’s at the Olympics for. He just finished 11th in his event.

A big hint: You should probably think of those lines in his hair as RACING stripes.

DRUMROLL….SPEED SKATING. Bonus points if you were thinking traditional and not short track. He just finished the 1,500 and will be back for the team pursuit on February 15.

Thanks for playing. I think he might have grown out the sides and cut the back for the games, probably the reason he wasn’t top ten.

American Olympic news coverage LOVES to pick a handful of athletes and focus most of their attention on them. It’s usually well-known and media-friendly favorites for medals combined with a few folks who have some extraordinary backstory about overcoming odds.

But we sent 224 athletes to the games, most of any country. The majority won’t be on the podium at the end of the day, won’t be on any primetime coverage and I’d like to give some of them a little attention. So here is the first post of the “3 CHEERS” series for 2022.

3 CHEERS for Scott Patterson – Skiathlon

What? You don’t know what skiathlon is?

Scott knows because he got 11th. He improved on his 18th place finish in 2018 to get the best finish by an American man ever. GO SCOTT! Scott is from Anchorage, Alaska, and also is a very accomplished mountain runner according to his blog.

Jokes aside, it’s time to learn. Skiathlon is a 30km race where they complete the first 15k (9.3 miles) in the classic technique of cross country skiing. Stop. Change their skis. Complete the second 15k in the free technique.

Classic style is what you do on a NordicTrack. They use the parallel grooves in the snow when going uphill and on flat terrain. It’s easier but also slower, kind of similar to the backstroke in the pool. Free, just like freestyle in the pool, is faster. It involves movements that are more similar to ice skating. It is a little harder though because you have the potential of tangling your skis. Scott did the free portion of the race about 3 minutes faster than the classic for a total time of 1 hour, 20 minutes to give you a little more context. He was actually the fourth fastest on the free portion of the race, probably that mountain running helping him keep a lot in the gas tank.

So now you know Skiathlon and now you know Scott Patterson. 3 CHEERS.

Breaking Things Out Of Excitement

I can not figure out which athlete this is but I love how he tried to fix it.

Don't let ANYTHING stop you from celebrating. 😂 #WinterOlympics pic.twitter.com/JRqAdHnkBt

— NBC Olympics (@NBCOlympics) February 6, 2022

Mikaela Shiffron Being Just Like Us

During an interview with Lester Holt, she said that “On Top of Spaghetti” gets stuck in her head right before she starts skiing during competitions. Let’s all get the song stuck in our head whenever she competes in solidarity! Her first event, the Giant Slalom got rescheduled to 8:30 tonight. Tune in!

Dinosaurs

I’m sure I’ll hate this commercial by the end of the Olympics but JURASSIC PARK AND THE OLYMPICS COMBINED INTO ONE THING!!!

Women’s Hockey Crushing It

The story for the women’s hockey tournament is USA and Canada working towards a rematch for the gold medal and everyone else is just along for the ride. So far the US has been DOMINATING in their games. Canada has as well but it’s been going well so far. I’ll circle back around when the medal rounds start!