OLE, OLE, O . . . NO: Four years ago, Mr. Cosmopolitan and I spent a long Presidents' Day weekend in Rome, where we had the great pleasure of watching several days worth of BBC coverage of the Salt Lake Olympics. As part of our general dumbfoundedness at the extent to which the BBC's Olympic coverage kicks the snot out of NBC's, we spent an hour on the edge of our seats watching Norway's star biathlete Ole Einar Bjoerndalen win the gold in the 12.5 km men's pursuit as part of his four-gold-medal experience in Salt Lake City. What a great sport, we said to each other over magnificent pastries and coffee, I wonder if it's really this good or if the BBC guys just make everything seem fascinating.

Four years later, I am here to tell you that whether it's the BBC or NBC calling the race, the Biathlon Pursuit is everything that Snowboard Cross is not. You want your head-to-head action? Check. You want people who screw up to be meaningfully penalized but still have a chance to potentially recover? Check. You want nail-biting suspense? Check. You want both physical and mental challenge? Check. You don't want judges sticking their biased heads into things? Check. You want competitors not to do goofy things like showboat ten seconds before they were going to win the gold thereby causing a faceplant and a whole lot of embarrassment? Check. Simply put, biathlon pursuit rocks.

So here's the deal. Start times are determined by placement in the individual sprint competition. Competitors ski a 2.5 km loop with a serious uphill climb at the end and then, using the rifles they've been carrying around on their backs, have to shoot five silver-dollar-sized targets from a distance of 50 meters. They repeat this ski-shoot thing 4x, then ski a final lap to the finish. The beauty of the whole concept is that if a skier misses any target, he has to ski a penalty lap around a smaller (150 m) track before returning to the main ski course. (Miss two, ski two, and so forth.) So they've just skied up a mountain, their hearts are racing, and yet they have to get themselves into a sufficient zen zone to shoot these five coins cleanly and quickly. After each and every lap, the shooting shakes up the standings in some significant fashion so that it's all but impossible to know what's going to happen by the end of the race.

It's high drama, it's got physical and mental prowess, and it's great fun to watch. Even without Brits with a dry sense of humor calling the race.

EDITED TO ADD: My post apparently ate the post that talked about how Blogger was having some issues resulting in new posts eating prior posts and the comments associated therewith. Sorry about that, and apparently none of us (including, this time, me) will be posting until the issue is resolved.

MICHAEL VAUGHN CAN'T BE DEAD -- HE'S ALIVE AND WELL ON THE PAGES OF THE WSJ: Interesting article in today's Journal (subscription unfortunately req'd) about how actors like Michael Vartan are being hotly pursued for television pilots because of a shortage of ruggedly handsome actors-with-real-chops to carry the weight of the burgeoning surge of new dramas. Examples cited include George Clooney back in the glory days of ER, and more recently Matthew Fox and the guy with the best glistening eyes in the business, Patrick Dempsey. Besides Vartan, other actors being wooed by multiple parties include Peter Krause, Jeremy Northam, and Ron Livingston.

RESOLVED: THIS HOUSE PREFERS HALFPIPE: There's been a fair amount of discussion here lately as to which winter Olympic events are sports and which are not. The debates go more or less like this:

• Events where a judge must exercise discretion are not sports; others are.
• Events stemming from the X-Games are not sports; others are.
• Who cares whether they're technically sports or not -- they're all fun to watch.

After watching much of the inaugural coverage of Snowboard Cross last night, I have to add a new category:

• Certain events may in fact constitute a sport but nonetheless are ridiculous and have no business being in the Olympics.

Any Olympic event in which (1) the most relevant statistic is which lane the competitors are starting in (lots of commentary to the effect of "oooh, no wins for the black line tonight, it must be running slower than red or blue!"); (2) the most relevant strategic point is "he who gets the early lead wins because he's less likely to be squashed and nudged off the track by others behind him"; and (3) the sole means of overcoming the significance of (1) and (2) seems to be positioning oneself in the one spot on the track (amusingly, the one spot without direct camera coverage) from which one can try to launch a slingshotlike attack on the leader is just not worthy of being an Olympic event. Snowboard cross is a back yard dirtbike race on snow -- fun for the kiddies involved, but not so much deserving of medals and primetime television coverage.

Edited to add: Every guy I work with is now shouting at me that Snowboard Cross is the best event of the entire Olympics.

"RETAINS ITS ORIGINAL FRESHNESS ABOUT AS WELL AS SUSHI": The Times' Ben Brantley weighs in on the new star-studded revival ofNeil Simon's Barefoot in the Park--and it ain't pretty.

On Amanda Peet: "Her Corie seems as madcap as Martha Stewart in a business meeting. You can sense that she's trying, really hard, to be funny and freewheeling, but it hurts her. Us, too."

On Tony Roberts: "The role of the Bohemian womanizer next door is one Mr. Roberts could glide through on automatic pilot. He does."

Everyone and everything from director Scott Elliot to Isaac Mizrahi's costumes gets the business in the review, save for comparably low-wattage Adam Sietz, who plays the minor role of a telephone repairman and whose previous acting jobs include voicing the role of Boots' father in an episode of Dora the Explorer.

