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 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.