Sochi Olympics Day 14 - Bowed, but not beaten

Note: The Olympic Cauldron in Sochi has been extinguished, waiting to be re-lit two years from now in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. But I am still trying to catch up on my writing. I hope to have another couple of blogs up in the next few days.

The last few days have not been kind to the US Olympic team in their battles with the mostly friendly rival to the north, Canada. On Wednesday, the Canadian women's 2-man bobsleigh team of Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moyse overcame the 0.23 second lead held by the US team of Elana Meyers and Lauryn Williams after two runs to win the gold medal. On Thursday, the Canadian women's ice hockey team scored two goals in the final 4 minutes of regulation to tie the score against the Americans. They scored again in overtime to take the gold medal for the 4th consecutive Olympics. Finally, on Friday, Jamie Benn scored on a deflection in the second period and the Canadian team held on for a 1-0 victory to move them into the gold medal game against Sweden. But the Canadians weren't done yet. The Canadian men's team pursuit speed skating team of Mathieu Giroux, Lucas Makowsky and Denny Morrison (the same team that took the gold medal in Vancouver against the Americans) blew the American team of Shani Davis, Brian Hansen and Jonathan Kuck off the oval in the preliminary round, winning by a margin of 3.52 seconds over the 3,000 meter distance.

There is a tendency in the media to read too much into events like these. No, this is not evidence that the nation of Canada is superior to the United States. The team of Meyers and Williams and the women's hockey team both claimed silver medals. While some look at the silver medal as a sort of consolation prize, I, for one, would be thrilled to be the second best in the world at anything. 

I think that these discussions miss the point. If you are, or even if you aspire to be, a world-class athlete, you want to be measured against the best in the world. How else do you learn what is required to progress to your goal? In 1992, the National Basketball Association assembled the Dream Team to go to the Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona. That team, with 11 future Hall-of-Fame members, was easily the best basketball team ever assembled. Beth and I saw them play at the Tournament of the Americas in Portland when they had just put the team together. They were awesome! Despite still learning how to play together, their average margin of victory was 51.5 points, including beating Venezuela for the Championship by 47 points. Then they went on to Barcelona. In eight games, their average margin of victory was 43.75 points including a 68 point victory over Angola and a 32 point victory over Croatia in the gold medal game. There were a lot of comments in the press that the US had made a mockery of the Olympics by sending such a strong team. This was ironic because when the idea of sending professionals to the Olympics was brought up in 1989, the US voted against the idea. In reality, it was the nations like Angola which voted for the proposal. Their reasoning: How are we ever going to improve unless we play against the very best? The wisdom of this approach is clear; the rest of the world has caught up and the US is no longer the dominant basketball power. Playing the best has made them stronger.

So it will be for these Americans. After a while, the sting of defeat will go away. If they are the kind of people that I think they are, they will take the lessons learned home with them, work hard and come back in four years better than ever. With the possible exception of Shani Davis, who is reaching the end of his athletic career, I fully expect to see all of these teams in PeongChang, Korea in 2018!

Sochi Olympics Day 11 - The Orange Wave

When we first attended speed skating in 1988, the stands in Calgary looked a lot like this:

We asked someone near us what was up with all of these orange-clad people. He said, "Oh, those are the Dutch fans" as if this explained why some of them looked like this:

 

  

Since then, we have fully enjoyed watching the Dutch fans. The closest analogy I have is that they are the Brazilians of the Winter Olympics - a walking party wherever they happen to be. But at the Winter Olympics, where they happen to be is always at Speed Skating. They even have their own band called Kleintje Pils (Little Beers):

The Kleintje Pils are so entertaining that they have been invited to attend Olympic Speed Skating at essentially no cost for at least the last five Olympics in exchange for providing entertainment during ice resurfacing breaks. I vividly remember the members of the band valiantly trying to teach the very stoic Japanese fans in Nagano how to do the Wave! 

While they fiercely cheer for their own athletes and really hate to lose, the Dutch are nevertheless very supportive of all of the athletes. We have often heard them burst into applause when some skater far back in the overall standings skates a personal best time. I have never heard them boo a rival to one of their own skaters.

So perhaps it is some sort of karmic reward for their good sportsmanship that the Dutch are absolutely destroying the competition at the Adler Speed Skating Arena. After 10 events, the Dutch have an astounding 21 medals out of a possible 30. This currently puts just their Speed Skating team ahead of all but two nations: the US and Russia. No other team in Olympic history has dominated their sport like the Dutch are doing this year. They have swept the podium in four of ten events and set three Olympic records. All of the prior Olympic Speed Skating records were set in the high altitude of Salt Lake City, so setting even one Olympic record at sea level is amazing. Setting three is, like my 15 year old son Sean would say, sick!

I read an interview with a Dutch journalist who traced the rise of Dutch Speed Skating to the 9 Olympic medals that Americans Chad Hedricks and Shani Davis picked up at the 2006 Torino and 2010 Vancouver games. This was a real smack in the face to a nation that, in a recent survey, had 12 million people who consider themselves recreational skaters. Note that the Netherlands has a total population of only about 16 million people so the only people who don't skate are the very old and the very young (and I'm not so sure about the very old). Any decent sized town in the Netherlands has more competitive Speed Skaters than there are in the entire US. How could the US get so much out of so little? This motivated an entire generation of Dutch skaters with the result that it is now much more difficult to make the Dutch Olympic Speed Skating team than it is to win an Olympic medal.

The rest of the world can only be thankful that the Dutch are not guaranteed to win all the remaining medals in the last two Speed Skating events. This is because both are Team Pursuit events with only one team per country! I have to be honest. After decades of enjoying the Dutch fans and their team, I'm rooting for them to smash another two Olympic records and maybe a World record or two.

Sochi Olympics Day 10 - The Streak Breaker

It is Day 10 and we have finally progressed to my favorite Olympic sport: Bobsleigh. Yesterday and today are the Men's 2-man followed by Women's 2-man (oxymoron alert!), with Men's 4-man toward the end of the week. 

American Bobsledder and Salt Lake City native Steven Holcomb does not look like a world-class athlete. In fact, at 1.78 m (5'10"), 100 kg (220 lb), he is kind of bowling ball-shaped. Looks are deceiving. In 2-Man, Steven and his brakeman Steve Langton manage to propel a 170 kg (384 lb) 2-Man sled from 0 to 50 km/hr (30 mph) in just under 5 seconds! Now he stands ready to break a 62 year drought since the last US 2-man bobsled to win an Olympic medal. But Holcomb's path to this point was not straightforward.

It is hard to picture, but Holcomb began his athletic career as a competitive ski racer. But the selection of Salt Lake City as the host of the 2002 Winter Olympics provided additional opportunities. Holcomb saw someone with a bobsled in the back of his truck and decided to attend a bobsled tryout. He took an eight part test of strength and sprinting speed and scored 675 points - exactly the minimum number to make the Men's national B team. But he was told that since he was only 18, they were going to take the next lowest athlete because he was older. Holcomb eventually made it back onto the team when another athlete was injured and was selected to be a pusher on US pilot, and now national team coach, Brian Shimer's 4-man team for the Salt Lake City Olympics. He hurt his hamstring and was not able to compete, but Holcomb wanted to take part in the Olympics in some way and was selected as one of the forerunners who drive sleds down the track prior to the official start of competition. He obviously "caught the bobsledding bug" because by the 2004-5 season, he was consistently ranked in the top two or three bobsled pilots in the US. He qualified for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy; finishing 6th in 4-man and 14th in 2-man.

