Doesn’t look like we have a general thread for this yet. For those of us living in the past, the opening ceremonies are tonight.
Should I feel guilty that I have ZERO interest in the olympics? I really am not interested in the summer olympics either when they roll around…
I’m looking forward to curling as usual, my wife and daughter are pumped for the figure skating and my son wants to see some biathlon action. As my kids are getting older and more interested in it, I find my own interest in it returning.
I’m already a big fan of brother and sister curling team Matt and Becca Hamilton. I can actually smell the beef and cheese emanating from this guy through my TV screen!
SERIOUS delays to coverage from South Korea. I was up early this AM and the local channel of choice has a guy at the games (Colorado loves it some winter sports and many athletes nobody has ever heard of outside of a few small areas are celebrities here) and he said that the Opening Ceremonies were over already. That’ll be a 12 hour delay by the time they air on NBC tonight.
All events are available for streaming live if you want, including the Opening Ceremonies.
I’m the opposite: I’m a huge fan of the Olympics, both summer and winter, and love everything about them. I’ve been watching them for 45 years.
We have a local girl, Karen Chen, competing in the ladies figure skating competition.
This year, delays will be the exception rather than the rule. Pretty much all of the figure skating will air live - and, for the first time, that includes the western half of the country (the Pacific time zone will also get the “primetime” coverage repeated three hours later).
I am assuming that, while nobody has a problem with having, say, figure skating or skiing starting in the morning (8 PM Eastern = 10 AM in Korea), holding the opening ceremonies during the day was another matter.
They had a great first game, but dropped the next three. I"m not a huge fan of mixed doubles, but I’d like to see them rally and come back from this.
the Weir/Lipinski duo on the skating commentary looked like the announcers from the hunger games.
Well, if there’s one benefit to NHL players not being at the Games, it’s that I can’t tell if Canada’s going to win the gold or lose to Korea.
The Canadian captain is Chris Kelly, who wasn’t a good player when he was in the NHL back in the olden days. Most of his teammates are names I either don’t or barely recognize; I think some of them are pseudonyms. They play for teams with names like “HV71,” “Lada Togliatti,” and “SC Bern,” all of which sound like flu virii. One of the goalies, Ben Scrivens, is a failed Ottawa Senators goalie, a category that includes over ten thousand men, none of whom can play goalie.
It used to be that the selection of the Canadian men’s Olympic hockey team was a huge event that garnered as much attention as a world war and almost as much controversy. I know people who are still angry about selections made in 2010 and 2014, and we won the gold medal both times. Now I don’t think there was a “selection.” It looks like the team was assembled by posting an ad on Kijiji.
This is going to be… something.
At least the last three Olympics have all been televised or streamed in total. It’s just the time zone difference that’s going to affect viewing. Lots of stuff in the middle of the night.
Rio was one hour ahead of the US east coast.
Well, sure, but that can’t be helped if the Olympics are in Korea. And as has been mentioned in this thread, some events are going to be shown live in prime time in the US by having them occur at awkward times live in Korea.
Since Matt and Becca Hamilton are from Wisconsin they have been getting extra coverage locally*. A lot of the players on the US women’s hockey team are from Wisconsin.
Brian
- well, for curlers. though some of the previous US curlers were from even closer
I love watching the small nations parade. Mike Pence & Kim Yo-jong are sitting hilariously close together. Also I found out today that one of my coworkers when to high school with Adam Rippon.
My semi-annual Olympic flag bearer tally results:
Alpine Skiing: 29
Cross Country: 20
Bobsled, Speed Skating, and Snowboard: 6
The US, India, and “Chinese Taipei” chose Luge
Biathlon with 5 beat Figure Skating with 4 even though the later is slightly more well known/popular 
Brian
And I’m sure the primetime NBC coverage will focus far more on biathlon than figure skating.
Great opening ceremony. As usual! The drone lights were AMAZING!!
I’m always excited to watch whatever games I can catch. I only have NBC so I just watch whatever’s on.
For airing an event that happened hours ago, NBC could have been a lot better with their editing. Did we really need the warm fuzzy human interest stories that seemed to go on forever before even starting? Did we really need to follow the US team all the way around the stadium?
Good job on the special effects, the cauldron was one of the cooler ones we’ve had. Nice touch having the unified torch carriers in the climb up the stairs. The drones were cool as were the light strands at the center of the stadium. Loved the humongous yet perfectly synchronized drummer group.
OK Mister Coconut Oil dude, yes you’re ripped. Now put some clothes on.
I have a feeling a lot of what they omitted was additional Korean cultural displays. NBC knows that the average person can only take so much of that until they reach for the remote. I recorded it on TiVO and then joined in after about a half hour so I could fast forward through the commercials as well as some of the human interest stuff. I’m happy for every cancer survivor or refugee that made it to the Olympics, but that stuff does nothing for me.
Sweden chose a curler, didn’t they? 