They are not only winning all the medals but also making music videos about it…

Some crazy shit happened in curling. We won our first ever gold medal after starting round robin play 2-4 and Canada didn’t medal at all. And look at our team. I would have expected them to crush the dads of elementary school kids beer drinking games but not necessarily Olympic curling. I wrote them off halfway through round robin play. But they come back strong to win 5 in a row versus the best teams in the world. Shuster has proved to be an unshakeable skip and playmaker under pressure. He was able to throw a shot rock in the 8th end to get the US 5 points and take a 10-5 lead.

The US team was really fun to watch. Matt Hamilton and Shuster were the most vocal and their back and forths, at times almost bickering, from opposite ends of the ice gave you some good insight into the game. You could also tell that Hamilton was probably trying to position himself as one of the next leaders of U.S. curling. They knew everyone had written them off so were able to play with a little abandon and took down a much younger Swedish team with stupid matching haircuts.

Curling is the drinking man’s sport of the Olympic games and I imagine they have all drank a lot of beers since their gold medal. They will be heroes on the curling rinks for quite some time.

Me: Hey, can you put on the Olympics

Bartender: I guess…. (starts clicking through and puts on a replay of biathlon relay)

Me: Sorry, I meant the primetime coverage of the Olympics

Bartender: (blank stare) what? what channel do you want?

Me: I’m not sure what channel it actually is but the primetime coverage where they are showing the live events.

Bartender: (increasingly impatient face) What am I searching for exactly?

All my friends: Can we at least get beers before you make the bartender hate us?

Me: Bobsled, we’ve got 3 teams!

Bartender: You want me to turn off the Celtics game for bobsled?

Me: Thanks so much. It’s going to be tough for us to win a medal but one of them liked some of my posts on Instagram so I’ve got to support.

Bartender: (I really hate you look) Can I least get you a beer after the weirdest tv request I’ve ever gotten?

Me: No thanks, I’m just having water….(jk, you know I got an IPA and nachos)

But speaking of bobsled….we are sitting 9, 20 and 21 after the first 2 runs. So could be better. I’ll save most of the bobsled talk for tonight but there weren’t massive mistakes but Codie Bascue is going to drive some perfect runs to end up on the podium. But at least we didn’t wear an anti-doping t-shirt and get caught doping….

Joey Mantia of the USA competed in the Men’s 1,000 meters long track speed skating this morning. He skated in the 13th out of 18th pair. He had a really good race and with one of the best times this year not at altitude. Takura Oda of Japan skated in the next pair and they had to go down to the hundreth of seconds to show Joey was still in the lead. But from there he had to slowly watch himself slip to second and third and finally Kjeld Nuis of the Netherlands skated last and took gold knocking Joey off the podium (really Dutch skaters, didn’t have enough medals already? couldn’t share the wealth a little bit?).

2014 and 2018 have not been the best for US speed skaters and this would have been a really big deal for Joey and the team but unfortunately he ended up sitting in the hardest spot. So just wanted to give him a little shout-out that someone was watching your race this morning and is proud. And you can read a lot more about him here if you are interested.

And way to go Dutch skaters….smooth move assholes

Time for some ice skating! I don’t think there is much else live tonight. Do you know when there is a lot of live stuff? Saturday morning at 1:00am. I’m going to be sitting on my couch with the TV on and streaming something on my phone and wilding out. And by wilding out I’m sure I will be asleep but I’m going to give it my best.

Also, some good Olympic funnies are here.

Short Track Speedskating

How do you get into short track speedskating in the US? It’s one of those sports that you don’t casually hear about someone doing. Is it more of a west coast thing?

Just going to throw this out there, Shim Suk-Hee of Korea in the women’s race prelim is one of the first short skate speed skaters that makes passing people look easy. I feel like so many other people don’t even try it and she is it just zipping around like it’s NBD.

Can you butt slide across the finish line and still win? But also, do not piss off the Korean men’s 500 speed skaters. Did you just see how they tag teamed the Chinese skater and crushed him into 4th place? He got passed on both sides and ended up being beaten by butt slide guy.

Oh Sbit! This women’s race. I feel like the Korean racers tried to get too sneaky with tactics and knocked each other out.

Women’s Ice Skating

This sailor moon clip is fascinating. I feel like she is in her zone for anime appreciation in these eastern Asian games.

Not going to make it for the free skate ending, calling it now.

This morning is a good time to wake up as an American. Because look at what happened overnight! Remember when I wrote yesterday that ending up fourth would be a fantastic end scenario? Let’s bump that hope up to third! Now let’s see how we got here.

Women’s Big Air Snowboarding

Jamie Anderson threw down a Cab Double Cork 900 but Anna Gasser of Austria nailed a Double Cork 1080 on her final run to take home the gold. Everyone knows that doing it cab-style doesn’t quite make up for the extra rotation….duh. But this brings Jamie up to 2 medals this game and 3 all time (2 gold and 1 silver) so not too shabby at all.

Women’s Alpine Combined

So this race starts with a downhill component and finishes with a slalom run and I think was the perfect passing of the guard for US women’s skiing. Lindsey Vonn was the leader after the downhill, her traditional strength, but missed a gate in slalom and officially has a DNF in what she claims will be her last Olympic race. Mikaela Shiffrin was 6th after the downhill and put up the 3rd best time in slalom to combine for the silver medal. She is only 22 right now and has some Olympics left. You would have liked to see them both medal in the final race but storybook endings rarely happen, especially in a sport like downhill skiing, so this was probably a bit more realistic passing of the guard from Vonn to Shiffrin.