This first Olympic success resulted in Holcomb joining the World Cup circuit for the 2006-7 season. His 2-man team won the World Cup championship while his 4-man team was second. But as his bobsled career was taking off, his eyesight began to fail. Holcomb had been diagnosed with degenerative eye disease called keratoconus in 2002. This is a thinning of the cornea that causes distorted vision. For a long time, he was able to get by with contact lenses and glasses. As his vision degraded, he became more and more dependent on driving by feel. Finally, he reached the point where he often could not recognize the person sitting across from him at a table. Imaging going down a bobsled run at 130 km (80 mpg) when you can't even see the front of the sled clearly! He was afraid that he would kill someone besides himself if he kept going this way. He became depressed and attempted to kill himself with a drug overdose. That didn't work, but did bring him to the point of confessing to his coaches that he was going blind. They convinced him to find a specialist who could help him.

Normally, the only cure is corneal implant surgery and that is what the first twelve specialists Holcomb saw recommended. But that would mean missing an entire Olympic Cycle. Enter specialist #13, Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler, who convinced him that there was another option: injecting B vitamin riboflavin into Steven's cornea followed by treatment with a specific wavelength of light. The idea was that when exposed to the light, the riboflavin would cross-link with the cornea, increasing its thickness and stabilizing his condition. This radical new treatment was a success, but it still left Holcomb with 20/1000 eyesight. Three months later, he had special contact lenses implanted and in 20 minutes, Holcomb's eyesight went from 20/1000 to 20/20. I remember what an amazing experience it was going from 20/200 to 20/20 when I put on my first pair of glasses, so I can imaging how he felt.

In the short-term, his new-found eyesight actually created more problems with his driving - before he was going completely by feel, but now he had all of these visual distractions to deal with. He had some successes, however. He won the first 4-man World championship for the US since 1959 in 2009 and followed it up with a Gold medal in Vancouver. This second victory broke a 62 year drought since the US last won a Gold medal in 4-man bobsled in 1948. But despite these successes, finding the right balance between sight and feel was a work in progress. Finally, success in Sochi was looking good when Holcomb's 2-man and 4-man teams both won the 2012 World Championship. But first, he was going to need a new ride.

Since 1994, all US bobsleds had been produced by the Bo-Dyn Bobsled Project funded by NASCAR driver Geoff Bodine. These sleds reached their peak with the "Night Train" 4-man sled that Holcomb used to win the Gold in Vancouver. But the momentum had gone out of this project so US Bobsled approached sponsor BMW/USA with the idea of designing the next generation of US bobsleds. This was a little complicated because BMW headquarters in Munich was designing new sleds for the German team. But a deal was signed and designer Michael Scully went to work. His idea was to replace a lot of the steel in the old sleds with high strength, light weight carbon fiber. The rules state that a 2-man bobsled must weigh 170 kg (384 lb) empty. The use of lighter materials meant that the designers would have to add weight back, but they could choose where to put it. After 68 "failures", Scully found design #69 where the weight was moved from the front to the center of the sled to make it more maneuverable and that would help it maintain momentum in the high-speed portions of the trace. Now, the trick was to build and refine this prototype in less than 18 months - a ridiculously short time to design and perfect a design.

USA Bobsled received the first prototype in 2012 and then received six brand-new 2-man sleds (three for the men, three for the women) in time for the US Olympic trials in October 2013. Then it was onto the World Cup where Holcomb promptly won four of the seven World Cup races and claimed the 2-Man World championship. Things were really looking good for Sochi!

However, breaking the 62-year drought since the US last won an Olympic 2-man title was not going to be easy. Perhaps no other sport has such a strong "home court" advantage. Getting down the track in one piece is one thing. Getting down the fastest is another thing entirely. It is estimated that Russian driver Alexander Zubkov has been down the track at the Sanki Sliding Center perhaps 300-400 times. Holcomb has been down it perhaps 40 times. Zubkov showed what he had learned in the first run; setting a track record of 56.25. Steven was comfortably in second with a time of 56.34. Zubkov again had the fastest run in run two with a 56.57, but Steven Holcomb had on the 8th fastest time of 56.84. This put him in 3rd place, but more importantly, he injured his calf during the push. The injury was bad enough that US team coach Shimer asked Holcomb if he wanted to withdraw from the 2-man to save himself for the 4-man. Holcomb told him that it took 4 years of work since Vancouver to get to this point and he was not going to let a "boo boo" stop him. 

There is a reason why the US has not won a medal in 2-man since 1952. While the US has many world-class push athletes, it rarely produces world-class drivers. The three push athletes in a 4-man sled can sometimes propel an inferior driver to a medal. But when there is only one push athlete, the driver not only has to be able to push the sled, he also has to be able to feel the track and quickly find the fastest line. Now Steven's ability to push the sled was reduced. Could he compensate?

The 3rd run begins with the fastest sleds first. 39 year old Zubkov showed that he has learned how to drive the Sanki track by getting only the 8th fastest start, but gradually got faster and faster and ended up with the fastest run; in fact, it was another track record of 56.08. Switzerland's Beat Hefti, who had moved passed Steven in the second run, unleashed the fastest start of the round and finished in 56.26; faster than either of Holcomb's first two runs. Then it was Holcomb's turn. With brakeman Steve Langton doing most of the work, Holcomb's start was only 12th best. At the first checkpoint, he had the 9th fastest time. He was 7th fastest at the second checkpoint and 6th fastest at the third checkpoint. He continued to find speed on the lower half of the course; posting the fifth fastest time at the fourth checkpoint and ended up with the third best time at the finish; 56.41. The highest-ranked Canada-3 sled had a somewhat disappointing 3rd run so Holcomb's margin after three runs was 0.09 seconds. But Canada-3, Latvia-1 and Russia-2 were all within 0.14 seconds.

Only the top 20 teams compete in the 4th run and they go in reverse order, so Holcomb had a long wait. Russia-2 pilot Alexander Kasjanov, taking advantage of his experience on the Sanki track and the huge cheers from the Russian fans, had a run much like Zubkov's in the previous run. He had the 13th fastest start but ended up with the second fastest run in the 4th run; 56.57 for a 4 run total of 3:46.30. Going next, Latvia-1, despite the fastest start time, could only manage a 56.75 and moved into second place. Justin Kripps, driving Canada-3 made a serious mistake before one of the three uphill sections and ended up with only a 56.94. This dropped him behind both Russia-2 and Latvia-1. Now it was Holcomb's turn. 18 years of hard work had brought him to this point. Could he kill another 62 year drought and earn his second Olympic medal? Maybe it was adrenaline, maybe it was Langton's extra efforts to push the sled, but their start was 4.88 seconds, 0.04 seconds faster than the previous run. Now it was all up to Holcomb. He was driving well, but the Russia-1 time was very good so his original 0.14 margin was down to 0.05 seconds at the next to last checkpoint. I was holding my breathe, but at the end, Holcomb held on to the Bronze medal by 0.03 seconds - and Holcomb had ended a second 62-year drought for Team USA!

