I‘m an Olympic junkie, so watch whenever I can. Love the skating — all I can say about the Russian 15 year old and her quads is WOW! I’m enjoying the short track speed skating and all the different snowboard events. Will be glad when the games are over so I can get some sleep.

Yep, we've watched some. Other than curling, our comments mirror yours.

We commented last night that maybe NBC finally took the criticism seriously. There seem to be far fewer commercials, and fewer fluff pieces. And they are showing many more athletes from the other countries, instead of assuming that we only want to watch Americans. I hope this trend continues.

I agree entirely aok. Try watching curling...it's a weird, weird sport, but the strategies involved make it so interesting...a lot of thinking goes along with the ice, sliding, sweeping, heavy stones and the grace and delicacy of the sliding throw with the gentle twist of the hand at the end.

I really like curling, and -- having played -- I understand how difficult it is in spite of how basic it looks. But not watching any this season.

I watched a few minutes of shuffleboard on ice yesterday but got bored and switched over to the NASCAR race at the LA Coliseum where the cars never even got up to highway speed. Then I got bored with that and watched the NFL Probowl flag football game. Watching snow melt would have been a better use of my time. lol

I like curling, too! Not watching though. Playing is best.

I still have my Little Beaver broom from way back. Tap, tap tap.

Anyone else a little tired of hearing about "the quad?" What's next--the quint? I wish these difficult jumps hadn't become so important in figure skating. Watching last night, the American ice dancers, Chock & Bates, were breathtaking. But I felt the choreography of some of the single skaters' performances was lacking. The skaters seemed to rush through their programs, trying to get in as many jumps as possible. I kept hoping for the artistry that we saw in the 1990s from skaters like Michelle Kwan, Nancy Kerrigan, and Kristi Yamaguchi, but it never appeared.

Alisande - I agree with you and it's why I stopped watching the skating. Watching them fall when trying to get that quad (and whether it was when going forward or backward and which foot they jumped off of to get those extra quad points) can just ruin a beautiful performance.

I haven't watched any of it this year.

I have watched bits here and there. I watched some of the skiing and was terribly disappointed and sad when Mikala Shifrin fell so early. I like to watch the grace and beauty of ice skating, especially the pairs and dancing. I still dont understand all the judging though and how someone who fell and dropped their partner can still score so highly and win over another pair that appeared flawless. It’s always frustrating.

It hurts me when someone else is injured. And this year, when someone has to sit it out due to testing positive for Covid after training so hard for 4 years.

When Michelle Kwan came on the scene she was all energy and jumps. Little to finesse. She matured over the next four years and WOW was she a different skater her second Olympics. The difference between a girl and a women and the grace a woman has... I go back and forth about watching, with all the human rights violations China is known for it does make me frustrated it is there at all.

I have not watched but I did see the horrid conditions the positive covid athletes are enduring. Horrible food and small cramped rooms.

There is some Olympian level cheating going on if the clip linked below is to be believed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/smtt26/sportsmanship_shown_by_the_chinese_skater_in_the/

Imagine that.

There are a few dozen reasons why I lost interest in the Olympics years ago. Cheating and corruption of so many of the governing sports bodies shouldn't be given a stage. It's not a healthy environment with healthy and honest competition. Especially so many of the individual events that breed win at all costs narcissism and bad attitudes among the participants.

I don't think I'm missing anything.

Ditto about the quad. Now that Vincent Zhou is out, I wish they would show more of Jason Brown. He doesn’t have the quad, but his skating is so much more artistic than the others, his changes of direction are so quick, he is just a joy to watch. I couldn’t stay up late enough last night to see him (he was scheduled last) and I saw nothing this morning on Today, so I watched it online. At least there I can watch it again whenever I need a spark of delight.

I was watching the past 3 nights, in bits and pieces. I caught one pair (and sadly now can't remember if Canadian or American or another) during the team competition that I was mighty impressed with - they just flowed and expressed the music so well, with no bobbles either.

I couldn't stay up to see the men's short program last night - I need to search for a repeat on line.

The Women's big air ski jumping last night was mighty impressive too. I don't usually watch many of the skiing event but I've been interested this year.. It seems that the man made snow combined with the below zero temps has made some of the courses quite tricky.

all energy and jumps. Little to finesse

That's how I felt about Tara Lipinski.

Congrats to the Italian mixed curling team...no losses for the whole tournament. Constantini was aces!

Well, I finally got a VPN set on my computer and tonight I watched CBC stream men's figure skating. Every skater, from warm-up to the end. Low key commentary. Plenty of admiration for Jason Brown (who should be on the podium if quads weren't de rigueur). And it aired straight through watching people leaving the arena, awards, and the PA announcement "this concludes today's competition. Thank you for coming..." It was like being there.

