Olympics Notebook: Vancouver 2010

Winter Games, day 12 — live

Lindsey Vonn goes for gold again in the women’s Alpine skiing giant slalom and we’ll be here to follow that and all the action, including some spectacular freestyle skiing late on, on day 12 of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

The other event not to be missed is Russia v Canada in the men’s ice hockey quarter-finals, starting at 1630 local time, 1930 ET and 0030 GMT. Can the hosts overcome the Red Machine and keep their golden dream alive? If not, there are going to be a lot of glum faced Canadians on the streets of Vancouver.

Winter Games live blog: day eight

Our live blog on day eight of the Olympic Games is following Lindsey Vonn and her quest for a second gold medal in the women’s Super-G. There’s also a bunch of speedskating medals so please feel free join us. Dip in and out, we’ll be here all day.

Lay down the run! And update your Olympic lingo

In the skiing and snowboarding events at the Olympic Games these days, we have many a super athlete giving us mere mortals lessons in linguistics.  It’s actually sick, in modern terms that is.

Sick (“crazy, cool, insane“) was snowboarder Shaun White’s killer second run through the half-pipe, a near perfect, thriller of a ride, even after he had already clinched the gold medal. Dude’s on fire.

Lindsey Vonn showed us how to “lay down a run” with her daring downhill burst that brought her a gold medal.  It appears that “throw it down” and “put it down” can also be used when talking about runs and races.

And then there are the broadcast commentators of a certain age who can be heard talking on their nice mainstream media about ”ripping” snow conditions and ”stoked” snowboarders. Granted these words are not new to the modern lexicon, but they may be to these people.

 Finally, there is a quaint little Canadian phrase that just might be catching on to a wider world, because it is just  too ambiguously funny to keep confined to Canada. That is “hurry hard” — the words Canadian curlers use to get their teammates to sweep harder.  They have even inspired a new brand of condoms.

Heard any more at these Games? Let us know in the comments.

PHOTO: Silver medallist Hannah Teter of the United States waits for her score after her second run in the finals of the women’s snowboarding halfpipe on Cypress Mountain at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, February 18, 2010. REUTERS/Todd Korol

Vancouver podcast – day six

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We’re back, and now with new added Australian. Join me, Julian, Mary Milliken and Miles Evans for our chat about the Worst/Best Games Ever, Lindsey Vonn and, inevitably, the great Aussie contribution to the Winter Olympics.

Vonn crashes, gold for Riesch

Lindsey Vonn’s hopes of a five-gold haul slipped away on Thursday as the American took a tumble on the slalom leg of the super-combined.

Vonn, winner of the downhill on Wednesday, was fastest again in the downhill section in the morning but only by a third of a second and with Riesch producing a masterful run in the slalom the pressure was on the favourite. Needing to pull off the slalom run of her life, she pushed just a little too hard, slipped and went down.

Vonn, one suspects, will not be too disappointed. Riesch is her best friend on the circuit and the American came into the Games saying she was not interested in all the talk of five golds, saying that just one medal would suit her fine.

Julia Mancuso got her second silver of the Games and Anja Paerson received a bronze medal reward for her bravery, after that painful mishap in the downhill no Wednesday.

All in all, another great race, and roll on Saturday’s Super-G, when Vonn gets another chance for a second gold.

PHOTO: Germany’s Maria Riesch reacts after competing in the Downhill run of the women’s Alpine Skiing Super Combined event at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics in Whistler, British Columbia, February 18, 2010. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger

Oh no Canada! But don’t be so quick to write off these Olympics

The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver have been beset by tragedy and trials, from the death of the Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, through the Goldilocks weather up at Whistler and Cypress — too much snow or too little snow, it’s never just right — to a biathlon scoring fiasco described as “the blackest day ever“.

Then there was the opening ceremony fail with the missing fourth ice pillar, the PR disaster of moving ugly chain fencing in front of the outdoor cauldron so no one could take a decent picture, the thousands of ripped up tickets and having to call on Calgary to the rescue after the ice machines broke down.

It’s quite a list of mess-ups and there are plenty more besides.