I hope that you don't mind the extra long story, but I wanted to make the point that Olympic athletes don't just appear at the Games. Each of them has decades of hard work behind them, and maybe more than a few challenges overcome, to get to this point. I hope that you've enjoyed the long version of Steven Holcomb's journey.

Sochi Olympics Day 8 - Another Aerials Story

There was another interesting story from the Women's Aerials competition yesterday involving Brazilian Joselane Santos.

Last May, former Canadian aerialist Ryan Snow was looking for a new coaching gig after coaching the Americans in Vancouver. He was married to a Brazilian, and while on vacation there, pitched the idea of starting up a Brazilian Aerials team to the Brazilian winter sports federation. Within a couple months, he had a budget and had selected two former Brazilian gymnasts, Joselane Santos and Lais da Souza to be on the team. Santos was a nationally ranked gymnast and da Souza had competed for Brazil at the 2004 Athens and 2008 Beijing Olympics. There was only one minor problem. Neither had ever been on snow. 

Fortunately, the airborne part of aerials does not require snow. So, they spent the summer in Sao Paulo jumping off a converted plastic snowboard track into a giant airbag. Toward the end of summer, they went to Whistler ski area north of Vancouver to learn how to ski. Joselane said she lost track of the number of times she fell. She even fell getting on and off the ski lift. It was only in the fall that the two Brazilians finally landed their first aerial jumps.

Ryan's original plan had been to target the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Korea, but this was to change. The International Ski Federation has an allocation system for each Olympics that allows any country with a recognized National Governing Body to qualify athletes for Olympics even if they are not at the top of the World Cup standings. Originally, Brazil was fourth in line for one of these allocations. But it soon became clear that Brazil would have a good chance of qualifying an athlete for Sochi. All they had to do was to compete in some World Cup events and not finish last.

At this point, things were looking really good. In January, Lais finished 28th out of 33 while Joselane finished 30th out of 33 at the World Cup event in Deer Valley, UT. Later the same week, Lais finished 23rd out of 27 and Joselane finished 25th at Val St. Come in Quebec. A week later, Joselane finished 30th out of 33 while Lais finished 32nd. Since Lais had slightly more World Cup points, she was named to the Brazilian Olympic team with Joselane as the alternate. Then disaster struck. Around January 29th, while skiing with her coach in Utah, Lais collided with a tree and sustained a life-threatening spinal injury. She did not sever her spinal cord and while she is just now beginning to breathe on her own, she still cannot move her arms or legs. The Orthopedic specialists treating her said that 90% of people sustaining this injury die within the first week. However, Lais' fitness level was so high that she survived the most critical period and doctors believe that she may yet recover.

So, it was with a heavy heart that Joselane took Lais' spot on the team and headed to Sochi. In Aerials competitions, there are six ramps numbered 1 through 6 and ranging from 2.10 m to 4.25 m (6.9 ft to 13.9 ft) in height just above the 39 degree landing slope. The athletes choose the ramp that is required to land the jump being attempted. Joselane lined up for her Back Tuck (one flip in a tucked position) with a small jump on the far right of the course marked only with the Olympic rings - likely placed there only for her. I cannot claim to know what was going through her mind at that moment, but remember that she had only been doing aerials for seven months and then only in competition for about one month. My thoughts would have been along the lines of "God, please keep me from hurting myself and making a complete fool of myself in front of a world-wide audience"! I expect that she was a little more optimistic than that. ;-) Despite everything, Joselane landed her jump and got a quite good score of 24.8 from the judges times a 2.000 degree of difficulty for 49.60 points. This placed her in 20th place out of 22 competitors, narrowly ahead of Tanja Schaerer of Switzerland and Hanna Huskova from Belarus, both of whom crashed on their jumps.

Joselane and the other 15 competitors not in the top 6 after the first qualification jump then moved on to the second qualification jump. In this round, Joselane used her most difficult trick, a Back Lay (one flip in the layout position) with a 2.050 degree of difficulty. For comparison, the most difficult jump in that round was the same Back Lay followed by two flips, each with a complete 360 degree rotation with a 3.800 degree of difficulty. Joseland's second jump was not quite as good, but she landed safely.  I saw her make a sign after she landed and found out that she was making the letter L for her friend Lais.  While waiting for the score, the magnitude of what she had just done and the whole situation with Lais got to her and she broke down and cried. Her score of 23.5 from the judges was good for 48.17 points, putting her in last place overall, but I am sure that she did not care.

For every Olympic medalist, there are hundreds of Olympic athletes like Joselane who have risked, or suffered serious injury in their quests to be the best in their countries and who have simply had the courage to try. I hope that Lais will recover from her injuries and that Joselane will again attempt to represent Brazil in Pyeongchang four years from now.

Sochi Olympics Day 7 - A long time coming

Happy Valentine's Day! Valentine's Day always occurs during the Winter Olympics, so if I were in Sochi, I'd be wearing at least a half dozen heart-shaped pins. They always trade well!

My favorite story for the day comes from Women's Aerials. Aerials is typically a young person's sport because of the number of horrific injuries that these athletes seem to acquire during their careers of falling out of the sky onto a steep landing zone while performing all kinds of twists and flips. The oldest athlete in the competition was 34 year old Belorussian Alla Tsuper. Alla was born in Ukraine and competed for Ukraine in the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics, but has competed for Belarus since. Overall, her career has had mixed results. She was rated in the top three in the world in 2000, 2001, 2005 and 2007, but came into Sochi rated 13th. Sochi was her fifth Winter Olympics. She finished 5th in Nagano, 9th in Salt Lake City, 10th in Torino and 8th in Vancouver. Not to demean Alla's career, but this is the profile of an athlete playing out the string - good enough to qualify for her country, but no longer good enough to contend.

Alla's jump in the first qualification run was a Back Lay Tuck Full. This means that she was going to make two flips, the first in the layout position and the second one tucked including a full twist. This jump has a pretty high degree of difficulty - 3.500. Alla looked pretty good in the air, but flipped a little too far and landed far on the back of her skis. She managed to bounce back up, but caught one ski in the mush in the landing zone and shot off to her left before crashing. By not crashing immediately, she did get some points for the landing, but the relatively low score from the judges of 18.9 times the degree of difficulty gave her only 66.15 points (compared to first round leader Ashley Caldwell of the US with 101.25 points). This put her 14th out of 22 competitors. The top 6 in this round went immediately to the finals while the other 16 went to a second qualification round.