I LOVE SCOTCH: Maxim magazine lists the 20 Greatest Movie Drinkers from Ron Burgundy and the McKenzie Brothers to E.T. and Arthur. Will Ferrell's Frank "the Tank" is No. 1. No word on whether the Donger, Henry Chinaski, or George Bailey made the cut.

HE DOESN'T CARE WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT HIM ANYWAY (HE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT THAT): Weezer's abstemious Rivers Cuomo is back at Harvard.

Impress us with your finally graduating, do.

KISS AND CRY: Back to Gretchen for the men's free skate:

First Russian Skater, Whose Name I Cannot Remember: He frontloaded the program with jumps, and despite what Sandra Bezic called the "intensity"of it, I thought it was boring. Jumping alone is not particularly interesting. And I was entertained that at least one Russian skater hadn't given up the gloves. It's always interesting when skaters fallout of what look like basic positions or trip on their footwork-he lost his balance while cantilevered, and just went splat. It just goes to show how difficult the fluid and artsy moves can be, even when you're not leaping into the air and spinning four times.

Kevin Van Der Perren, the EXIT skater, is back! His outfit is, yet again, terrible. He's skating to Pirates of the Caribbean and has a big splash of red on his left thigh, representing a bloody leg wound, and a fake sword scabbard. Oh, I love this guy. He's clearly committed to the program-check out the "I'm imitating Johnny Depp imitating Keith Richards" face before he launched into his swordfighting-footwork sequence. And his jumps, especially those triple lutzes, are huge and powerful.

NBC is running yet another semi-incomprehensible analysis of the new judging system. One of the things that is intriguing to me is that in most of the world, when you have corruption problems, you expose them to the light with transparency and accountability. But in figure skating, they respond to corruption problems by eliminating the accountability and the transparency. You can't tell who is doing what! You don't know which judge is gaming the system! And the problem is that the program component scores judge things like musicality and artistic expression, which is inherently subjective. So basically, we haven't eliminated the corruption problems-we've made it incrementally harder for judges to cheat, because they might have the scores that are tossed out, but we've made it easier for them to get away with it.

Angela Nikodinov is coaching Ivan Dinev, a Bulgarian skater. She was a beautiful and lyrical skater in her time, and suffered a tragic loss when her mom died en route to US nationals. The commentators said that she might be back, which would be a great thing for US skating. She is a very different skater from the current US women's crop. Ivan is fun to watch because of his long lines, but his height almost seems like it's a problem for him-he can't quite get down to the ice in his spins, and his lanky body fell out of the triple axel. It's always sad to see a skater fall apart like he did, but in some ways, it's good to see it on TV--it helps remind you of the difficulty of this sport and gives you a baseline for the rest of the skaters.

* * *

The new figure skating Code of Points uses a panel of 12 anonymous judges. The computer randomly eliminates three of the judges for each skater. As a result, the scores from nine judges remain. For each element, the high and low scores are deleted, and the remainder of the scores are averaged for the final mark.

The goal? Deter corruption. Debra Pitz Gataz, the ISU spokeswoman, told the Wall Street Journal that the random procedure is intended to deter corruption, since no one knows whether a judge's score will count.

But there are several key problems with this. The most important statistical problem, as Yale statistician Jay Emerson says, is that in close competitions, the medal results can be dramatically different depending on which judges are randomly eliminated from scoring the event. There are 220 possible judge panels, depending on which judges are selected. Using the 2006 European Championships, Emerson found that after the ladies’ short program, only 50 of the 220 possible panels would have resulted in the same ordering of the top five women. While each panel put Irina Slutskaya on top, Swiss skater Sarah Meier lucked out; more than half of the possible panels would have put her in 4th or 5th. Instead, she placed 3rd. Even Italian Carolina Kostner, in 5th place, would have been ranked 2nd or 3rd by about one-third of the panels. Basically, the skaters in second through fifth place could have been in ANY order, depending on which judging panels were selected.

But, you say, this isn’t a big deal. After all, this was just the short program results. Since the scores in the short are lower already, they are bound to be more clustered. The free skate is longer and scores are higher. That will sort it out.

That was true at the European Championships for the ladies. But it wasn’t true for the ice dancing competition, where the silver and bronze medalists were separated by a mere .55 points. It’s likely that at this Olympics, the ice dancing champions will be chosen by a computer. In the pairs competition, 1/8 of the possible judging panels would have put Pang and Tong in the bronze medal position instead of Shen and Zhao.

Finally, in most of the world, when you have corruption problems, you expose them to the light with transparency and accountability. But in figure skating, they respond to corruption problems by eliminating the accountability and the transparency. You can’t tell who is doing what! You don’t know which judge is gaming the system! And the problem is that the program component scores judge things like musicality and artistic expression, which is inherently subjective. So basically, we haven’t eliminated the corruption problems—we’ve made it incrementally harder for judges to cheat, because they might have the scores that are tossed out, but we’ve made it easier for them to get away with it.

