The Swamp

The Sybian wrote: ↑Thu Feb 15, 2018 3:27 pm

Steve of phpBB wrote: ↑Wed Feb 14, 2018 9:38 pm

Rex wrote: ↑Tue Feb 13, 2018 11:51 pm Yo Korea, your weather sucks dick. Maybe have this someplace more reasonable next time, like the Poconos?

There's no snow in those mountains, is there?

Not much. There are several ski slopes in the Poconos, but they are all tiny. I was going to say they all suck, but in fairness, I've never skied at any of them, only been there in the summer.

Camelback is an alright track. Jack Frost is lame.

brian wrote: ↑Fri Feb 16, 2018 12:12 pm Also, for the last time I'm going to quit bitching about Asia getting the Winter Olympics three times in a row.

(Sochi is basically in Asia, yo.)

I'm a little surprised to see ANY bitching about the weather, given how terrible Sochi was in terms of conditions. They built those Olympics in a summer resort town on the Black Sea. Place has average winter temps in the mid-50s.

Russians fucking suck. Corrupt bullshit, that was.

Nonlinear FC wrote: ↑Fri Feb 16, 2018 12:46 pm Russians fucking suck. Corrupt bullshit, that was.

Fired up for the World Cup?

Look I don’t know shit about figure skating. But that Nathan Chen routine was legit.

A_B wrote: ↑Fri Feb 16, 2018 9:51 pm Look I don’t know shit about figure skating. But that Nathan Chen routine was legit.

5th best ever score in history. Too bad he was too far back.

Haven't been watching a lot of these games, but sat down with my daughter to watch the NBC feed of the Women's Super G race.

The coverage was pretty much a self-satire. As many shots of Lindsay Vonn's disappointed father as of some competitors. Constant cut aways of the Vonn family talking as skiers were racing. Ridiculous.

But even worse was the colour guy (Bode Miller?) who sounded like a complete moron.

Situation is that Lindsay Vonn was the first one down the hill. She had what looked to me to be a bit of a rough run even up until she turned wrong and basically slid off the course.

So 2nd skier heads out and her splits and final time are way worse than Vonn's. So Miller immediately says that Vonn's time could hold up - she was having such a great run that the one mistake might not be enough to keep her off the podium. She finished 6th.

Numerous dumb comments followed. And then they showed the final standings, so off went the TV. Just found out now that a later skier won.



Either - NBC really doesn't know what it's doing (odd after all these Olympics) or they figured that for all intents and purposes the event was over when Vonn fell to 4th.

NBC assumes nobody cares directly about any particular sport. They assume we care about the known big (American) names, and once they're done, they can move on to something else.

A_B wrote: ↑Fri Feb 16, 2018 9:51 pm Look I don’t know shit about figure skating. But that Nathan Chen routine was legit.

I'm old enough to remember when falling meant you didn't get a good score. Now it seems to be 'Hey, he tried some crazy quad jump, who cares if he landed on his ass'.

And I stayed up late watching the women's skiing slope style. That shit is bananas.

Ski races are weird. I don't know why they don't send down the B-flight first, and let all of the hobbyists from Myanmar or whatever have their fun, then do the A-flight. Even when it works right, the winner has to wait for every Baron von Dingleblatt to go down the hill before they can celebrate.

Rex wrote: ↑Sat Feb 17, 2018 2:35 pm Ski races are weird. I don't know why they don't send down the B-flight first, and let all of the hobbyists from Myanmar or whatever have their fun, then do the A-flight. Even when it works right, the winner has to wait for every Baron von Dingleblatt to go down the hill before they can celebrate.

I thought the top ranked folks got to pick their order. This way they can get reports from their teammates who have gone and see what others have done.

wlu_lax6 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 17, 2018 5:04 pm

Rex wrote: ↑Sat Feb 17, 2018 2:35 pm Ski races are weird. I don't know why they don't send down the B-flight first, and let all of the hobbyists from Myanmar or whatever have their fun, then do the A-flight. Even when it works right, the winner has to wait for every Baron von Dingleblatt to go down the hill before they can celebrate.

I thought the top ranked folks got to pick their order. This way they can get reports from their teammates who have gone and see what others have done.

I think it also has to do with fresh snow. If 50 bad skiers go down first it would ruin the course and/or weather conditions can change.