Australian athletes Lydia Lassila and Laura Peel started the 2nd round with great jumps and clearly took two of the remaining six spots in the finals. Russian Veronica Korsunova landed a Back Full Full to take the third of the six spots. Then it was Alla's turn. While most of the women chose to do jumps with degrees of difficulty around 3.1, Alla chose to do a Back Lay Full Full (one flip in a layout position followed by two more flips, each with a full twist) with a degree of difficulty of 3.800. Otherwise, the jump was nearly a carbon copy of the previous one - good in the air followed by a near crash. The only difference was that this time she shot off the course in the opposite direction. It was not looking good for Alla. Her air and form scores were slightly higher than in her first run as were her landing scores. This resulted in a judges score of 20.4 times 3.8 degree of difficulty for 77.52 points. This put her in fourth place. Then the waiting began. First up was Chinese athlete Xin Zhang, ranked number 2 in the world. Zhang landed her Back Full Full and got 24.6 from the judges. However, the 3.150 gave her only 77.49 points - 0.03 behind Alla. Two jumpers later, Kazakh Zhanbota Aldabergenova also landed a Back Full Full, but got slightly higher points from the judges and moved into fourth place with 78.12 points. Two jumpers after that a Chinese skier, 3rd world ranked aerialist Mengtao Xu landed a Back Lay Tuck Full, the same jump that Alla has used in the first round. Her score of 87.15 points moved her into 2nd place and pushed Alla into the sixth and final qualifying spot. If any of the three remaining competitors scored higher than 77.52 points, her Olympic dream was over. Fortunately for Alla, all three fell short and she was into the finals!

As the lowest ranked aerialist in the finals, Alla went first. I had thought that no one could use the same jump twice, but apparently, what they did during qualifications did not carry over. As a result, Alla went back to the same Back Lay Full Full that she used in the second qualification round. This time, she landed it perfectly. The judges gave her 26.1 times the 3.800 degree of difficulty for 99.12 points. The remaining eleven competitors could not match Alla's score and she finished the round in first place. Alla and the next seven highest placed women moved on to the second finals round and Alla was assured her best Olympic finish in 16 years.

In the second round, the eight competitors are cut down to the final four. As the top qualifier, Alla got to go last. I don't know if this was a good thing because Mengtao Xu landed a Back Lay Full Full, Lydia Lassila landed a Back Full Full Full, Nana Li  from China (ranked #1 in the world) landed a Back Double Full Full and Shuang Cheng from China landed a Back Full Double Full. Alla needed 87.42 points to get into the medals round. Alla chose a Back Full Tuck Full (3 twists, 2 flips) with a difficulty of 3.750.  This requires a flip with a twist, a flip with no twist and another flip with a twist. She over-rotated just a little bit, but managed to hang on to the landing. It was a long wait for the judges to decide her fate, but finally, she got 23.6 from the judges times 3.750 for 88.50 points.  She was into her first Olympic finals after five tries!

As the last qualifier again, Alla went first. She chose her toughest trick - a Back Full Full Full - three flips, each with a full 360 degree twist for a 4.050 degree of difficulty. Up in the air she went and this time, Alla stuck the landing. The announcer pointed out on the replay several points in the air where she was not perfect, but she stuck the landing and her first Olympic medal in her 21 year career looked possible. Next up was Nana Li. She chose a Back Double Full Double Full. I thought this a surprising choice because the degree of difficulty was "only" 3.900. Clearly, she was choosing an easier jump with a higher probability of doing it perfectly. Unfortunately, she did not get high enough up in the air and therefore landed too far forward and ended up falling face first. Alla was going to win a medal! Now, what color would it be? Next was defending Gold medalist Lydia Lassila. She chose to do a Back Full Double Full Full - a triple flip, each with a full twist except that the first one has a double twist for a ridiculous difficulty rating of 4.250. She looked great in the air. She landed on her skis (impressive given all of the twists and flips), but bounced backwards and could not pull out the landing. Last up was Mengtao Xu from China with a Back Lay Double Full Full with a 4.175 degree of difficulty. She also looked great in the air, but barely hung onto the landing as she touched down with her hands after not being able to stop rotating. This was going to be pretty close - the landing is only 30% of the scoring and Mengtao had a higher degree of difficulty. Finally, the scores came up: 20.0 from the judges times 4.175 for 83.50 points and the gold was Alla's!

I cannot imagine what drives a person to keep competing for nearly a decade after she was last one of the world's top-rated aerialists. How many times must she have asked herself what was she doing out here with all of these teenagers. But Alla Tsuper persevered and that is why tonight she is an Olympic Gold medalist.

Sochi Olympics Day 4 - The heart of a champion

I was watching the women's luge and enjoying that I got to see all of the runs for each of the competitors when I saw something unusual. Sandwiched between 18 year old American Summer Britcher in 19th place and 21 year old Ekaterina Baturina from the Russian Federation in 21st place was 29 year old Austrian Nina Reithmayer. While Summer and Ekaterina both had the "just glad to be here" smiles on their faces after kind of shaky runs, Nina was visibly ticked off at herself after a run of 51.225 seconds (compared to 49.891 for leader, and later Gold medal winner Natalie Geisenberger of Germany). In the second run, both Summer and Ekaterina were noticeably faster, but Nina improved by only 0.082 seconds and was still firmly in 20th place and still upset. 

I googled Nina and found that she won the Silver medal in Vancouver! Okay, that could have been the peak of her career and she was just disappointed that she could not get back to the level she was at in 2010. Then I looked a little further and found that she tore her medial collateral ligament in a crash in Koenigssee, Germany on January 4th! Now I don't pretend to be a medical expert, but I believe that the normal treatment for a torn MCL is 6 weeks of rest followed by gradually building the strength back up - and she had 38 days.

With that in mind, I watched her final two runs closely. She finished 22nd in the 3rd run and 17th in the 4th to remain in 20th place overall. You could tell from the mistakes that she made that her mind knew what to do, but her leg was not strong enough to make the fine corrections needed while pulling five times normal gravity - and it was really frustrating her. Most people would have just said there is no way that I can be ready to do this. But most people are not Olympic medalists. In order to succeed at the highest level, you have to be absolutely focused on the goal - winning an Olympic medal. And that is what Nina had done - blocking out the pain of trying to rehab a knee in less time than needed as well as the doubts that she would be ready in time. She made it to the starting line against all odds, but she could not block out the fact that her knee was just not ready for the demands of driving a luge at 80mph.

It is a given that 90+% of Olympic athletes never win a medal. It may be hard for Nina, who has won a medal, to understand right now, but I really believe that the important thing about the Olympics is the journey and not the destination. She may find that what she learned about herself in terms of courage and perseverance during the last six weeks is worth far more than the Silver medal in her trophy case.

Sochi Olympics Day 3 - Our favorite Curler

Our fascination with Curling began at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. This was the first time since 1924 that Curling was part of the official Olympic program,  although it was a demonstration sport in 1932, 1988 and 1992. It turned out that our tour group at the Olympics was housed in a hotel in Karuizawa, the host of the Curling venue. Since we were going to be there anyway, we thought "why not check it out and avoid a long bus ride for at least one day". The organizers must have thought that no one would be interested because the arena was really small. I remember that we were in something like the 3rd row (out of maybe 6 or 7) on the side of the arena about midway down the playing surface. We had good enough seats that there were a group of team coaches sitting in the row in front of us. One of the Norwegian coaches was good enough to help us figure out what was going on. He told us that the key point was to forget about where the stone ends up on this throw. You have to think two or three throws ahead in order to figure out what is going on. Anyway, we had a good enough time that we again bought Curling tickets for the Salt Lake City Olympics as well.