* * *
Evan Lycasek looks infinitely better tonight. He has a great sit spin, his jumps are on, and those landings are clean and elegant. I’m not sure I understand the red ribbon tied around his hand. Is it supposed to be blood? I think he’s skating to Carmen, so that would make sense, sort of. I am a huge footwork fan—I think Michelle Kwan did this best, but when it’s timed to a big crescendo in the music, great footwork, more than jumps, can inspire the crowd. His is great, not necessarily for the quality of the footwork but for the choreographic integrity. I’m so happy for him. After his really disappointing short skate, this must be tremendously gratifying. It’s a beautiful, inspiring, clean Olympic skate.

Matt Savoie, dressed as Robin Hood. Or possibly a peasant. Oh wait! It’s the soundtrack from The Mission. This is some of my favorite music, so again, I’m already biased in favor of Matt. Awesome triple axel as his second jumping pass. He creates incredibly lovely angles against the ice with his body, leaning into spins and really working the edges. In some ways, he reminds me of an ice dancer; you’ll see in the ice dancing that part of what they do is work their spins and spirals very low to the ice, which requires tremendous control. Matt does some of that too, in a really lovely and elegant way.

Emmanuel Sandhu is skating to original music, which is really interesting. The choice of music is one of the most essential decisions that an elite skater can make. Good music can create life and character and artistry in a program; it can also inspire an audience to their feet. But good music is hard to find, and even harder to edit together into a 4.5 minute suite. For example, Evan Lysacek’s first program this year was to music from Grease. According to the NBC Olympics site, he found a Los Angeles music studio whose owner had played in the orchestra pit for the Broadway production of "Grease" for several years; that musician created an original arrangement of the music and then recorded and produced the medley for Lysacek's free skate

As a result, you hear skaters use the same music over and over—Carmen, Tosca, Romeo and Juliet. Using original music is an interesting bypass of all the old familiar melodies. Too bad his program didn’t live up to his potential, his reputation, or his musical inventiveness.

Plushenko is skating now.

Best line of the night by Dick Button, commenting on Plushenko’s tendency to do arm flailing instead of actual choreography: “He divides the program: first jumps, then arm movements, then jumps, them arm movements.”

Most mysterious comment of the night, by Scott Hamilton: “[Plushenko] has made every one of the judges his friend. He makes them smart, and they reward him.” What does that mean?

I think that this long program was solid, but not particularly inspiring. The music was fast, but never really soared. I love the arm flailing, but it was a little egregious in this program—there was no choreographic intent.

Ultimately, the thing that you can say about Plushy is that he is tremendous athlete and a smart one; he’s learned how to work the COP very effectively, and perhaps faster than the other skaters. The system works for him and he works it. Some call this code-whoring; I think it’s smart. But it doesn’t result in particularly lovely or inspiring skating. (And just wait until Irina Slutskaya in the ladies’ program; she’s even more guilty of this than Plushy is.)

Lambiel was dressed like a sunburned zebra and is skating to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. One of my pet peeves about the NBC coverage is their refusal to tell us what music the skaters are using. You can sometimes figure it out from the internet or familiar melodies, but I wish they’d make it easy on us. And if Stephane had a vision behind his costume choice and music choice, I couldn’t figure it out.

My fun fact is that Stephane and Carolina Kostner, the Italian skater who carried the flag at the Opening Ceremonies, used to date.

Another quirk of the COP is that skaters get points for jumps even when they fall, as long as they complete the rotations. Overall, I just don’t think the COP penalizes you enough for falling (and oh, Lambiel just had two really bad ones.)

Johnny Weir looks really nervous. He changed his long program mid-season, and is now using an old program, Otonal. Johnny has a beautiful presence on the ice; you want to watch him. This music is perfect—meditative and very moody. It’s an interesting performance—he never fell, but he left out a jump and had to struggle on some others. He would have been smarter to do something—anything—to get that eighth jump into the program, even if he threw it in at the end—because without it, he was missing an automatic five or six points. And as I talked about earlier, even if he had fallen, he would have still earned more points than he lost by not doing it at all. My fiancé declares that he’s the Michelle Kwan of the men—choking at the Olympics.

One thing that always surprises me about skating is how many of the skaters succumb to killer fatigue. Yes, it’s four and a half minutes, but this is what they DO. It’s what they train for. And it’s not like it’s unexpectedly longer than normal.

Daisuke Takahashi had a terrific program in the short. But his first jump, a quad attempt, crashed and burned. And the rest of the program had moments of elegance, but seemed sloppy to me.

You know, this last group of skaters has been really disappointing. The really memorable programs of the evening, in my book, were Evan Lysacek and Matt Savoie, and Shawn Sawyer (the uber-flexible Canadian.) But the rest of them—especially Emmanuel Sandhu, Brian Joubert, and Jeffrey Buttle, were really disappointing. These are great skaters, but none of them had great performances tonight. I can live with the standings, but the fight for the silver and bronze medals finished with a big thud instead of a bang.

One final question: under the old system, would Evan Lysacek’s beautiful performance tonight have gotten him onto the medal stand? I think it might be possible. In the old system, the short program was worth one third of the total score. Looking at the point totals, it looks like under the COP, the points from the short program comprise more like 40% of the total score.