3/1000 of a second, that’s less than 5 cm. Koen will secondguess every step he took, how far stretched on the last run.
Nice curling match in the Women USA/Sweden.
On the guys’ side, the British skip dropped the ball on the final stone of the 10th end against Canada, he could’ve forced an extra end.
Did nobody get up early for the USA-Russia hockey game? With Vladimir Putin in attendance, the teams played to a 2-2 tie through regulation and overtime. In the shootout, they again tied 2-2 with the three designated shooters. At that point the teams can send anyone they want out to shoot, and the US went all-in with TJ Oshie, a forward from a tiny town in Northern Minnesota (Warroad) that is known for one thing only, producing hockey players. Oshie went out five consecutive times as the teams matched each other goal for goal and save for save. Finally, on the eighth attempt, Oshie scored to give the win to the USA.
Oshie was probably the last player selected to the US squad, and a large part of the decision was his uncanny ability to score on penalty shots. In a sport where a 40% conversion rate is excellent, Oshie averages 54%. He converted 4 of 6 shots in this mornings game.
My club is hosting a women’s tournament this weekend and I’ve been timing some games and helping out. Watched that on our big screen; tough way to lose a game. Hell of a shot by the Swedish skip.
Semi-local guy Marc Antoine gets the bronze in skeleton.
Prairie du Chien is about 75 miles south of me.
Brian
I was! Loved it! And we spanked Slovenia today too! Whoooo!
In other hockey news, Canada wins in OT, and Cindy Crosby still sucks ass. 
I was wondering about this whole suite thing, so I went and looked at the speed skating results during the year for the last few years for the 1000m and 1500m.
I see a a few things when I look at the data:
1 - Davis (and US in general) does well in Utah and Calgary
2 - Times in Utah and Calgary are generally faster than anywhere else
3 - US is inconsistent when looking across the spectrum of racing locations
When 1st, 2nd and 3rd place time are slower, Davis performs more poorly (3rd, 5th, 8th, 9th, 10th, etc.)
When 1st, 2nd and 3rd place place times are faster, Davis performs well (1st).
He seems to win in Utah, Calgary and Kazahkstan, and generally has been unimpressive in other locations.
I don’t know anything about speed skating other than looking at this pattern, but it seems like the track conditions or elevation or something has a big impact on who does well.
It is true that both American and Canadian skaters do better in Salt Lake City and Calgary. These are the inly indoor tracks at altitude, which means that far faster times are possible because of lower air resistance (that is why all world records are at these tracks). Europeans often seemed to struggle because they weren’t used to the higher top speeds.
This is something else that is now being mentioned as being a ‘wrong’ decision: training at altitude. I’ve heard that you need to use a different technique at sea level; less gliding and more emphasis on pushing off. In any case, if I look at the world cup results this year Davis had 3 wins and 1 third place on the 1000m (out of 4 races). For the 1500 he won once and only finished outside the top 5 once. The same is true for the women on the 1000m, Richardson won once and the other world cup was won by Bowe (all US).
It doesn’t matter how you look at it, it is weird that none of the US skaters has been in a top 6 after 8 events.
That’s nice. Thanks.
Yes, but those 3 wins were at Utah, Calgary and Kazakhstan where he consistently does well.
I think because it’s a small sample and the recent events were all at locations that appear to be to his advantage, it presents a skewed picture.
When you look back a few years you can see a consistent pattern.
1st, 2nd, 5th, 8th.
Extend that back one year and add: 3rd, 9th, 10th, 1st (Kazakh), 10th
The pattern becomes more clear.
I didn’t look at the women’s patterns yet.
I disagree that it doesn’t matter how you look at it.
When you look at an extended history, the results fit in with the pattern, they don’t look unusual.
Well, whatever happened with the US speed skaters, the same thing seems to be happening (or worse) with the Norwegian cross-country skiers.
Crosby was pretty good actually. He has been all tourney. Scoring isn’t the be all and end all.
Well, you clearly have no clue about skating the last few years and are just listing some results when they fit in a pattern that suits you.