Fast forward to 2006. We wanted to stay with a host family near Torino in a location that had good access to transportation. The closest home to Torino that would allow three people was in Pinerolo, site of the... Curling venue! Pinerolo, Italy had a population of perhaps 30-35,000 people, and more importantly, perhaps 5-6 decent restaurants in the downtown area. We soon discovered that most of the families of the Curlers as well as the coaches were also staying in Pinerolo. One night, we went to our now favorite pizza parlor. Rather than being seated in the back as usual, we were seated close to the front door. There was a big table near us of older people. I noticed several of them watching me. This wasn't unusual as I was wearing a hat and vest completely covered with Olympic pins. When we got up to leave, one of the women stopped Sean and offered him a pin. We made several pin trades including a Swiss team pin and a strange pin with a curling stone and four faces on it. I asked the woman what this was. Her English was not very good, but my understanding was that this was the Swiss Women's Curling team pin and that one of them was her daughter.

Several days later, we were in another restaurant when the Swiss Curling team and their coach came in and sat down at a table not too far from ours. Now I am not above using my son to troll for Olympic pins, but in this case, I thought that it would be cool for Sean to meet an Olympian. So after we finished dinner, I gave Sean one of my better traders and told him to go over to the Swiss ladies, hand them the pin and wish them good luck. Sean was not very keen on this plan, but he went over, handed the nearest woman the pin, mumbled something and was probably two-thirds of the way out of the restaurant before the Swiss women even figured out what was happening. Once they realized it, they called to Sean, but there was no way he was going back over there again without some support. So I walked over with Sean. The skip, Mirjam Ott, laughed, thanked Sean for the pin and handed him a Swiss team pin. Since I was there, I took out the pin with the people on it and told her that I was confused because one of the women at the table was a blond and there were no blonds on the pin. She explained that the fourth woman at the table was their alternate and then they all introduced themselves and pointed to their pictures on the pin.

We had a spare day near the end of our stay and were able to purchase tickets to the Women's Curling gold medal match, which happened to be Switzerland versus Sweden. Here is a picture of that match:

Ott is the woman in white on the right. Sweden was the defending World Champion and were ahead for most of the match, but Ott was able to score 2 points to send the match into extra ends with the score tied 6-6. Each stone in that final end seemed to tilt the match from one side to the other, but on the very last stone, the Swedish skip was able to score 1 point to win the Gold medal. You could tell how disappointed she was and we felt really bad for her. I found out later that the exact same thing had happened to Ott at the Salt Lake City Olympics four years earlier although that time, they lost to Great Britain and she was the 3rd on that team instead of the skip.

Ott came back for the Vancouver Olympics and we got to see her win a preliminary match. Her team easily qualified for the semifinals, but lost 6-5 to Canada and then 12-6 to China to finish fourth. Nevertheless, she comes into the Sochi Olympics as the most decorated skip in the women's tournament with 2 Silver medals, 1 World Championship and 2 European Championships. She started out the Sochi Olympics with a 7-4 win over the US although neither team played particularly well.

Getting to meet an athlete post 9/11 is very unusual. Mirjam could have easily blown us off but she chose to be kind to a little kid and his pin fanatic father. For that, we will be rooting for Mirjam for as long as she is competing. Go Team Switzerland!

Sochi Olympics Day 2 - Golden Oldies

It is Day 3 and I am already a day behind in writing this journal!

In the interest of full disclosure, I will turn 59 in a few weeks. However, I can't help but be drawn to the successes of the older athletes. Day 2 was a really great day for the "old folks". I wrote yesterday about the two luge athletes, 42 year old Russian Albert Demchenko and 40 year old Italian Armin Zeoggeler. Well, they hung on and won Silver and Bronze medals in Men's Luge, respectively. In addition, there were four other 40+ year olds who performed well on Day 2:

40 year old Norwegian Biathlete and Olympic legend Ole Einar Bjoerndalen surprised most people (although perhaps not himself) in winning the Men's 10km Sprint. This tied countryman Bjorn Daelie for the most medals ever by any Winter Olympian. He now has seven Gold medals in this, his sixth Olympic Games.

41 year old German Speed skater Claudia Pechstein missed a Bronze medal in the Women's 3000 meter by about 1.7 seconds. Claudia was trying for her 10th Olympic medal - in fact, we saw her win a Silver medal in this same event in Nagano in 1998. Her first Olympics was Lillehammer in 1994.

41 year old Japanese Ski Jumper Noriaki Kasai finished 8th out of 61 jumpers in the Men's Normal Hill competition. While Kasai has only a single Silver medal in his career, this is his seventh Olympics!

41 year old Cross-Country skier Giorgio Di Centa finished 12th out of 68 in the Men's 15km Classical/15km Free Skiathlon event. Giorgio was part of the legendary battles between the Italian and Norwegian teams in the Men's 4x10km Relay races in Salt Lake City and Torino. He has two Gold medals and one Silver medal going into his fifth Olympic Games in Sochi.

There are huge challenges to remaining a world-class athlete beyond the age of 40. Part is physical; injuries heal more slowly and more work is required to maintain the same level of fitness. But perhaps an even bigger part is psychological. It is natural to begin wondering if you are "over the hill" after a bad workout or bad performance. But the bigger question is "When am I going to get on with the rest of my life?". I heard an interview with US mogul skier Hannah Kearney after she finished what was, for her, a disappointing third place in Women's Moguls and announced that she was going to retire. She was asked how she could retire when, at 27 years old, she was still in her prime. She said that she had other things that she wanted to do with her life. She knew that if she committed to staying in the sport for another four years her sole focus would be the training necessary to stay at the top - and another four years would be gone before she could start on anything else.

As the years go by, the amount that you've given up in order to train gets bigger and bigger. For women, their biological clocks start going off. Although some women have had children and then gotten back to an elite level, this is a strain that many bodies cannot handle. And even if they are able to get back to their previous fitness level, the time spent away from their children is yet another strain. There is also the financial strain.While a few athletes, like Bjoerndalen, make enough money from sponsors to have a comfortable life, most athletes exist at a subsistence level - enough money to pay for food and training, but not much else. They have to worry about how they will make a living after sports and probably begin to feel that any additional time spent in their sport is not worth giving up time to transition to a new career.

So when you see athletes like Albert, Armin, Ole, Claudia, Noriaki and Giorgio, who love their sports enough keep competing past age 40 despite all of the obstacles, I hope that you will give them a special cheer. They have surely earned it.

Sochi Olympics Day 1 - Slip sliding away

What did you think of the Opening Ceremonies? Given my previous post, you can probably guess that I liked the section on Russian history the best. It was really interesting how they emphasized the building (Imperial Russia)  and rebuilding of the country (post Bolshevik Revolution and post Great Patriotic War (WWII)) and de-emphasized Glasnost and the breakup of the Soviet Union. This seems to mesh with President Putin's opinion that the breakup of the Soviet Union was a huge mistake. I also really liked how the organizers made it look like the athletes were walking out of their countries. I would have liked it better if they zoomed out the map after one country and zoomed back in again for the next country (to help the geographically challenged), but this is picking nits. I didn't like breaking up the artistic portion with the parade of nations. Perhaps this is just because I didn't really understand the first part of the Opening Ceremonies. Perhaps this was stuff that the Russian people got right away, but I was sitting there going, "huh?". Overall, I find it very difficult to compare any Opening Ceremonies with those of Beijing. I know that this is totally unfair to all current and future organizing committees, but that is the way that I feel.

