Wednesday, February 6, 2013

BUT I WANTED SALÉ AND PELLETIER AND ORSER AND BOURNE AND KRAATZ AND CHOUINARD AND MANLEY AND STOJKO AND BROWNING ALL AT THE SAME TIME:  One year from today, the Winter Olympics will begin in Sochi, Russia, the Games so packed with new events that the Opening Ceremonies won't even take place until the next evening, in order to ensure that everything can still end on that final Sunday.

Among the new events? You'll be excited to hear that luge team relay and a figure skating team event are involved ... until you get to the details, which involve the most boring possible version of what you might have otherwise conjured. Luge relay does not have sleds running into sleds halfway to hand off a baton halfway through the course, but instead functions as "when one gets to the bottom, the next one starts," and team skating is not an Ice Capades spectacle but some nonsense where they just aggregate the scores of separate performances in the various disciplines. Bleh.

12 comments:

  1. KCosmo's neighbor11:26 AM

    I too am disappointed that team skating doesn't equal a big dance-off on ice. Oh well. I'm waiting for long-distance skating, which would be similar to cross-country skiing, but on a big-ass ice trail (maybe 50K). I ice skate all the time, and I feel the need to see stuff when I skate rather than just going in circles. I'll be developing that sport in my spare time...more to come! My dream is to pave the bike path along the West Side Hwy (in NYC) with ice during the winter months. Put a few lockers on one end...lace up the skates, go a few miles, back and forth. Great work out, some scenery, and who the heck wants to bike ride in freezing weather anyway (not me!)? I just need to invent a narrow Zamboni to resurface the path every few hours, and some security to close down the path for resurfacing, etc. So I have some t's to cross and i's to dot! I doubt my plan will piss anyone off (ha, ha).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Marsha12:22 PM

    Did you mean for Orser to be in there twice? If so, I don't get it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Adam B.12:45 PM

    Fixed. I didn't like him THAT much.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Fred App1:26 PM

    Sochi is in the middle of nowhere. The only thing busier than the competition schedule is the travel itinerary you need to get there: a flight to London, then to Moscow, then you have to change AIRPORTS in Moscow and take another flight to Sochi, generally on a plane left over from the '50s-era Aeroflot fleet. I have a feeling that the real reason they're delaying the Opening Ceremonies is that they're afraid not everyone will make it there on time.


    There was a media tour of the venues last November which seemed pretty typical: You couldn't see anything because almost nothing was built yet, and the few places that were (partially) built were obscured by fog. I'm taking another trip there in a few months, and I'm hoping that they're a little bit further along in preparations.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Adam B.1:56 PM

    I don't know if my brother is going this time; he was part of the team from a Seacaucus-based business channel. It's not that they're delaying the Opening Ceremonies; that date remains the same. It's just that like the Summer Games, they're starting some competitions a day before that. Sorry if I was unclear.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I'm just happy that women's ski jumping is included (finally!). I'm still really peeved that they weren't part of the Vancouver Games.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Joseph Finn5:21 PM

    For some reason, my mind thought: "Ok, one guy heading down the slope doing skeleton luge then slaps the extended behind him hand of the guy on his back on the next luge which continues the race" which a) would be more exciting and b) guarantee a serious injury or death every race.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Adam B.5:29 PM

    Why not have bobsleigh and luge events on a mountain, instead of an icy track? You know, sledding the way civilians do it.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Joseph Finn5:30 PM

    And a pre-race fistfight between people who spell it sleigh and people who spell it sled!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Olympic Snowball Fights, individual and team. Done.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Watts9:11 PM

    But sleigh and sled are two different things....

    ReplyDelete
  12. You know that, and I know that....

    ReplyDelete