Ongoing carnage in the Men's GS. Lots of guys wiping out in the last 3 turns, right before the finish.

well well the husband is in trouble

Russian mixed doubles curling Olympic bronze medallist fails drugs test

degenerasian wrote: ↑Sat Feb 17, 2018 5:08 pm

wlu_lax6 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 17, 2018 5:04 pm

Rex wrote: ↑Sat Feb 17, 2018 2:35 pm Ski races are weird. I don't know why they don't send down the B-flight first, and let all of the hobbyists from Myanmar or whatever have their fun, then do the A-flight. Even when it works right, the winner has to wait for every Baron von Dingleblatt to go down the hill before they can celebrate.

I thought the top ranked folks got to pick their order. This way they can get reports from their teammates who have gone and see what others have done.

I think it also has to do with fresh snow. If 50 bad skiers go down first it would ruin the course and/or weather conditions can change.

The top ranked folks do get to choose when they go, and they consider weather/snow conditions in choosing. So the broadcasters show the main group instead of all 60 (?).

degenerasian wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2018 12:04 pm well well the husband is in trouble

Russian mixed doubles curling Olympic bronze medallist fails drugs test

Too much vodka? Didn't realize curlers needed to use performance enhancement drugs. I guess it could have been Viagra.

so far the ice dance outfits are wild

Pruitt wrote: ↑Sat Feb 17, 2018 6:30 am But even worse was the colour guy (Bode Miller?) who sounded like a complete moron.

I think he also made this comment at the time.

I want to point out she also got married. And it’s historically very challenging to race on the World Cup with a family or after being married. Not to blame the spouses, but I just want to toss that out there that it may be her husband’s fault.

There was a good 30 seconds of dead air after that. They just showed a skier going down the hill and neither announcer said anything. I thought they cut his mic and were dragging him out of the booth. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bo ... 6daf45dff3 has some more details and the audio. Later on he said it was a joke, but it didn't sound like one at the time.

That totally reads like a joke. Must have been that classic NH dry delivery that threw people off.

totally a joke, heard that joke many times

even in hockey it's a common joke first game home after a long road trip is usually a loss. Haven't seen the wife in awhile, gotta do errands etc...

there is no joking or sarcasm anymore, world of outrage over everything.

degenerasian wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2018 11:05 am totally a joke, heard that joke many times

even in hockey it's a common joke first game home after a long road trip is usually a loss. Haven't seen the wife in awhile, gotta do errands etc...

Well, that's not a joke that's actually a proven statistical anomaly (at least in hockey), but I don't know how much it has to do with domestic concerns (some, maybe) and how much of it is mental, how much of it is statistical noise (by nature, it's going to have a small sample size -- only two or three such games for each team each season meeting the criteria).

Well, Ted Ligety was 15th after winning gold 4 years ago. He got married AND had a kid. Enough evidence for me.

And, following that, this:

sancarlos wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2018 5:14 pm And, following that, this:

Canada needs to set up beer vending machines that only serve people with Canadian passports so their fans don't miss any action waiting in beer lines.

duff wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2018 1:47 pm

degenerasian wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2018 12:04 pm well well the husband is in trouble

Russian mixed doubles curling Olympic bronze medallist fails drugs test

Too much vodka? Didn't realize curlers needed to use performance enhancement drugs. I guess it could have been Viagra.

I'm not that surprised, for mixed doubles curling. I didn't watch the Russian team very much, but the guy on the Canadian pair worked his ass off, because he did a lot of sweeping even on his own throws.

"cunniliftus"

Best moment of the Olympics (for America) and it will get zero pub

http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/usas-r ... untry-gold

That was great. And it is breaking news splashed across the top of the NBC Olympics site, so I bet they'll show it tonight. They highlighted the (even closer) photo finish in the men's mass start biathlon over the weekend, and a (not that) French guy won that.

Ryan wrote: ↑Wed Feb 21, 2018 7:53 am Best moment of the Olympics (for America) and it will get zero pub

http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/usas-r ... untry-gold

I am not sure if the Nordic combined folks train with the cross country skiers, but this was a fun article on the team training in a ski garage

https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-u-s-o ... 1519039660

So, last night the family sat down for our dinner/Olympic watching for the evening. We put on the DirecTv Olympics overview channel to show what was available on the various channels. There's one channel we don't get, because you have to pay extra for, but you can "watch" it in the little square on the summary channel.