Day 1 of the Olympics finds me with a problem. Yes, NBC is streaming 1500+ hours of live coverage in the US but it does not take advanced math to figure out that this is something like 94 hours of coverage every day of the Olympics, or about 6 hours of coverage for every hour that I'm awake! So what is an Olympiholic to do? I am rethinking my strategy of shifting my sleep schedule back so that I can watch more events live because I can't watch everything simultaneously and every day, my TiVo fills up with another dozen hours of NBC tape delayed coverage of things that I've missed. We'll see how this shakes out as time goes on.

Today, I woke up at the usual time and watched the Men's 5,000 meter speed skating. This is an event that takes about 6-7 minutes each for 13 pairs of skaters. Since the US team is not very strong in this event, NBC coverage will usually follow the three Americans (skipping several minutes from each of their skates) and the three Medal winners. So it was nice to watch every minute of every race while I was working on my other Olympic project of protecting collectors from unauthorized Olympic Committee pins (if interested, look here).

My main interest today was the first two heats of the Luge. As expected, 24 year old German Felix Loch was leading, but I was very happy to see that two old farts were right behind him. In second place was 42 year old Russian Albert Demchenko, who is taking part in an amazing 7th Winter Olympics. In third place is 40 year old, and six time Olympian, Armin Zeoggeler from Italy. Maybe 40 is the new 20!

But my real interest was not with the top of the start list, but with the bottom. NBC never covers anyone but Americans if they are outside of the top 10-15 sliders, but today, I got to watch both runs for all 39 entries! There were two athletes that captured my attention. This first is 32 year old and five time Olympian, Shiva Keshavan. Normally, Shiva would be competing for India, but because the Indian Olympic Committee has been temporarily suspended, all Indian athletes are competing under the flag of the International Olympic Committee. Shiva lit up YouTube earlier this week with a miraculous recovery during a training run. You can view it here. His two runs today were not nearly as spectacular, although he did find that going sideways is not a great way to go down the track rapidly. He is currently 37th out of 39 sliders.

In 33rd place after two runs is 26 year old Bruno Banani from the Pacific Island nation of Tonga. In 2007, Bruno was a computer science student named Fuahea Semi and member of the Tongan military when Tongan Princess Salote Mafile'o Pilolevu Tuita (try saying that three times fast!) put out a call to find an athlete who could represent Tonga in the Winter Olympics. In 2008, Fuahea changed his name to Bruno Banani, who happens to be a German underwear manufacturer. This was originally thought to be a coincidence, but then Bruno moved to Germany, began training with the German national team and (shock) received funding from ...Bruno Banani! German NOC President (and now IOC President) Thomas Bach, declared it the name change "in bad taste" and a "perverse marketing idea". Bruno narrowly missed qualifying for the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, but in December 2013 became the first Tongan athlete to qualify for the Winter Olympics. Today, Bruno had two pretty solid runs and still has a chance to achieve his goal of finishing in the top 30.

Now I'm off to watch some of the other events that I missed today. Stay tuned for more tomorrow.

Sochi Olympics Day 0 - Memories of Past Opening Ceremonies

The XXII Olympic Winter Games in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi, Russia are now officially underway. Unfortunately, through the miracle of television, we on the west coast of the US still have another 8 hours or so before we can watch the Opening Ceremonies. Normally, I'd be railing against NBC for once again, failing to understand a world which includes instant communications. But this time, I'm inclined to cut them some slack because they are going to be streaming over 1500 hours of live coverage during the Games - I just have to figure out how to adjust my sleep schedule to accommodate the 12 hour time difference between Sochi and Cupertino! With some time on my hands, I thought that I would take a few minutes to give some of my impressions from past Olympic Opening Ceremonies and what I look forward to in the Opening Ceremonies in Sochi.

 

Beth and I have been fortunate enough to attend four Opening Ceremonies: Lillehammer (1994), Atlanta (1996), Nagano (1998) and Vancouver (2010), but the first one is the most special. The Opening Ceremonies for the 1994 Olympics were held in the Ski Jump stadium at the top of the hill above the village of Lillehammer in the early evening. We had left the relative comfort of the home that we were staying at near Hamar and boarded an Olympic transportation bus to Lillehammer around noon with the plan of getting something to eat and then looking around before heading up the hill around 4pm to find our seats. Lillehammer is probably the last Olympics held in a small town. With a population of perhaps 35,000, we found Lillehammer bursting at the seams as hundreds of thousands of spectators flooded into town. We could not find a single restaurant that was not completely packed so we ended up in a big plastic tent that had been setup to provide warmth and some fast food to spectators. There we stayed until it was time to leave for the Opening Ceremonies. The hill was pretty steep and we saw a number of people slip on the ice and slide back down the hill, but we managed to make it to our seats near the back row of the stadium. Stadium makes it sound much more solid than it really was. Imagine a natural bowl with the Ski Jump off in one direction and the rest of the bowl surrounded by bleachers. Each seat at the Opening Ceremonies has a seat package that includes all sorts of things that spectators will need to take part in the entertainment portion of the evening. All I can recall in our seat package was a program and what looked like a white, wearable garbage bag - I guess the entertainment director wanted to create the image of the stage surrounded by snow, rather than spectators. I wasn't about to complain as it did add another, albeit feeble, layer of insulation against the mind-numbing cold. By the time the ceremony started, the temperature was well below 0F. It also became clear that no one was going to sit on the metal bleacher seats - I guess for fear of freezing to them. At least when standing, we could move around a little to generate heat. The atmosphere in the stadium was electric. Part of that was the natural thrill of the opening to the Olympics after seven hard years of preparation. But there was also a palpable sense of fear. The plan was for the Olympic flame to be brought into the stadium by a ski jumper. However, in practice the day before, the ski jumper had crashed and injured himself. So the organizers had to go with the backup jumper and a good part of the nation had an image in their minds of another crash and the Olympic torch tumbling end over end in front of a projected worldwide audience of perhaps a billion people. Much of the opening ceremonies went by in a blur - I remember trolls, Vikings, people in horse-pulled sleighs and a bunch of nymph-like things that created the world out of an egg, but everyone was focused on that Ski Jump. Finally, the athletes were in place and everyone turned to stare up the hill. After a few moments, we could see (or thought that we could see) a weak flame. Then the flame started moving downhill, faster and faster and finally, the backup jumper landed short, but respectably in the Stadium and you could hear a sound very much like an entire nation starting to breathe again followed by a huge cheer.

