During the London Olympics a couple years ago, I created a Day Guide for another, professional blog I used to write for. That blog has gone the way of baggy cargo pants and hacky sacks - passe for now, but itching for a revival. A lot of that is my fault. Having a newborn makes writing reality show recaps something of a luxury I can't afford. If I have a free 90 minutes, I'm going to be using it to make a meal out of something other than cereal, thank you very much. Still, it was a fun thing that I kind of miss.
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, the Olympics. Basically, it was a mix of the previous day's recap, previews of the upcoming day, and medal counts. Oh so many medal counts.
So my goal is to attempt this again for the Sochi Olympics. I have a couple of things working in my favor. One is that Winter Games have fewer events and therefore, fewer medals to count. A second is that these Games will not want for interesting stories to link to. No one will ever complain that an Olympic Games in this era was under-promoted, but what with Vladimir Putin being insane and the bevy of controversy about discrimination over gay rights and the fact that the Opening Ceremonies creep ever closer and the Olympians may or may not have a village to sleep in, these Games are ripe for interesting topics to discuss.
Even though the Opening Ceremonies aren't until tomorrow, the Olympics actually start tonight because Russia. No medals will be awarded just yet (that would be crazytalk), but there will be some prelims and qualifying in men's and women's slopestyle snowboarding, women's freestyle moguls and team figure skating. This is kind of dumb since, you know, the Olympics haven't started yet, but it should also be interesting because three of those four events are new. Team figure skating is a new twist on a pretty standard and well-worn Winter Olympics event. The figure skating teams will consist of one male, one female and one pairs team, along with an ice dancing pair. All four routines get judged and the team that gets the highest combined score wins. Kind of like a gymnastics all-around, if you combined the men's and women's teams and the rhythmic group, too. So, really close.
Meanwhile, men's and women's slopestyle snowboarding has become something of a hotbed of controversy over the last couple of days. The competition is a judged affair in which athletes have 655 meters' worth of hills, rails and jumps to perform a variety of tricks and has been a Winter X Games staple for some time. But the Sochi course is proving to be fairly dangerous. Medal favorite Torstein Horgmo of Norway broke his collarbone during a practice run, while Finland's Marika Enne got a concussion. Shaun White, the biggest household name in snowboarding, jammed his wrist and decided to opt out of the event in order to focus on his specialty, the halfpipe, in which he already has two Olympic golds.
I can't say that I blame White, who wasn't a favorite to medal, especially after an unsafe luge course in Vancouver led to the death of Georgia's Nodar Kumaritashvili in 2010, but White isn't the most popular among the snowboarding community anyway, and a few Canadians have accused him of using any excuse to get out of an event he won't excel in. Snowboarding drama? Snowboarding drama.
Medals Awarded Yesterday
None
Medals To Be Awarded Today
None
Televised Coverage
8 p.m. - NBC - Snowboarding (men's and women's slopestyle)
Skiing (women's freestyle moguls)
Figure Skating (team)
Interesting Read of the Day
There's been some debate over whether all of the performance arenas and the athletes' village will be ready for the Games, but I can tell you one thing that is definitely NOT ready and that's the media hotels. Because you obviously want to screw the people whose job it is to tell the world about things. Deadspin has a fabulously disturbing first-hand report from a number of media members, talking about everything from rooms with no doorknobs to concrete-encased palm trees to disappearing street dogs to beds that you're actually happy don't have sheets on them. Oh, and the athletes don't have pillows.
In addition to men's and women's slopestyle snowboarding and team figure skating, there are eight other new events debuting at these Games. Read up on them here.
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