Olympics 2010, Sunday, Feb. 14

Today I watched:
Nordic combined, men's
More men's luge
Biathalon, men's
3000m speed skate, women's
Moguls, men's
Figure skating, pairs, short program

I learned what the Nordic combined is: ski jumping and cross-country skiing. I thought it was really interesting to watch, and every time I saw the athletes take another stride with the skis, I thought about the ten minute maximum I can handle on the gym's cross country machine.

I watched the luge for a second day in a row, and although I like watching their speed going down the course, after watching a few athletes go down, the sport can get kind of boring to watch. It consists of four rounds, so there is a lot of repetition, and there isn't any way you can really tell who is faster and who is slower, except for the clock running on the bottom of the screen. I think it would be more exciting if there were head-to-head competition as they go down the course, but I realize that would be impossible.

I also enjoyed watching the biathalon; it's an interesting event because not all of the competitors start at the same time, which means that short bursts of bad weather can hurt a small number of athletes who have the misfortune to be competing at that moment. That happened today, as there was a short period of time when a pretty heavy snow was falling.

Speed skating and moguls were both a lot of fun for the second day in a row.

As I mentioned yesterday, pairs skating is one of my favorite events (I still remember Gordeeva and Grinkov winning the gold in 1994). I was confused by some of the scores during the competition: teams that flubbed a good bit were scored above teams that skated cleanly. The commentators seemed confused as well. Tomorrow is the long program, which should be interesting because there are a number of teams within a very small point range after the short program.

Tomorrow: snowboarding, speed skating, cross country skiing, pairs figure skating.