 

 

Two years later, we attended our first Summer Olympics in Atlanta. We tried again to get Opening Ceremonies tickets, but were not been as lucky in the ticket lottery. But at the last second, we were told that after final placement of the TV cameras, space for a few more tickets had been found, would we like them? Of course we would! Atlanta was every bit as hot as Lillehammer was cold. The organizing committee had somehow convinced the International Olympic Committee that the average temperature in Atlanta in August was 89F. Of course, what they didn't say was that that this was the 24hr average. So when we arrived in the Stadium, the temperature was well above 90F with about 110% humidity. The Ceremony started out great - five compressed air-powered spirits in the colors of the Olympic rings rose from the corner of the stadium. They called forth the tribes of the world during the playing of composer John William's song Summon the Heroes. The tribes, also in the colors of the rings, arrived and went into a great drum solo written by Grateful Dead and Planet Drum drummer Mickey Hart. This was followed a little later by a section called Summertime which tried to explain the culture of the Old South and it's rebirth after the Civil War. From there, things went way downhill culminating in a section involving cheerleaders, pickup trucks and spotlights. I remember that it seemed to take forever for the athletes to enter the stadium because more than six times as many athletes took part than had been in Lillehammer. But the most memorable event was the lighting of the Olympic cauldron. I am not sure whether there was any question who was going to light the cauldron in Lillehammer (it was the Crown Prince), but I remember a huge amount of discussion about it in Atlanta. Finally, after several laps around the stadium by memorable US athletes, the torch was handed off to the greatest boxer of all time, Mohammad Ali. Despite the obvious effects of Parkinson's disease, he was able to light the cauldron and received a huge ovation from the crowd.

 

 

Another two years and we managed the three-peat by securing Opening Ceremony tickets to the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. Nagano, with a population of perhaps 350,000 was a much different place than the town of Lillehammer. I remember that the bus dropped us off quite some distance from the Stadium. I was wearing a black Norwegian hat and ski vest, both covered with Olympic pins, and dark glasses. The people in the neighborhoods we were walking through just stopped what they were doing and looked at me. To them, I might as well have been from Mars. The Opening Ceremonies began with a huge group of workers in traditional outfits constructing eight two-ton wooden gates at each entrance to the stadium. This was followed by a parade of Sumo wrestlers, led by the Yokozuna (Grand Champion) Akebono who was actually from Hawaii. Akebono blessed the stadium and then the athletes entered the stadium, each team led by a Sumo champion and a child from the Nagano area. Japan definitely wanted to blend tradition with technology so the music was conducted by Boston Symphony conductor Seiji Ozawa featuring simultaneous links with symphonies on five continents. Finally, the Olympic cauldron was lit by figure skater Midori Ito wearing a beautiful traditional kimono. On the way out of the stadium, I was stopped by a reporter from Japanese network NHK. The reporter asked me if I thought that the Ceremony was "too Japanese". I told her that it was my belief that one of the purposes of the Opening Ceremonies was to introduce their city, region and nation to the world and that anything that they felt was important to include was fine with me.

 

 

Our last (so far!) Opening Ceremonies was in Vancouver in 2010. This was our first indoor Opening Ceremonies and was very much appreciated as it seemed like it rained constantly while we were there. This was also Sean's first Opening Ceremonies although you could argue that it was his second as Beth was four months pregnant with him in Nagano. It was certainly his first Opening Ceremonies with a view! Just like in Lillehammer, our seat package included a colored Garbage bag to put on. But there were a bunch of lights and other doodads as well. By 2010, the Opening Ceremonies have grown into a huge spectacle viewed by 3-4 billion people and the audience is expected to contribute. Each section of the Stadium had a "teacher" whose job it was to instruct us in our jobs for the Opening Ceremonies. While she tried hard to make sure that we "got it", probably two-thirds of the people in our section failed to do any of what they had been instructed to do! My favorite part of the Opening Ceremonies was the welcome by the First Nation tribes, but I also enjoyed a section covering the immigrant and British periods in Canadian history and music. I paid more attention than usual to the people chosen to carry the Olympic flag into the arena. You could tell how honored people like actor Donald Sutherland and hockey legend Bobby Orr were to have been chosen for this task. I was also moved by the tribute to Georgian luge athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili, who was killed during a training run earlier in the day. While it was almost a given that the greatest hockey player of all time, Wayne Gretzky, was going to light the Olympic cauldron, the design of the cauldron, the malfunction of one of the four arms of the cauldron and the fact that four athletes would light the cauldron simultaneously still made it exciting to watch.

 

 

So what do I expect from the Opening Ceremonies at Fisht Olympic Stadium in Sochi? I have no idea what to expect, and that is part of the charm. As I told the reporter in Nagano, the Opening Ceremonies is a chance for the organizers to tell the story of their city/region/country that they want to tell. In the US, we have been hearing about Russia, and the Soviet Union before that, since I was a small child. But this was always about what our government wanted us to know about them. Since the US, foolishly in my opinion, chose to boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, this is really the first time that Russia, particularly southern Russia, gets a chance to tell us what they want us to know about them. This is part of what the Olympics is all about - bringing the peoples of the world together, learning a little about each other and learning how to compete with each other in peace. Bring on the Games!

The Jamaicans are coming!

On Monday, it was announced that Jamaica had qualified a 2-Man team for the Sochi Olympics - their first Olympics since 2002. If you've followed any of my past Olympic adventures, you will know that Bobsled is my favorite Winter Olympic sport. My love of the Olympic sliding sports, particular Bobsled, was born during the Calgary Olympics in 1988. This was the Games of the Olympic Tourist because of the exploits of people like brick layer, and part-time ski jumper, "Eddie the Eagle" Edwards from Great Britain. But there was no more popular group of Olympic Tourists than the Jamaican Bobsled team, later immortalized in the movie Cool Runnings.

 

We actually had tickets to the finals of the 2-man bobsled in Calgary and were eagerly looking forward to seeing whether the Jamaicans would be able to beat the other non-traditional teams from Mexico, Netherland Antilles, New Zealand and the US Virgin Islands. Unfortunately, the Chinook winds started blowing and the air temperature rose to around 48F. The combination caused dust to lodge in the starting grooves at the top of the course and melted the track at the bottom. I think that the Jamaicans had just made their 3rd run when the event was called off and rescheduled for the following day. We had tickets to other events the next day so missed seeing the final two runs with the Jamaica-I sled of driver Dudley Stokes and brakeman Michael White finishing 30th out of 38 and beating all of the non-tradition teams except the one from the Netherland Antilles.

 

I certainly enjoyed the speed of the sliding sports, but what I really enjoyed was that these sports were entry points for participation into the Winter Olympics by countries that were decidedly winter deficient. After all, there are only a few handfuls of these sliding tracks throughout the world and athletes, whether from wintery climes or tropical ones, have to travel to these tracks to train. From my point-of-view, more participation surely means more interest in the Winter Olympics and that has to be a good thing.

 

But these non-traditional teams face tremendous odds trying to break into these sports. First, there is the issue of equipment. I am sure that traditional Bobsled power Germany probably spends more money on a pair of runners for a luge or bobsled than the Jamaicans spend on all of their equipment. Likewise, the US Bobsled team's sponsorship deal with BMW-USA brought them six brand new state-of-the-art bobsleds worth much more than $100,000 a piece while the Jamaicans and many other teams are working with hand-me-down sleds. There is also training. In the US or Russia or Germany or Canada, bobsled training is their job. For Jamaica and the other non-traditional teams, the athletes have to earn enough doing something else to survive and raise the money their team needs for equipment, uniforms and coaches.