Free. I tried watching Peacock but the things I wanted to see, I had to pay for.

Tomorrow I'll see what else I can watch on it. And of course, next week we'll have it on for hockey!

This morning I was watching Canada-Germany hockey play-by-play Inuktitut. Amazing.

I'm mainly interested in the skating. I agree, Jason Brown is amazing. I've been following him a long time. I am always impressed with Nathan Chen. I missed the Russian female skater but have heard how incredible she was. Heard also she had been doping and was caught. I regret that this is all taking place in China, which is so authoritarian and is violating human rights so blatantly.

Apparently the 15-year-old Russian skater is back in the competition. I, too, heard she'd taken a forbidden drug, so I don't know what happened with that. Woodnymph, you should look for a video of her performance. I stand by my comment about undue emphasis on quad jumps, but I have to say she is a phenomenal skater--grace, choreography, athleticism, the whole package.

I caught most of the performance of the 15 year old Russian skater where she skated to Ravel's Bolero (great music!). I thought she was absolutely wonderful and I hope she is cleared of doping charges after having taken heart medication.

Her jumps were spectacular, but I felt like the choreography (and I blame the choreographer) was all about cramming as much into the time as possible - so it felt like she was rushing from one element or move or gesture to the next all the time.... still very, very well executed, but just lacked that bit of finesse that comes from being able to hold a pose or gesture an extra second or two - what Kwan was so good at.

And nobody, but nobody, holds an arabesque spiral like Michelle Kwan did.

Cat_mom, when I think of Michelle, that's the image that comes to mind first. So beautiful.

I've been enjoying the curling, but there is a noticeable difference between the mens and womens teams: the women are all gorgeous...the men look like scruffy unshaven bums and on the whole, the women look like fit athletes, and some of the men sport dad bods ....why is that?

I have a difficult time understanding the scoring procedures esp. in the skiing events. When I think someone has won the gold, they are actually in fourth place. ha

Alisande, same 😊

I just discovered that I have ESPN on my Hulu account. I'm not a huge sports fan, but I do love some of the winter Olympics events. Tonight I watched the Snowboard downhill races . I didn't know there were snowboard races; I thought they just did the fancy tricks (Half Pipe maybe? which I love to watch). Anyway, I saw Lindsey Jacobellis and Nick Baumgartner competing as a team, win the gold for the USA. It was heart stopping watching them race down the mountain on a snowboard. The event was called the Mixed Snowboard Cross, which I just read is a brand new event. They are the two oldest Olympic competitors, according to the announcers - he is 40 and she is 36. She also won a gold in an individual snowboard event, but this was his first gold in 4 Winter Olympics. He said he was going to keep competing until he won one, but was feeling discouraged that he might be too old in 4 more years. Then he won! It was weep worthy at the end.

Snowboard cross is the most exciting sport to watch!

I've decided that the majority of these olympians are nuts. At a minimum clearly danger junkies.

You'd never get me to let someone toss me and spin me in the air to land backwards on a single blade and keep skating. But that's the least of it.

For example, the half pipe....that thing is 22' high or the height of a 2 story building, and you're shooting up in the air way above that like 3 stories high, flipping around in the air trying to land so you don't kill yourself, especially by falling on the edge of it. And you get to do that for over 1/10th mile!

Or how about skeleton where you're sliding head first with no steering or braking down an icy shaft, head first with only a helmet on at 80 mph!

I mean people get seriously injured or die just skiing, let alone going down a ski jump backwards, doing flips in the air and landing backwards!

Yikes!!

Here is an interesting article about the Russian doping, their ”system” that not only cheats but victiimizes some of the youngest, most vulnerable and lithe pre-teen athletic aspirants.

The Russian women’s figure skating team has bigger problems than doping
Kamila Valieva and Russia’s women’s figure skating team are incredibly dominant. The team is also incredibly controversial.

Read in Vox: https://apple.news/ABh0Ob5riS-iMwaBUjdvgoQ

Shared from Apple News

A portion of article for discussion purposes. the Russian cheating is disgusting, as is the passive response and greed and self promotion of the IOC.

”…

Even before this bombshell doping scandal, the Russian quad squad’s excellence has been accompanied by controversy. At the center of it are fears for the long-term health of the team’s prized prodigies — landing difficult jumps can take their toll on small, developing bodies.

All eyes have been on the women’s skating team from Russia for one big reason: They’re incredibly dominant. Coach Eteri Tutberidze figured out how to get the highest possible scores, and skating is a numbers game.

🔺Tutberidze’s stars took advantage of the scoring system, which favors risky jumps over safely executed, if less ambitious, tricks. In the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, gold medalist Alina Zagitova stacked all her jumps in the second half of her free skate to cash in on a 10 percent bonus, a rule that’s since been changed and limited to three jumping passes in the second half.

