And today even more dubious decisions - this time in the ski cross as Fanny Smith was disqualified from the Final for some insignificant obstruction. These games have so much clunky officiating that I've lost count.
Anyway, congrats to Canada for winning their 5th ice hockey title in the women's tournament by...beating the US of A. The heartbreak for the US olympians was double as Mikaela Shiffrin failed to finish yet another alpine skiig event - this time in the Alpine Combined, leaving her empty handed...for now (there's still the parallel team event, but other teams have better chances)
Canadians deserved that one, so congrats to them. I only watched the first period before going to bed, but the USA goaltender let in a couple of really easy shots in the first to put us down 2-0. Hard to come back from that. USA was getting some good puck movement and chances, but if your goalie let's soft wristers through, you're in for an uphill battle.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
And the most talked event - the women's figure skating, has concluded. And I'm neither happy or mad - I'm just...sad. Sad, because for two weeks one 15 y.o. child has been put through an enourmous psychological stress and in the end Kamila Valieva has cracked being even outside the medals. Whether it was right or wrong to allow her to continue, IMO doesn't matter anymore, because the damage had already been done.
ivaneurope wrote:
And the most talked event - the women's figure skating, has concluded. And I'm neither happy or mad - I'm just...sad. Sad, because for two weeks one 15 y.o. child has been put through an enourmous psychological stress and in the end Kamila Valieva has cracked being even outside the medals. Whether it was right or wrong to allow her to continue, IMO doesn't matter anymore, because the damage had already been done.
While it wasn't nice watching her fall apart (and then get treated like a piece of shit by her coach immediately afterwards) she shouldn't have been there in the first place, so at least 3 "clean" skaters got to win medals.
"Ringo is exactly right", Shonak - 8 September 2016
ivaneurope wrote:
And today even more dubious decisions - this time in the ski cross as Fanny Smith was disqualified from the Final for some insignificant obstruction. These games have so much clunky officiating that I've lost count.
Just catching up on this today, and wow that's a dodgy call! To even have Maier saying "No, it's not right. I don't want this Bronze" should be a big giveaway to officials perhaps they made a mistake.
ivaneurope wrote:
But I've something controversial to say about another sport(s). Call me blasphemous, but I just can't connect with the new disciplines the IOC added in snowboarding, freestyle skiing in the Winter Games and the inclusion of skateboarding at the 2020/1 Tokyo Games and break dancing at the 2024 Paris Games. They're just too gimmicky and the Olympics versions of Big Air and Slopestyle for example pale in compairsion to their originals at the X-Games. Even the halfpipe - a discipline that has been part of the Olympics since 1998, is tamed compared to its X-Games counterpart (though IMO the Olympic halfpipe has gained following thanks to Shaun White). And several top snowboarders/skiiers in halfpipe, slopestyle and big air have refused to go at the Olympics, because in their eyes the IOC and FIS (as the governing body observing international skiing and snowboarding competitions) want to merely piggy back on their success, make those disciplines generic cookie-cutter disciplines and shove them down people's throats.
Maybe I'm too old school and perhaps don't share the values today's youth have. Though the IOC is trying to engage with the youth through social media - that's something positive.
Nothing wrong with this opinion. Personally i love the freestyle events so much! Without them i don't know if i'd bother to watch much Olympics at all, as that buzz carries me over into other Ski & Board events and from there i get more and more into it.
But i also get why some people don't gel with them at all, or in the Olympic context. Certainly the Olympics seems to me focused on technical aspects and nailing the execution vs X-Games and other events which take more style and flair into account. But i get enjoyment from them all.
I liked skateboarding to test, but yeah didn't really work for me. Maybe a format change will help. Don't get dancing at all. But man, Olympics is expensive and suffering consistent viewership drops so i get the shift to try and bring in that next set of fans.
ringo182 wrote:she shouldn't have been there in the first place, so at least 3 "clean" skaters got to win medals.