 

So, it was no surprise when I read that in order to qualify for Sochi, 46 year old Jamaican driver Winston Watts had spent $160,000 of his own money and needed to raise another $80,000 in 3 weeks in order to get his team to Sochi. But then a miracle happened: Jamaican Bobsled fundraising appeared on three crowd sourcing websites. For those of you not aware of such things, crowd sourcing is a way to use the internet to raise a little money from a lot of people to fund an idea (or dream) rather than trying to find a few people with a lot of money. And boy, did people like Winston's dream: in less than two days, the Jamaicans raised more than $190,000!

 

So on February 16th and 17th, while I will be rooting for USA-I driver Steve Holcomb to win the first US gold medal in 2-man bobsled since 1936, I'll also be rooting for Winston Watts to show the world that he and his teammate Marvin Dixon are just as deserving of the title Olympian as any other athlete in Sochi.

Awakenings

Like some sort of biennial cicadas, Olympic fans across the world are slowly coming out of hibernation in anticipation of the lighting of the Olympic flame at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. But before I talk about Sochi, I thought that I should bring everyone up to speed with what Olympic stuff I've been up to since my last post in December 2012.

 

First a little background: During the fall of 2012, I put together my list of NOC pins from London for the Olympin Collector's Club - the world's oldest and largest club of Olympic memorabilia collectors. I have been doing this for about the last 10 years. I was not asked by the club to take on this duty because I know so much about NOC pins. I was asked to take it on because I am good with Excel and Word. If you've been following this blog for a while, you will know that most of the rare NOC pins are only seen by the fortunate few who have managed to obtain access to the Olympic Village. The rest of us have to hope for a sort of trickle-down effect to even see these pins, let alone acquire them. As a result, most of my work in building the NOC pin list consists of contacting the collectors who did have access to the Village and regurgitating everything that they tell me. But this year, I noticed that many collectors, rather than trading or selling the NOC pins that they acquired in London, were tapping into the worldwide demand for these pins and selling them online at auction sites like eBay. So every day, I would go through the hundreds of auctions involving NOC pins and cut and paste images of the pins being sold so that I would know what I which pins I'd already added to the list and which ones were new. This worked pretty well until I started asking the collectors with Village access about the pins that I was seeing. Many of these pins turned out to be fakes - excuse me, unauthorized - because, as my friend Sid reminds me, they are real pins, they are just not authentic NOC pins. Here is an example of one of the fakes:

Ever see Olympic spelled with a T? Me either!

 

After finding dozens of pins that were believed to be unauthorized, I made the fateful mistake of saying something to the effect of "How are lower level collectors like me supposed to know which ones are authentic and which ones aren't. Someone should do something about this..." No sooner had I clicked send on that email, than I received an email suggesting that I be the one to do something about it. Yikes! It was a put up or shut up moment. Being a person who believes that if you are not part of the solution then you are part of the problem, I agreed. The Olympin Board of Directors, sensing that they were not likely to find another live one to take on this task, authorized the formation of the Committee on Unauthorized NOC pins in January 2013, put me in charge and found five other collectors to help me.

 

I will not go into the details, but basically, when we identify a new NOC pin, we contact the NOC in question and ask them whether their committee produced the pin. We also look at who is selling the pin and information obtained from other collectors in order to come up with a rating about the likely authenticity of the pin. This is going to be a really big deal for Sochi where we are going to try to upload images of all NOC pins, authentic and unauthorized, in as close to real-time as we can. If you'd like to see our handiwork, head over to the Authenticity Project. There is also a blog describing what we are doing in more detail.

 

At the end of my last blog in 2012, I mentioned that we were waiting to find out what Sean's grades would look like before deciding whether to go to Sochi. Well, his freshman year was pretty good - all A's and B's. Not the straight A's we were asking for, but close enough to think that he might get there. So, to hold up our end of the deal, we went through the declaration of interest process to let the ticket supplier know which events we were interested in buying - and got pretty good tickets: Opening Ceremonies, Biathlon relay, Men's Luge, Men's 4-man Bobsleigh, Men's and Women's Ice Hockey semifinals, several Speed Skating events and more Curling than you could shake a stick at. Unfortunately, once the school year started, his gaming habits, combined with running cross-country, being in the advanced choir and taking two honors courses proved too heavy a load and his grades tanked. That was the end of going to Sochi. Of course, given the recent bombings in Volgograd, I cannot say that I am too upset with this development, even though it means missing our first Winter Olympics since 1992. Actually, I am not too concerned that something really bad will happen during the Sochi Olympics although that is certainly a possibility. I am actually much more concerned about the Olympics having the feel of being held in the middle of a military base. I can just picture going through a metal detector with a bag containing perhaps a thousand small pieces of metal and then trying to explain to a very large Russian soldier who speaks no English and who is carrying a very large assault rifle that this is just a hobby!

 

But just because we will not be going to Sochi, does not mean we won't be paying attention. Since our committee is going to be protecting the Olympic collector community from fraudsters, I will be taking the whole 17 days of the Olympics off from work. I'll have a lot of work to do uploading images and getting pins authenticated, but I should still have more than enough time to watch as much Olympic coverage as there is and comment on what I see.

 

One positive development, as far as US Olympic coverage is concerned, occurred while we were in London. For years, the US Olympic broadcasts have been based on the ridiculous notion that the internet does not exist. NBC would broadcast the finals of the most popular events "implausibly live" during the prime evening hours. Depending on where the Olympics were being held, this could result in US viewers not seeing an event until 24 hours after it happened. But I learned that during London, NBC finally realized that showing an Olympic event live did not kill their audience for the same event in prime time. As a result, NBC plans to stream something like 1500 hours of live Olympic coverage - yippee!

 

The bottom line is that with live Olympic coverage, I've decided to continue my tradition of Olympic blogging. The only difference is that I won't be able to give you the tourist's view of the Olympics. That will have to wait until 2016 when we head to Rio de Janiero for the Summer Olympics. I hope that you will tune in anyway.

 

In the meantime, I've been getting in the Olympic spirit by watching the various US trials. My favorite story so far was from the Women's Long-Track Speed Skating trials. There was a woman named Jackie Munzel, who finished 7th out of 11 in the 5,000m, 13 out of 19 in the 3,000m and 16th out of 25 in the 1,500m. In each race, she set a personal best. I am sure you are wondering what the big deal is. Well, the big deal is that Jackie was born in 1963! When she was young, she was a national level figure skater and had a decent chance at making the US team for Sarajevo in 1984. But she developed a severe eating disorder and had to retire from skating to save her life. But she didn't give up skating and has provided power skating training to some National Hockey League players. In 2010, she was watching the Vancouver Olympics with her daughter and admitted that she regretted the way her skating career had ended; feeling that she had been given a gift and failed to use it properly. And so began a quest to make the Olympics in a type of skating that she had never tried. She didn't make the US team, but along the way, she did become the World Masters Speed Skating Champion and world record holder. I was thinking about that yesterday while I was hauling my butt around during my weekly three mile run - an athlete's body may slow down as they get older, but the drive that made them an athlete never has to end.