Tutberidze’s current crop of students — Valieva, Alexandra Trusova, and Anna Shcherbakova — all are able to hit quads with positive grade of execution scores, which amount to bonus points given when skaters can perform their tricks. They’re among the only women in the world who can hit quads at all, and Valieva and Trusova have jumps that rival those of some of the best male skaters.

Thanks to the scoring system, even when Tutberidze’s protégés don’t skate cleanly, they’re racking up points. When they do hit cleanly, it’s a blowout. This year, they’re poised to come in with gold, silver, and bronze.

Add past and seemingly current doping controversies to that, and you can understand why this team is under scrutiny.

Even before the doping report surfaced, however, there has been controversy surrounding the Russian women skaters, specifically around their practice regimens and physical health. There’s concern that Russian women’s success and their dominant jumps come at the high cost of serious injury and shortened career longevity.

Female skaters who can land difficult jumps and quads tend to be very young — sometimes prepubescent — and very small and thin. Puberty affects women’s bodies in ways that are incongruent with skating. Hips, breasts, and more height and weight can make triple and quads that girls used to hit much more difficult to land. As physicists I spoke to explained, there’s a physical advantage to being smaller and thinner when it comes to executing jumps, but there’s also a huge physical toll that jumps take on ankles, legs, and other parts of the human body.

Polina Edmunds, a former US Olympic ice skater, says that adults who can do these jumps are incredibly rare. She explains that when you look at the women who have gone through puberty and can still do a triple axel, “you can count that number on one hand.” Edmunds pointed out that in contrast to the ROC team, the US’s skaters tend to be older and don’t possess the same kind of jumping ability. (Mariah Bell, one of the leaders of the US team, is 25.)

“For the young skaters, it’s easier because their bodies haven’t gone through those changes yet. And you have a lot of girls who are just out the next season [after puberty] because they grow or they get injured,” she said.

In October, Trusova skated and won a competition but had to do so through injury. Shcherbakova may have also been nursing an injury this past year. The 15-year-old Russian junior champion Daria Usacheva appeared to endure a serious injury this past November. The extent to how serious these injuries are is difficult to assess, since injuries are usually kept close to the vest and private.

Going back to the previous Olympics, Alina Zagitova, who won gold at 15 years of age in 2018, said in 2019 that quads are too dangerous for her to land and she would need to lose weight to be able to do them. Since then, the now-19-year-old Zagitova has stepped away from competitive skating and won’t be at this year’s Olympics. Evgenia Medvedeva, who placed second after Zagitova in 2018, has also been dealing with a plethora of injuries — a bum back and foot, among other ailments — at the age of 22.

The result is girls and young women putting their smaller frames through exponentially tougher jumps — much more difficult than they were just one Olympic Games ago. Tutberidze, who trains all of these skaters, has said in interviews that Zagitova and her peers have trained up to 12 hours per day.

Edmunds, who had her skating career cut short because of a bone bruise in her landing foot, told me that injuries are part of skating like they are any sport. There were times when she was given the choice to pull out or skate through injury, and she credits her mom with helping her to make the decision to focus on her long-term health. Since quads have become a ticket to win, she worries about what girls and young women are putting their bodies through to win.

🔺“You kind of have to look at the severity of what’s happening to so many young girls. At the end of the day, it feels to me more like we’re exploiting them for that excitement of landing a quad on television,” Edmunds told me. “And if we’re instead creating a generation of athletes where too many are getting injured and too many are having really severe injuries at such a young age — that’s just so wrong. And I think it needs to be changed on both the ISU level as well as individual Federation levels. But I don’t see that happening.”

Allegations of doping on top of an injury-laden sport like figure skating feel especially insidious. Valieva is 15, and her teammates aren’t much older. It brings up questions about their autonomy, and puts a spotlight on the adults responsible for these girls’ and young women’s well-being.

