The Olympics have started!
 

The Olympics have kicked off and got out to a great start. My wife and I watched mixed biathlon, men and women's skiathon, 3000 meter speedskating, and women's normal hill ski-jump over the weekend.

The biathlon was fantastic - such an interesting sport with the mix of skiing and shooting. An athlete can come into the range with a 20 second lead and leave trailing by 10 seconds if they have a bad run at the range. The lead changed continually and the US team even had a fleeting moment of running in 2nd on the strength of their shooting.

Both skiathon races were good in a different way with dominant performances from the gold medal winners. If you are a nordic skiing it is amazing to see what the pros can do on a pair of skis.

NBC has surprised me by not ruining their streaming coverage. The Peacock app is easy to navigate, doesn't have spoilers, and the "replay" streams have the events in full without all the useless "meet the athletes" or let's cut to two people talking instead of watching the race moments. They have about 6 minutes of commercials per hour which isn't bad considering. We saw a bit of olympics in a bar yesterday and the broadcast is almost unwatchable with all the commercials and filler.

Anyone else watching the Olympics? Any obscure sports that are surprisingly interesting?

Want to talk Olympic politics? - there are other threads for that.

No. I did see a screenshot of the skater that renounced her California citizenship and then disgraced her new country.
Shiny. What thread, where?

I wasn't familiar with "skiathlon" (or the difference between classic and skate skiing). Is that a new thing this year or have I just been out of it?

Both skate skiing and the skiathlon has been part of the Olympic games for 30 years. The "skiathlon" name might be new - I think they used to called it "combined".

I got into cross-country skiing 6 years ago when I decided downhill was too expensive. I've tried skating but it didn't click for me (which is odd because I spend a LOT of time skating uphill on downhill skis.) In the last couple of years I've branched out into back-country skiing.

I've got Plex recording everything NBC broadcast is airing and automatically cutting out the commercials. No idea how commercial detection technology works, but it works well.

Stuff I'd be interested in is biathlon, downhill skiing, really most anything on skis or skates is interesting enough. It amazes me how easy the athletes make a 10k skate race appear.

Women's snowboard stuff seems almost cruel to broadcast. I'm all for their participation, but I could tell I was watching men's snowboarding from 20 ft from the TV in 1/4 second glance of someone spinning in air. Night and day difference in performance there.

Curling is something I could get into. I already seek out shuffleboard when considering a bar to visit.

I'm not going to bother with it.

We watched the Women's giant slalom tonight. Amazing skiing on a treacherous course. (combination of very cold temperatures, low humidity, and 100% man-made snow) 22 skiers crashed out which is crazy at this level of competition.

The Americans had a very bad day.

• Defending Olympic champion Mikaela Shiffrin fell on the first run - DNF
• Nina O'brien took a nasty crash on the 2nd run resulting in what appears to be a spiral tib / fib fracture of her left leg.
• Paula Moltzan had a miraculous save and came back to tie for the lead - then slip back as the day continued.

Wow does it make me want to get out on my skis. Linking those big arcing turns with your hip just off the snow is a magical feeling.


I think tomorrow night will be board-cross. Think of motocross on snowboards. Heats of 5 snowboarders hit the course at once over a bunch of jumps and obstacles. First one down the mountain wins - no points for style.