Men’s Freestyle Skiing Halfpipe

David Wise had some technical issues in his first two runs and had one run left to get more than 20 points when teammate Alex Ferreira was in the lead with 90. He landed 4 amazing tricks, launched his ski poles in celebration, got the gold and celebrated with his family.

And just because there is so much else going on that I know silver medalist Alex Ferreira is not going to be getting much attention today here is a picture of him and an article focused on him.

Women’s Hockey

This is going to be everywhere when you wake up so I’m not even going to try to add anything. You just need to watch the shoot-out, know the intense rivalry between these two countries goes back decades and be happy that the US team of amazing hockey players finally brought home the gold. And that everyone is going to be talking about Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson’s deke that she named “Oops, I did it again”.

Now it’s time for some quiche. Good Morning America. Be proud of your athletes today, they had a stellar night.

Women’s 2 man bobsled team of Elena Meyers Taylor and Lauren Gibbs brought home the silver. They only lost by .07 seconds to the German team. I think they really wanted to bring home gold as Taylor won bronze in Vancouver and Silver in Sochi but still did us proud.

And also an important thing to note, with all of these medals the overall count is finally getting closer to where it should be. If we can end up fourth I would say disaster averted. Not a bad start to Wednesday.

Because guess what other team event came home with their first medal? Women’s Speed Skating Team Pursuit. I love this event because we’ve got a team event in something that is usually so individualized. And when they get super in-sync it’s just a really cool visual.

So the U.S. was up against the Dutch in the semifinals. It’s not based on time to get into the finals but winner moves on so they knew they didn’t have a chance and rested Brittany Bowe to save her for the bronze medal match.

We started out incredibly strong, fell apart near the end but held on for the well deserved medal.

You should watch the women’s gold meal match as well. Japan coming out of nowhere in the last two laps to take back the lead and bury Netherlands with a new Olympic record. Watching the two teams you can tell that this is Japan’s jam. Netherlands probably focuses a little more on the individual events and Japan knows they can crush this event and it shows.

The men’s hockey team’s journey came to a close early this morning as the USA lost to Czech Republic in a shootout. Our best men’s hockey moment at Sochi came from a shootout but these games it is arguably reversed. Without the NHL participating we had a mix of young players and veterans that were never able to really mesh together. They’ll have to leave it up to the ladies to bring home the hardware and the glory for the USA.

But they do happen on snow….

Because Kikkan Randall and Jessie Diggins just won the first ever gold medal for USA in cross country skiing in the sprint relay. They really did save the best for last after some disappointing earlier races. You could tell when they were sprinting down the homestretch who was the hungriest for gold and we got it. And just want to clarify that these two athletes have had amazing seasons and were not necessarily underdogs in this race. It’s just a miracle in general that we got our first women’s Olympic medal and it was a gold.

There is something to say about our first medal being a relay because you know US winter athletes do….?

Also chest bumps for cross country gold medals, new American Olympic tradition.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BfdjnnLFiCg/?taken-by=teamusa

Evening. I’m running out of intros so….

But while doing some research I found this hilarious video of what happens when your blade breaks off in a performance in 1999, it’s worth a watch until the end.

Women’s Short Program

So what’s up with the arms straight up in the air thing for jumps? I feel like that’s new but not sure about that and does it add extra points? But I’m taking a firm stance now that I think it’s cool and I’m all for it.

Here are the spellings of the two Russian skaters that everyone keeps mentioning. Yevgenia Medvedeva and Alina Zagitova. I’m not sure which one is which but as soon as I figure that out I’ll try to clarify.

Bradie Tennell is first up to skate in the competition and the U.S. She fell on her first jump but she seems to have recovered well. Her music selection is from a famous Korean movie, I don’t hate this strategy of being relatable to the hometown crowd. I would probably give extra points for the Band of Brothers intro but there’s always next time.

Mirai Nagasu also starts out with a fall but brings it back with her second jump combo.

Karen Chen does the exact same thing to bird calls. Maybe she was inspired by Johnny Weir’s recent hairstyle choice?

They end up 9, 10, 11 (ducks fly together) which is really out of medal contention considering who is at the top of the scoreboard but if they skate clean free programs they will be able to move up in the ranks.

Women’s 2 Man Bobsled

Humpries and Meyers. Great first run for the USA putting them at the top spot. Great USA chant as well from the stands. Greubel and Poser. Not far behind in 3rd. They just showed Jamaica as well which is pretty cool. But I’m pretty sure the camera guy is showing the fathers of all the athletes in the second after they cross the finish line but not showing the time yet because they mostly look a little confused and sad when I’m pretty sure that’s the opposite they are actually feeling.

Women’s Short Track Speed Skating Relay

I forgot how amazingly crazy and chaotic and fun to watch this event is. Near the end people just start popping out of nowhere to get pushed and you have no idea what is actually happening. How do the athletes even know what’s going on?

Women’s Downhill Alpine Skiing

Lindsey Vonn won a bronze. Maybe not exactly what she hoped out of these games and this event but from the interview she gave you can tell how much she loves this sport and how hard it is going to be to walk away. They showed a montage of all her worst crashes and her numerous injuries. The fact she still goes out there and gives it her all says something about her as a person and a competitor.