From last night—
- As expected, Lindsey Vonn’s first position did not hold up in Women’s Super-G. I can’t say that I understand (or agree with) the random nature of assignment in the sport. Why not use, say, World Cup standings or similar? Whoever goes first has far less info then the rest of the competitors (especially with no training runs) and that put Vonn in a terrible position.
- So, Kabletown switched the storyline to Lichtenstein’s Weirather. A tiny country, a family QISE legacy, and an older competitor—it’s made for TV drama.
- Never assume. The Peacock switched over to Mens Figure Skating (in order to show Adam Rippon’s performance live), assuming the skiing event was done, since all the top skiers had completed. Then comes Ester Ledecka of the Czech Republic—who’s better known for Snowboarding—beats them all by 0.01 sec.
- Back to Skating. Weir calls the judging “interesting”, which is a rare understatement from him. What have we learned? Skating cleanly gets you lower scores than taking risks and crashing. What if an athlete just tried a “quint” (five rotations) and failed? I’m guessing they would win.
- Another Weir quote: “That performance is in his blood”. The visual of hundreds of Winnie-the-Pooh dolls raining on the stage is bizarre, as is the gushing commentary for Yuzuru Hanyu when he screwed up two of his moves.
And now today’s coverage--
- A clear sign that QISE has become a media event more than a sports competition--Ester Ledecka refused to take off her goggles in interviews because she didn’t have her makeup on.
- Today’s Today quote from Natalie Morales of the weekend crew: “We’re going to take a look back at (the first week)…has it only been a week? It’s seems like longer!” Yes it does, Natalie, yes it does.
- There was an interesting story on The Today Show (I was shocked too) about how young South Koreans feel about North Korea. Basically, there’s mistrust and anger that North Korea stepped in at the last minute and took attention from South Korea’s efforts.
- The afternoon’s coverage begins with the “controlled chaos” of Women’s Mass Start Biathlon. Sharp sticks, flailing athletes, rifles—what could go wrong? One of the commentators talked about a competitor being tired, partly due to all the media coverage. Perhaps more media coverage would help?
- During the break before prime time, I’m watching more Curling online. Still don’t understand why this doesn’t catch on in the US outside of the games.
- Primetime starts with Tirico at the Ski Lodge, throwing us to Women’s Skeleton.
- You know things at the Peacock are chaotic when they trumpet a whole 30 minutes of “uninterrupted” coverage of one event. (Uninterrupted, but with commercials).
- Speaking of commercials, there was one for Dunkin Donuts. I thought I read they were dropping the “Donut” part (not the pastry, but the name). Wouldn’t QISE be a good time to introduce this?
- There were several events tonight, but very little of it piqued my interest. Am I getting burned out? There’s still 8 days to go…
More tomorrow.