You don’t mention how he was second in the world cup 1000m last year (after missing the start) and was on the podium in almost every race. That he was first and second in the two 1000m’s of the world sprinting championships a month ago in Nagano (so of the 6 official and international 1000m races this year he won 4 and was on the podium the other two times).
If you are so convinced about location being the prime reason: last year the wolrd championships were in Sochi and he was on the podium for both distances. I’m not saying that anything but gold would have been a suprise, but 8th and 11th are very out of character and some of the worst results he has had in a decade (and no, I don’t feel like actually looking this up).
PS if you go back to 2012 and 2011 (if those results count for anything), you’ll see that Davis has won about a dozen times in places like Heerenveen and Berlin (both at sea level).
So far, it does appear the fix is in for ice dancing. The person who literally invented one of the critical short dance moves said the scores given the American and Canadian teams could not be rationally explained.
It’s high time ice dancing was removed from the Olympics - not because I have anything against it as a sport, but because if they cannot get the judges to stop cheating, it does not belong there at all. The judging in ice dance has been a joke for so long now that it’s clearly a deep institutional problem.
It’s true I do not have any experience or clue about speed skating.
But it’s not the pattern that “suits me” because I didn’t go into this with any preconceived notions, I just went looking at the data to see how frequently davis wins.
I checked all world cup races in last few years, not sure if they are the same ones you are referring to.
This is the data I am looking at:
1000m, 2011 until present:
1st
1st
1st
7th
4th
5th
3rd
8th
1st
2nd
DQ
3rd
1st
1st
1st
1500m, 2011 until present:
6th
1st
1st
7th
4th
2nd
3rd
9th
10th
1st
10th
8th
5th
1st
2nd
I’m not convinced of anything. It seems like location is a partial factor.
The press made it sound like Davis was winning every event he was in and they should have just handed him a medal.
So I checked the results and my conclusion is that he was won a lot but a low finish isn’t unusual also.
Of course my above comment should not be taken as implying that the fix is not also in to ensure Canada wins silver. The Russian team just put on a performance that was effectively flawless and vastly more technically impressive than Canada’s Virtue and Moir, but of course the judges gave the Russian team a substantially lower score - like, not a tiny bit worse, but substantially worse - because, well, they weren’t SUPPOSED to win anything better than bronze. So they won’t, even if the couples that are supposed to win gold and silver actually fling themselves over the boards.
I think I would like to have the Flower/Bouquet concession at the Figure Skating rink.
Do people buy flowers so they can throw them after their favorite skaters finish their performance?
I don’t know a ton about ice dancing (along with 99.9% of the general population) but it seems like every Olympics provides no real surprise as far as the final results are concerned (they always seem to be chalk). I always found that strange.
How come I never heard of snowboard motocross until last night? That was awesome. Nothing improves downhill speed snowboarding like big jumps, slushy snow and a lot of traffic.
I wouldn’t go that far, although judges’ second marks being based more on how well the skater was expected to do rather than how well the skater actually did has been happening for decades, and not just in ice dancing. Does anybody remember Torvill and Dean getting anything other than nine 6s on their second marks in any routine (and not just in 1988, but in 1987 as well)?
Still, in the component scores, Virtue & Moir got 16 perfect 10s (out of 45), 11 of which were still counted after throwing out the high score in each of the five components, while Ilinykh & Katsalapov got only 5, of which only 2 counted. Davis and White, on the other hand, got 25, 15 of which counted - and two of the 10 that were discarded were discarded because they were the low score (i.e. they got 10s from all nine judges in two of the five categories).
Also, Ilinykh & Katsalapov were effectively penalized 1.5 points because their circular step sequence was determined to be Level 3 instead of 4.
Looks like Canada vs. USA in the Women’s Hockey final, eh? This should be a great game, but I think Canada has the edge. Some of the CAN women have 18 or 19 career Olympic goals?? Plus, Canadian Women’s Hockey in the Olympics won, what, the last three or four gold medals? They’re kind of like NCAA women’s UConn team!