Olympics 2010, Sunday, Feb. 20

Today I watched:
Ice hockey, Russia vs. Czech Republic
Ice hockey, USA vs. Canada
Skiing, men's ski cross
Skiing, men's super combined
Skiing, men's biathalon, 15,000m mass start
Figure skating, ice dancing original dance
Speed skating, women's 1500m
Bobsled, men's two-man
Ice hockey, Sweden vs. Finland
Skiing, women's biathalon, 12,500m mass start

I already shared some of my thoughts about the ice hockey in my previous post, so I'll keep the comments here brief. After the USA-Canada match, one thing that struck me was the interaction between Blackhawks teammates Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane in the handshake. Kane, who plays for Team USA, broke into a smile when he saw Toews, who plays for Team Canada. Kane gave Toews a hug and said something to him as they shook hands. The look on Toews' face, however, was of someone completely shell-shocked. Contrasting the expressions of the two teammates was pretty dramatic.

Also, a bit of criticism about NBC. I haven't really complained about the broadcasting of these Olympics, because I would rather just focus on the fun of the Games. But I have to wonder why NBC even bothered to break into the USA-Canada game when they did: after the USA scored its empty net goal, the score was 5-3, and there were only 20 seconds left in the game. What was the point? The three minutes immediately before that had been incredibly exciting: Canada scored to bring them within one goal of a tie, and then proceeded to control the puck, shooting at Miller mercilessly. They had so many chances to score; it was truly edge-of-your-seat hockey at its best. Yet NBC didn't cut over for any of that--at the very least, I would have thought they would have shown the final three minutes after Canada scored. Total miss on the part of NBC. Big shock.

As for the other sports: Biathalon is exciting! I'm sure you're shocked. Really, I love biathalon and any other sport that has cross-country skiing. Biathalon is my favorite because of the added drama of the shooting and penalty laps, but cross-country has not bored me once during this Olympics. To think that at the beginning of this Olympics I didn't even know who Magdalena Neuner was. Now I feel like I've known her forever.

Today was the debut of skiing cross, and I loved it. It's just like snowboard cross, but on skis! I love watching the skiiers race head-to-head.

If I weren't so tired, I'm sure I could say an awful lot about the original dance competition in ice dancing today. Alas, I'm tired. Suffice it to say, the costumes were quite special. After the compulsory dance round, my favorite team was Russia's Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin. They are now in third place, and according to the LA Times, they probably can't catch the first place team. I'm not really sure why that's the case, since they were in first after day one, didn't make big mistakes, but fell to third. Seems that the same could happen to the other teams tomorrow, but what do I know? I did think that the teams in first and second did skate the best today, Canada's Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue and the US's Meryl Davis and Charlie White.

Looks like I might get to bed before 4 a.m. today, which I now consider an early night. Tomorrow is a hockey-free day (well, women's hockey semi-finals, but as I have written in the past, I'm only going to watch the USA-Canada gold medal game because the other teams are horribly overmatched and the games just aren't fun to watch). Tomorrow: more cross country and ice dancing!