Olympics 2010, Friday, Feb. 26

Today I watched:
Ice hockey, men's, USA vs. Finland
Ice hockey, men's, Canada vs. Slovakia
Curling, women's, Sweden vs. Canada (gold medal)
Speedskating, men's team pursuit, quarterfinals, semifinals
Speedskating, men's short-track, 500m quarterfinals, semifinals, final
Skiing, women's, slalom
Speedskating, women's short-track, 1000m quarterfinals, semifinals, final
Speedskating, men's short-track, 5000m relay
Bobsled, men's four-man, heat 2
Snowboarding, women's parallel giant slalom
Biathalon, men's 4x7500m relay
Speed-skating, women's team pursuit, quarterfinals

Today I watched two of the most exciting finishes of the Olympics. First was the gold medal curling match between Sweden and Canada, which went to extra innings and came down to the last stone of the eleventh end. I feel like the sentence I just typed was in a foreign language. I will call that language Canadian. The second exciting moment were the last seconds of the Canada-Slovakia hockey game. Canada was up 3-0 with six minutes left in the game when Slovakia scored two goals in very quick succession. Slovakia tried to tie it up and had a number of good chances in the last three minutes, with a few notables in the last 20 seconds. It would have been great to see them come up with an upset, but it wasn't going to happen.

The USA-Finland game was not a close one--the US won 6-1. When the US scored their fourth goal halfway through the first period, Finland goalie Miikka Kiprusoff pulled himself. Nikolas Backstrom replaced him and promptly gave up two goals fifteen seconds apart. Absent injury, I don't think I have ever seen a goalie pull himself out of a game, but I give Kiprusoff credit for realizing he wasn't helping his team at all and deciding to do something about it. I only wish Nabokov had done something similar after letting up his fourth goal against Canada two days ago.

This produces the Canada-USA gold metal game that Gary Bettman has been praying for. Bettman actually did a spot with Al Michaels and was his usual annoying and moronic self. I do not understand how he has retained his job--no commissioner has done more to ruin his sport.

As for the rest of the day's events: Gobo thinks that Apolo Anton Ohno is a dirty speed-skater. Of course, the Koreans have been saying this for years, but Gobo wasn't aware of their allegations (he completely ignores the pieces done before and after the matches), yet after watching Ohno's performances, he has come to this conclusion. Is thinking such a thing unpatriotic?

I don't understand why NBC couldn't show us more parallel slalom. I really enjoyed the semi-final matches that they showed us, and wish they could have aired more. The coverage on NBC's secondary networks has not been extensive--surely they could have added an hour to one of the daytime slots on CNBC or MSNBC.

The high point of the night might have been finding out that there would be more biathalon. I thought that the sport had seen its last race days ago, so this was a wonderful surprise. It was great to hear the name Ole Einar Bjorndalen one more time. Maybe I should have made him my Olympic boyfriend. (Just joking, Ovi!)

Just two days of Olympics left. Tomorrow is the bronze medal match in men's hockey, which will be aired on the non-HD MSNBC so that the figure skating exhibition can air on NBC. Good work again, NBC, thanks for the coverage!