Wow. That is embarrassing. And, yes, I could do better.
I don’t know. She “rules lawyered” her way in. If the IOC is going to be as openly corrupt as they are, they deserve it when things like this happen.
In men’s Giant Slalom, for example, there were a hundred(!) entrants, and (generously) at least 75 weren’t anywhere good enough to be competitive.
Either you have to let in only the best, which favors certain countries, or you accept that 54 competitors in GS “met the basic qualification standards” to get in, but DNF’d their Olympic experience.
On the one hand, it would make the events a lot quicker and competitive with 20 world class entrants than 100 filled out with average joes, but on the other you would deprive people from even trying. I don’t know the answer. But if I had a chance to attend and at least knew how to get down the hill, I might take it, even at a minute and a half off the pace. It’s the Olympics!
There is nothing new about athletes finding ways to represent other countries. The earliest I can think of is 1976, when someone who didn’t qualify for the USA men’s basketball team used some relationship (I want to say it’s where his mother was born) to get onto Puerto Rico’s team. Probably the most famous is South Africa’s Zola Budd representing Great Britain (to get around the ban on South Africa at the time) in 1984.
As for athletes that have no business being there, there are usually two explanations.
First, the host country is allowed to be in every event. In some cases, it deserves a head shake (USA men’s field hockey).
Second, there are some sports where they want to have as many countries as possible, so one man and one woman from each country can enter one event. In the Summer Olympics, these are track & field and swimming; usually, these athletes enter the shortest events - the 100m and 50m freestyle, respectively. You rarely see them as they don’t usually compete against the “names.” In track & field, the 100m has a “preliminary qualifying round” which usually has two runners who have some business being there and five or six who don’t, and the top two advance to the “first round.” In swimming, where your place in your qualifying heat is irrelevant - the top eight times overall go to the final - they race in their own heats, which are held at the start of the qualifying round.
Something similar is done with skiing, although there is a minimum skill requirement.
But there are no pre-eliminations in skiing, so you see starter #87 from, say, Algeria, who comes in 30 seconds after the winner. (usually, the TV broadcasters have long switched to another event before those weak skiers start, but Eurosport usually shows them all until the bitter end).
Just as you had a swimmer from Monaco finish his 1500m race last year over 45 seconds behind the next-to-last-place finisher. The only difference is, swimming has two “rounds” while skiing does not. Okay, maybe you have a case for limiting the second run of the slalom and giant slalom to, say, the top 24 from the first run.
Note that not every individual sport does this. Figure skating, for example, takes great pains in limiting the number of competitors.
Watching one NBC block a day on DVR (nobody in my family gives enough of a damn to make any more effort), so I’m not going to be up to date on anything. Just three quick questions:
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What exactly is a “Euler”, and when did figure skaters start doing it? (It’s this little 360 hop between two triples or a triple-quad, never more than once per routine.) I’ve never seen it discussed and searches aren’t turning up anything.
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Where are the men’s hockey players coming from now that the NHL is out? There are definitely some lower leagues that could produce some quality teams, but given that the official word on the pullout didn’t happen for a long time, I imagine it had to be challenging to get everyone together and coordinated on short notice.
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Is it really necessary to yell so much in curling, or do they just enjoy it? Look, a quarterback has to be loud because he’s surrounded by thousands of roaring fans and has a bunch of possible audibles which ten other men, some of whom are spaced a fair distance away, have to hear. The shooter is in a quiet arena, and the commands, as far as I can tell, are “sweep really fast” and “don’t sweep really fast”.
Came here to post about our hockey team. This goalie is going to win it himself.
ETA: Live on the power play in the 3rd.
Damn bad words
What a great game.
Well, as the stone slides over the pebbled ice, it makes a low, rumbling sound, and there are three other games happening at the same time, whose teams are also yelling. My club doesn’t have the best acoustics, but there have been times I felt like I was yelling my lungs out, but my sweepers said they couldn’t hear me. The skip is also trying to exhort his teammates to sweep as hard and fast as possible.
I suspect that the TV coverage keeps the ambient noise level low and the players’ microphones loud so the viewers can understand them. In real life, shouting is necessary.
Penalty shot?
What a terrible loss.
That’s one way to look at it. It was a pretty good game though. May be an argument that there were penalty calls missed, but all in all a good game.
One of the best hockey games ever, but I am still crying.
How was that not a penalty shot, not that we would have scored anyways?
At the last Olympics, the Euler jump was called a half loop jump.
Figure skate blades are roughly W-shaped looking down the heel-to-toe axis, creating an inside and an outside edge. Pretty much every normal jump is landed on the outside edge of the skate. However, the Salchow and flip jumps require a takeoff from the inside edge. So, when those jumps are done in the latter parts of a combination, the skater can do an Euler jump in between, which is launched from the outside edge and lands on the inside edge. Now they’re ready for their next jump.
Shootouts are terrible ways to end either hockey or soccer games. Play until someone scores if it takes all night, and sometimes it does.
Nice explanation of the Euler jump, at first I would have thought it involved mathematics. Then again I used to think other jumps were called salt cows.
Goddamn, this is funny! 
If you want to see heartbreak, watch this poor Japanese skater lose her team the gold medal on the final bend/turn of the gold medal match. They were ahead and she skipped and fell and Canada took the gold. Stunning.
Looks like it only plays back on Youtube. Cut to 2 minutes, 40 seconds to see the buildup to the tragic moment.