My wife looks at the guy in the little premium channel square and says it looks like our boys' Orthodontist. Both boys agreed, thinking it was funny. Then we heard him talk and he SOUNDED like our Ortho. A bit of Googling and rewinding confirmed that it WAS our Ortho! It turns out that his daughter played hockey at Harvard and is now a member of the South Korean hockey team (his wife is first-generation Korean-American). Apparently in their last game, she scored a goal for Korea - the first (and only) goal they'd scored in the tournament, which was a pretty big deal there, particularly because that's the combined North-South Korean team (and American ex-pats, apparently).

Pretty cool and unexpected.

She scored the goal against Japan in the group stage last week. Korea got another goal yesterday in the 7th place game against Sweden.

While the combined team was a nice gesture it turned into quite a farce. Every game the coach had to decide which 23 out of the now 30 players to dress and she had to play at least 6 North Koreans.

My new cardio workout is watching the cross country relays. They're really great TV.

Rex wrote: ↑Wed Feb 21, 2018 11:19 am My new cardio workout is watching the cross country relays. They're really great TV.

The biathlon is even crazier. Sprint for 3 km then stop and shoot 5 targets each the size of a silver coin from 50 metres away. With reloading bullets and penalty loops the lead can change after each shooting station.

sancarlos wrote: ↑Sat Feb 17, 2018 2:13 pm NBC assumes nobody cares directly about any particular sport. They assume we care about the known big (American) names, and once they're done, they can move on to something else.

And, for the most part, they are 100 percent correct.

Look, I've probably watched more of these games than most folks, but I'm not slogging through 90 minutes of Super G when there's absolutely no chance an American is going to at least threaten a podium slot. I'll watch parts of it, but I'm not gonna invest that much time when there's so much other shit to watch. (I'm taping NBC SN and CNBC, not enough time in the day.)

I'll watch pretty much an entire sliding event. I dig the biathalon, but I'm zipping through it until they get to the 4 shooting segments, ski jumping is getting forwarded, and a lot of alpine is gonna get skipped if no American is in the mix.

And I'm an Olympics mark. The average American? They aren't gonna sit through a bunch of Super G knowing Vonn is out of the mix. And why should they? They don't watch these events other than every 4 years.

Rachel Homan was eliminated last night (first time ever Canada will not get a curling medal) and the outrage is from the post game interview.

what says you?

http://awfulannouncing.com/olympics/can ... jones.html

For me, i thought the questions were a bit rough but if she had ended it with "i know it's been a tough week but thank you for representing Canada" she could have salvaged it. You can tell Homan wanted to kill her.

rass wrote: ↑Wed Feb 21, 2018 8:08 am That was great. And it is breaking news splashed across the top of the NBC Olympics site, so I bet they'll show it tonight. They highlighted the (even closer) photo finish in the men's mass start biathlon over the weekend, and a (not that) French guy won that.

NBC LOOOVES Diggins and the XC team. They've given her and the rest of the team a lot of run in prime time and they were featured with Katie Couric before the games. She has this whole glitter thing going on and is very cute.

They will get lots of coverage tonight.

Really enjoyed watching South Korea hang a four in the fifth end against the US in women's curling yesterday afternoon. US spent so much time talking about strategy, they eventually called a time out and the coach came down to join the conversation. Two minutes and one sensational South Korean throw later, the US team honked their final stone and they went from up one to down three.

Ten minutes later, my nap started, just like it was supposed to.

degenerasian wrote: ↑Wed Feb 21, 2018 10:49 am She scored the goal against Japan in the group stage last week. Korea got another goal yesterday in the 7th place game against Sweden.

While the combined team was a nice gesture it turned into quite a farce. Every game the coach had to decide which 23 out of the now 30 players to dress and she had to play at least 6 North Koreans.

Korea wasn't going to win anyway, so if it creates a small opening of diplomatic opportunity then so be it. Arguably, it sucks for the South Koreans on the team to have to give up spots to less qualified athletes but I imagine even they would agree that detente with the North is a good outcome (assuming it ever happens).

Win or lose, going to 4 on 4 in OT on the Olympic ice sheet is dumb.

Win or lose, Pyeongchang is fun to say out loud.