But calling these the Worst Games Ever? That’s quite a stretch just a few days in and it may have more to do with certain sections of the media looking for a good overarching narrative — a theme they can keep going back to in every story they write. An entire press pack cannot live on one outside hope of a curling medal alone.

I don’t want to skate over the problems — see what I did there? — so I encourage you to follow the links above to read all we’ve written about them, but I also think we risk losing sight of a few things that have gone well in Vancouver. Here are a few reasons why these might well turn out to be not such bad Games after all.

1. Lindsey Vonn. Her gold in the women’s Alpine skiing downhill means the American skier may end up giving us a great story of triumph in adversity, after she came her worried that a badly bruised shin might mean she wouldn’t be able to compete at all. Vonn is competing in four other medal events, meaning a huge gold rush is still possible. That sort of achievement would change the whole mood of these Games and make them one of the most memorable … for the right reasons. The downhill itself was spectacular as well, with so many skiers ending up on their backsides in the icy conditions. Made for terrific viewing.

2.  These are the Games we’ve stopped being snooty about arriviste sports like snowboard and freestyle skiing, and put these wonderful athletes at the heart of the Olympics. Just think about the significance of starting the opening ceremony with the image of a snowboarder freestyling off a cliff and leaping through the Olympic rings. How’s that for a ringing endorsement? And the action itself has been at times beyond description, culminating in Shaun White’s outrageous skill and daring in winning gold in the halfpipe on Wednesday night. Awesome, as they’d probably say themselves.

Lindsey takes first gold — the Vonn-couver Olympics begin

Lindsey Vonn shrugged off the most famous shin-jury in sport to produce a fantastic victory in the women’s downhill Alpine skiing at the Winter Games on Wednesday, marking the start of what may well be the Vonn-couver Olympics.

Vonn, the hugely popular American and one of the most famous faces at these Games, blew away her nearest rivals, which is astonishing given that she arrived worried that her bruised shin might be so bad that it would stop her competing altogether. If she is so dominant when having to ski through gritted teeth, how* good would she look here fully fit?

Now we will hear lots of talk about a possible five-medal haul. Can she do it?

PHOTO: Lindsey Vonn of the U.S. reacts after competing in the women’s Alpine Skiing Downhill race at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics in Whistler, British Columbia February 17, 2010. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger

* changed from “who” … thanks to Db8r for spotting the typo.

Vancouver podcast — day 1

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Kevin Fylan is joined by Steve Keating, Ossian Shine and Mary Milliken for a fireside chat on day one of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

We discuss the opening ceremony, and that extraordinary failure at the end, plus the state of Lindsey Vonn’s shin and the first gold medal at the Games.

Best listened to with a clamato juice in hand.

Lindsey gets down with her digital Vonn-tourage

Lindsey Vonn has re-connected with her huge online following — which I, for one, am determined to call her Digital Vonn-tourage — and put a brief dalliance with old media behind her.

Vonn, the 25-year-old Alpine skiing world champion and Face of the Games, turned to a major U.S. TV network and a traditional IOC press conference to break the news on Wednesday that she had a badly bruised shin that might keep her out of the Olympics.

TV? A press conference? How old-fashioned, Lindsey. How very binary!

For a while it looked like she might be doing a Stephen Fry and bidding farewell to the Twittering game.  Remember, Vonn had originally said she would be ceasing her social media activities during the Games after getting confused about what IOC rules permitted.

The IOC stepped in to reassure her that she was perfectly fine to carry on as usual but her heart seemed to have gone out of it for a while there, with “Just landed in Vancouver yay!” about as interesting as it got for a week or so.

She apologised to her followers for not being more digitally forthcoming and on Thursday she was back in a much more social mood.

First up was Twitter, where she informed fans that she had taken painkillers prior to a training run that had to be cancelled because of the weather. Then in the afternoon she proved she is back in digital spirits with a lengthy Facebook post, complete with kisses and hugs at the end.

Vancouver Sportswrap: Vonn’s bombshell

News of an injury that might keep American ski queen Lindsey Vonn out of the Olympics rocked Vancouver two days before the opening ceremony for the 2010 Winter Games.

Join Owen Wyatt for a look at what Vonn said at her bombshell news conference on Wednesday, and a few shots on the snow that finally began to fall on Cypress Mountain.