Random notes on figure skating (I plan to be completely wrapped up with it on Sunday, just in time to miss the closing ceremony. 
) I’ve gotten a better handle on the schedule, although I’m still just a tad miffed as to how ice dance seems to get less than half the coverage of women’s. I know where the big money is for NBC, but still.
Pairs. As expected, our B squad was mostly an afterthought; too many mistakes, not enough pop. (It was delays in the citizenship process which prevented us from sending our best, which I hope our nativist noodlebrains are paying close attention to.) Sui and Han gave it their best, but…well, Sui has a hip injury; that’s pretty much all there was to it. As for the top three:
Bronze - Minerva Hase & Nikita Volodin, Germany. Hase followed up a major mistake (a step out) with a huge mistake (popping to a single), and that was all she wrote. Dang, really thought they had it. They’ve been in contention before, and this is where you start to get concerned that they just don’t have the mettle or focus of a champion. Still a good finish of course. We’ll be seeing them again.
Silver - Anastasiia Metelkina & Luka Berulava, Georgia. Probably the best that could be expected, even if she didn’t mess up that one landing. This is Georgia’s first ever Winter Olympics medal of any kind, so there’s zero shame in making history. Great effort all around. She’s said on the record that she won’t quit until she’s become an Olympic champion, which has a number of possible positive and negative connotations. I prefer to be optimistic and interpret as her being dedicated to the sport and planning to be around for a long time. 
Gold - Riku Miura & Ryuichi Kihara, Japan. After the NBC announce team completely dogged them after the short program, it was suh-weeeet justice for them to score a clutch-of-clutch personal best and win this running away. There’s a certain…how do I put this…discipline in the top Japanese skaters that I don’t see from anyone else, and their ironclad refusal to beat themselves makes them very formidable in the big events. What can I say…they nailed everything. Every jump, every lift, every spin, every gesture and glide and flourish. It didn’t leave an atom of room for controversy. It was a privilege to watch. 
Got most of the women’s short program. As expected, Alyssa Liu is the only American with any realistic shot at the podium. She’s the only one with the mix of confidence, artistry, and strength to not get devoured by the moment. Isabeau Levito is a picture of grace but can’t do the big moves, and Amber Glenn…well, she had another one of those days. (And of course, I harbor no illusions that Bradie Tennell and Sarah Everhardt wouldn’t have gotten chewed up even worse.) There’s one Russian who’s in the mix, and the announcers claim that she can do a triple axel and a quadruple…something, but it’s going to be a major longshot to make the podium against Liu and a powerful Japanese contingent. Sounds like fun!
Can we officially have an “NBC Olympic megahype curse” now? It seems like every time they give inordinate feature time to an Olympian, no matter how good he or she was leading up to the Games, the result is a resounding fizzle. We’ve seen it with Bode Miller, Lindsey Vonn, and now Amber Glenn. (After all that “Skating Angels” booshwah, I barely heard anything about Levito.) The next athlete they want to overhype up should graciously defer to an alternate.