CAS allowed her to participate, that says it all. Earlier (in 2018) CAS aqiutted 28 Russian Olympic athlets (returning them back Sochi medals in skiing, speed skating, luge, bobsleigh, skeleton). And nobody apologized to Kulizhnikov, Yuskov, Ustyugov, An, Shipulin for motiveless DSQ in 2018 Olympics. That's only politics and nothing else. Well, you can keep screaming about "evil Russian dopers", I'm not interested it anymore.
Edited by tomcat9 on 18-02-2022 13:51
Let's save the history of PCM together!
Just write me a PM if you have something for old PCM Editions (from 2005 to 2014) - databases, stages, shirts etc. and we'll share it.
Well, with the games now officially over, I'd like to make some retrospective:
Norway again topped the charts with 16 gold medal, 37 medals in total. But IMO the men's cross-country was disappointing - 2 gold medals in the sprint events and NONE in the distance ones. Seeing them against the Russian skiiers being helpless - this wasn't Norway. Klaebo was almost unrecognisable in the skiathlon and the 28.4 km (where he took his bib off). Thankfully they had the Duracell herself - Therese Johaug, to collect gold for Norway in her final Olympics. In the biathlon it was business as usual for them with the men's relay pulling a surprising comeback due to Eduard Latypov's blunder on the final shooting (there's a pattern where the men's relay leader blows it). There was one scary moment with Tandrevold in the pursuit though - you could clearly see she was struggling in the final meters.
Germany steamrolled the sliding events - out of 10 events, 9 of them were won by ze Germans. Dominant as usual in the luge, in the skeleton took both men's and women's titles despite not winning the World Cups and in the bobsleigh they've found their newest star in Laura Nolte, while Francesco Friedrich solidified his GOAT status with big golden letters by becoming the first bobsled pilot (along with his crew mate Thorsten Margis) to do the 2-man + 4-man double in consequitive games.
USA and Canada saw their grip on the snowboarding and freestyle skiing starting to slip away. In the meantime China got their superstar in those funky disciplines - Eileen Gu, who won two gold and one silver. And she's 18, so I'd expect her to be a hot favorite in 2026.
In the alpine skiing - disaster for Mikaela Shiffrin and the Italian team as well. Shiffrin failed to finish in both the slalom and giant slalom - her flagship events, while she fell short on winning the bronze in the team event (which would've been some small consolation prize). The Italians came with the big basket and strong World Cup performance - yet no gold medal. Goggia, their best bet got herself injured before the games and no one knew whether she'll make it. She eventually won the silver. Switzerland won the most medals with 5.
In the ice hockey men's tournement everyone expected that the ROC's title to be a forgone conclusion. But they've shown vuneraubility during the semis with Sweden and in the Final allowed Finland to come back from 0:1 deficit to win it all (their first title after falling short in 1988 and 2006). Without the NHL stars to rely on again, Canada and the US were sent packing in the 1/4 Finals. The Czechs, once one of the mightiest teams, was eliminated in the play-off match vs. Switzerland. The biggest surprise was Slovakia.
However the games will be remembered with the dubious decisions and scandals which were: severall bad calls in the short track, multiple disqualifications in the mixed event in ski jumping (if those suits were legal in the individual event days earlier, why on earth were now illegal; consistency is all what we ask), dubious disqualification of Fanny Smith in the women's ski cross final, shortening the 50k freestyle for men to mere 28.4k (when they could've just rescheduled it for the next day like some skiiers and coaches proposed) and the whole saga with Kamila Valieva which a huge can of worms that I'd wish to stay closed. But I'd say this - her coach made the situation even worse by chastizing a clearly distraught Valieva, a child no less, in front of the camera for the whole world to see (it was really disturbing for me). And this on top of the wave of positive COVID-19 tests among athletes - some even top favorites, plus the usual human rights stuff that surround China when it comes to big sporting events.
It's funny how America how immigrants used to come to America and compete for us in global sports events instead of their home countries. Now natural born Americans are expatriating to compete for other countries, usually their ancestral ones (i.e. Gu). Similar things with Canada. I guess it's good for spreading different sports worldwide and having greater competitive balance, but it sometimes hurts to see medals going elsewhere.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
![imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg](https://imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg)