Dominance in any sport always comes at a cost — sacrifice and all that stuff about blood, sweat, and tears. But the age of the Russian team, their injuries, and their abilities, combined with Russia’s doping scandals, has made this conversation about women’s figure skating impossible to ignore. As Edmunds points out, however, when gold is on the line, change is unlikely …”

~~~~~~

Also, Christine Brennan has a good opinion piece in ? USA—-?

CHRISTINE BRENNAN OPINION PIECE.

I encourage people to read this. Ms. Brennan is an experienced and decent sports columnit.

Below, a few excerpts, but please, read her piece. (One has to wonder who got the usually do nothing IOC to move. remember the abused female gymnists?…)

Russian Kamila Valieva must be suspended. If not, the Olympics are forever tainted. | Opinion

7:05 am EST Feb. 11, 2022

BEIJING – The International Olympic Committee has finally entered the Kamila Valieva fray, and just in the nick of time to try to save these Winter Olympic Games from themselves.

Breaking its silence on the utterly predictable Russian doping fiasco, the IOC is appealing a Russian Anti-Doping Agency (an oxymoron if ever there were one) ruling that allowed Valieva to continue practicingfor Tuesday’s women’s short program.

The IOC has spoken. It wants Valieva suspended. It wants her out of these Games. And if that happens, the International Skating Union, the worldwide governing body for figure skating, would likely disqualify the gold-medal-winning Russian Olympic Committee from the team skating competition and reward the United States with the gold medal.

That’s great news for Team USA, but it’s better news for the Olympic movement. It’s hard to imagine something worse for the reputation of these already-controversial Games than having an Olympic drug cheat winning not one but two gold medals less than two months after she tested positive for a banned substance known to increase endurance and stamina.

That Valieva is a minor, only 15, is troubling, engendering plenty of deserved sympathy. It is the adults around her, those who encouraged her use of a banned substance, who truly deserve our scorn.

But you can feel sorry for Valieva, the women’s gold-medal favorite and a once-in-a-lifetime talent, and still believe that she shouldn’t be allowed to step onto Olympic ice again.

It comes down to this: Are you for doping in sports, or are you not? If you believe every effort should be made to eradicate performance-enhancing drugs from sports, Valieva must be suspended.

There’s no gray area here, no middle ground. To not suspend her is to condone the cheating of those around her. To not suspend her is to tell Russia to keep doing what it’s doing, which is to spend nearly a decade fine-tuning its state-sponsored doping, with a slap on the wrist and a wink of the eye from the IOC.

To not suspend her is to forever taint these Olympic Games, to allow the bad guys to win, to allow fraud to rule over fair play.

One can’t help but think of all the athletes around the world who make it their life’s work to play by the rules, people like Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky, who volunteer for extra drug tests and make sure to text the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency if they’re going to the grocery store for 30 minutes in case a tester knocks on the door for an unannounced test during that half-hour when they aren’t home.

Think of that, then think of the Russians, riding the grace and athleticism of Valieva to Olympic glory, then, so full of themselves and hardly chastened, doing it over and over again, to the next young star, and the next.

If you don’t stop them now, when will you stop them?

After the positive drug test became known Tuesday, Valieva was provisionally suspended by the Russian Anti-Doping Agency for the rest of the Olympic Games. But she appealed to the RUSADA Disciplinary Committee, and, wouldn’t you know, the Russians actually decided to lift the suspension of the top Russian skater, and she was at practice the next day.

Enter the IOC and the International Testing Agency, which is leading the anti-doping program at these Olympic Games. Not so fast, they said, announcing that they would appeal the Russian decision to lift Valieva's suspension to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which has set up shop here for just these type of issues.

If CAS rules for the IOC and ITA and against Valieva, she would be expected to appeal to have the merits of the case reviewed by CAS for a final decision. All this has to happen before the women’s short program, one of the marquee events of the Games, begins Tuesday at 6 p.m. Beijing Olympic organizers must be thrilled that their friends the Russians have hijacked their Olympics in this manner.

Over the past few days, China has come dangerously close to having its Winter Games be known as the Olympics that allowed a confirmed drug cheat to win not one but two gold medals. It appears officials have finally awakened to that horror, and are doing something about it.

Russian Kamila Valieva must be suspended. If not, the Olympics are forever tainted. | Opinion
To not suspend Russian skater Kamila Valieva is to forever taint these Olympic Games, to allow the bad guys to win.

Read in USA TODAY: https://apple.news/AJikcI7LOSEWr4al2gMWCYA

Shared from Apple News

Child abuse.

A society that claims to value and seek a measure of justice hides from it at its peril.

And it relates to the situation there, as the people sponsoring the games are treating a major minority in their territory very badly.

When they are challenged about it, they say it's their country and their business, not ours, to mind our own business.

Covid has been teaching us that it is one world in which we live and our actions - or lack of them - affect others everywhere.

When the citicism comes from agencies or people in the northern part of North America, their reply is that we should look to our own house, for our record of the treatment of minorities at home was very dismal, and continues in our day.

ole joyful

"To not suspend Russian skater Kamila Valieva is to forever taint these Olympic Games,"

The use of the word "tainted" and "Olympics" in the same sentence is redundant. Anyone paying attention for the last many decades, summer and winter, realizes that and those who pretend otherwise and choose to deny same fool only themselves. The two accompany one another and long have. The conduct and attitudes of the athletes are nothing any conscientious parent would want their kids to emulate. So why pay attention and justify what they do and how they do it?

(I don't understand or see what the message is in joyfulguy's comment, just above this)