For all your extremely amateur coverage of the Olympics, mediocre attempts at being witty and original takes, overuse of GIFs and Memes & other random thoughts (and probably some handsome Olympians along the way).
Not going to lie, I didn’t watch anything from last night because I was too busy winning gold of my own!!
Hup Holland!!! We Go Dutch!!!
After a disappointing silver medal finish in the Rio Olympics, team Netherlands came back strong for a gold medal performance in PyeongChang (aka second floor of The Point). For the prelims we excelled in the rubber ducky hockey challenge but not in the Olympic Rings ring toss. And by sheer luck we were able to tie for first in the Ice Ice Trivia (who the F* knows what channel Vanilla Ice’s reality show was on or his first daughter’s name? I wasn’t even sure he was still around). But in the gold medal final of curling with fans it took a few turns but we were able to figure out our sweeping technique and bring home the gold. Damn, does it feel good.
But Instagram told me this morning that many US athletes walked away yesterday with the same feelings….so here are some reactions:
Mikaela Shiffrin not medaling
Adam Rippoon in general
Nathan Chen not having a great Olympics
Men’s Hockey getting a win
John Daly not finishing top 10 in the Skeleton
Shirtless Tongan not finishing last in his event!
That’s all I got right now…I’ll be back up and running either tonight or tomorrow morning.
I’m all in on luge right now and it’s the final event for the sport these games. It’s exciting because the the women, men and doubles (which has grown on me) go one after another and have to hit a physical target with their hand to send their teammate down the track. And if you miss the target you are disqualified from competition. And these are their spiked gloves so this is not a casual high-five situation. They made a very individualized sport a team competition and added some flare to it.
U.S. team had a rocky start with Britcher Summer not having her best run. Chris Mazdzer brought it back but it was really Matt Mortensen and Jayson Terdimen that pulled out something amazing on the last couple turns to get ahead of Italy with only a couple more teams to follow. We got a couple minutes of being on top and having a track record.
But next came Canada besting our time.
Austria next.
And finally Germany pushing the U.S. to the hardest place to finish, in fourth. We finished in 6th at the Sochi games so we’ve made an improvement as a team. Here’s to looking to Beijing in 4 years for getting on that podium. And now they get beer. Lots of beer.
I’ll be honest, work has gotten a bit in the way for constant Olympic watching. I’ll attempt to stay awake for all the coverage tonight and get caught up to speed. I know the chances of that happening are similar to that of a U.S. speedskater bringing home a gold medal this games (more to come on that in a special blog) but I’ll do my best and try not to fail like the 2018 Olympics putting on downhill skiing as scheduled (did you get those jokes? you are becoming a pro).
Let’s go!
Women’s Downhill Skiing
-How do they straight french fry the whole way and never have to pizza?
-I think we are all so excited to Mikaela Shiffrin. So much hype and so far, most of the mega-hyped athletes at this games have done nothing but perform. Solid first run for her, probably not hyped about it but oh shit, she could have just done what the Swiss skier did and attempt to take out half the photographers.
-Anyone else just hear those awkward comments from the commentator about how getting married makes it hard to be a successful skier? Not sure where that came from. Is there proof to those claims or he is just bitter that she’s married and he’s sitting alone on Valentine’s day in a commentator booth? UPDATE: He just apologized, is he reading this right now? I’m sure not but he probably got torn about on twitter. “Spouses are great”.
-I did not know that Heather Bergsma married a dutch speedskater. Not the happiest about that since they are kinda the enemy in this sport but love is love. How are their future children going to pick what country to skate for?
-No surprise here, a Dutch skater won. Shocker.
We get it, you’re team is ridiculously good. I get how it feels to be another other country during swimming now.
Men’s Skeleton (things I did once)
-I think there should be extra points for helmet design, just saying. Ironman is a great one for the overwhelming favorite from the home country.
-Matt Antoine won bronze in Sochi. John Daly regularly puts him in his social media. Not an amazing first run for him but I’m confident he can come back strong.
-Ruh-roh, John Daly also didn’t have a great first run. Luckily there are 3 more runs to start making up on that time difference. Where is Steve Langton. I’m 99% sure that if John can just do one more trust fall on Steve between his runs he’ll come away with a medal. Or maybe whoever slid into his DM’sslid into his DM’s should slide him a message of encouragement right now about sliding down the track a bit faster.
-Matt did a little bit better in his second run while John stayed steady. Let’s get some top ten finishes tomorrow night boys.
Another Happy Valentine’s Day message courtesy of Norway’s curling team:
I’ve got my tight pants, my tights pants on, For Valentine’s Day!
[I fell asleep, it’s no longer live, just an FYI]
Pair’s Free Skate
-Ok China throwing some Star Wars in the mix but Johnny has declared it a disaster. I think some of that music was from Phantom Menace right before Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan faced Darth Maul and we know how that ended so maybe that was just bad music selection.
I think this screenshot below summarizes everything pretty well:
Is this a single gal on Valentine’s Day meme or the medalists in pairs skating?
-Eric Radford and Meagan Duhamel became the first pairs to do a clean quadruple throw jump in the Olympic games and took home bronze. They are hugging in excitement to the left. Heard someone mention their chemisty is sometimes off…probably because he’s not skating with his hot fiance ice dancer Luis Fenero.
-Wenjing Sui and Cong Han of China put in a solid skate with total points of 235.47. They were favorites to win gold and clearly wanted it because that face means….
-Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot won gold with 235.90. They were only fourth after the short program but did a record scoring free skate and sneaked into first with a flawless performance. This is her fifth Olympic performance and after bronze in Vancouver and Sochi she wanted that gold and she got it. She and Bruno are completely overcome with emotion in the center crying for joy.
I’m not going to pretend I have anything new to say about Shaun White’s amazing feat. He deserves to have the honor of being the USA’s 100th gold winter Olympic medal. And be part of this amazing fact:
And if there was ever a time to cry to your mom about something, this would probably be it.
Of course we can make space on the fridge for your third Olympic gold medal, we’ll have to move some more of your 23 X-Games medals to the beer fridge but we’ll make it work.
Alexa and Chris Knierim finished their short program with an adorable kiss. They’ve been through a lot together and are just so happy to be at the Olympics and will celebrate a bit of Valentine’s Day romance when they can, aka at the end of their finals qualifying routine. Go get em.
Notes: What a mustache and what a character (he know all about bears). He has given some solid sound bites about the culinary quality of the snow. He’s probably not having the Olympic performances he wanted (17th in the men’s combined) but he’s having fun and also importantly, he’s collecting a lot of pins. Pins go back to the first modern games in 1896 and have slowly become a collector’s item and also one of the athlete’s favorite past-times during the games. Swapping and collecting pins and Bryce (just like his mustache) does not disappoint.
I don’t think I’ve touched on Chloe Kim yet and this is the first time I’ve watched her. She definitely lives up the hype. She’s also got a great story. Papa Kim would drive her 6 hours in the middle of the night to get her to Mammoth Lakes to ride. Whole family making incredible sacrifices to get her to this moment. She also has a lifetime supply of skittles as well so there’s that. She is only 17 and just blew away the competition. 98.25. And Arielle Gold for the bronze giving the US 2 medals.
Casual almost perfect final run.
I want to give a shout out to Kelly Clark as well, she has been in the Olympics since 2002 when she won gold. If you saw her final interview she seemed so down to earth and happy to still be competing.
Curling Bronze Medal Match
And remember Anastasia & Alexander? They won bronze today. I’m kinda excited for them and yes, I know they are OAR superfans. But as luger Chris pointed out, the individual athletes from opposing countries probably have a lot in common and a lot of compassion for each other as athletes devoted to their sports. I enjoyed watching them play as the first thing I watched this Olympics and I’m glad they got a medal as clean athletes from Russia. And for some full circle fun, Matt Hamilton fell in their opening match and Anastasia got a little chuckle. In this bronze medal final Anastasia fell right before getting her bronze medal.
And while there have been various satisfaction levels of NBC’s overall coverage (especially during the day) I will say their social media coverage has been pretty on point. They found knitting coach:
For today’s medal winners there are 2 things I wanted to address. How all of the gold medal winners names from today are exactly what you would expect from someone from their country. And the stuffed animals. I addressed it with Red a bit but some more questions and answers have happened since this morning. So in honor of those 2 things here are pictures of all the winners with their new stuffed animal!
Biathlon – Mens 10K Sprint: Arnd Peiffer, Wolfenbuttel, Germany
Simen actually led a Norwegian sweep with Martin Johnsrud Sundby and Hans Christer Holund.
Women’s Moguls: Perrine Laffont, France
They are still fully in Mogul mode, look at the form.
But unfortunately a very disappointing event for the US. We had 4 in the finals and walked away with no medals which we hadn’t done since 2006.
Men’s Luge Singles: David Gleirscher, Hall in Tirol, Austria
Much more casual stuffed animal pose (oh, hey Chris)
Men’s Slopestyle Snowboarding: Red Gerard, Silverthorne, Colorado
I would say general confusion on what to do with a stuffed animal more than anything else
Men’s 5000m Long Track Speedskating: Sven Kramer, Heerenveen, Netherlands
I think this is more of “Three-Peat, still got it, I don’t know what this tiger is doing in my hand and I don’t even care”
So WTF tiny stuffed animals and no medals?
So no one panic, there are still medals being given out but it is traditional for the winter Olympics to have a nightly ceremony for all sports when the medals are given out. In an ode to ancient Greece they used to give out some sort of bouquet of flowers reminiscent of a victor’s olive wreath. But in a push for sustainability in 2016 they got rid of the wreaths and switched to small statues of the Olympic logo. They said the flowers weren’t meaningful to most athletes and the statues would be something they could keep forever. I guess the same thing goes with the stuffed animals…sure. No way 84% of those stuffed animals don’t end up as chewed up dog toys, in their kids yard sale pile or traded for pins in the village.
Johnny & Tara – ok, getting a little more out there with the outfits. Not sure what is going on around Johnny’s neck but if he’s letting loose with his words he might as well let loose with the outfits as well.
I already wrote about Luge but it’s good to see that some light exercise band work is good to stay limber between luge runs.
Moguls, got to ask. Why are there fake tiny moguls at the end? What is their purpose? And again, very disappointing that the US didn’t medal or even make it to the finals. Maybe if we had a cheering section like this they would have done better.
This is one of the wildest things I have ever witnessed with my own two eyes!! A North Korean cheer sqaud at the Olympics 😱😱😱 pic.twitter.com/ijJysVGLXf
Everyone be on the lookout for the tall Russian coach with the red scarf and the bowl cut. He is very creepy and always lurking around somewhere.
Adam Rippon, here we go. He said he is going to sneak attack the competition so let’s see it. He talked a big game. He came through for the USA. That’s what you get Mike Pence for tweeting at him. You only fired him up even more. Score seemed a little bit low but we’ll see where he ends up.
Royer's Olympic Blog 