Rio 2016 - Day -1 (August 3)

Welcome to the blog of our trip to the Games of the XXXI Olympiad in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - the first Olympics to be held in South America and our 12th trip to the Olympics!

Zika and Pollution and Crime oh my (sung to the "Wizard of Oz" song Lions and Tigers and Bears oh my!)! It has become a tradition for the press to pile up negative articles about an upcoming Olympic Games and Rio 2016 is certainly no exception. And to be honest, Rio does have more than it's fair share of problems, including government instability, economic collapse, crime, enormous income inequality, infectious diseases, threatened ISIS terror attacks and rampant corruption. But it also has tremendous natural beauty and a population that loves to party and is passionate about sports. It is my hope that by the end of the next three weeks, the later will far outweigh the former. Mark Purdy, the sports columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, in his last column before leaving for Rio (his 14th Olympics) said: "The Olympic Games generally succeed because, despite all the other stuff going on in the world as well as the issues that can plague the games themselves, the vast majority of humanity wants it all to succeed." I completely agree.

But we are not going into this adventure wearing rose-colored glasses. Despite a drop in the number of cases of Zika in Rio state from 3,000-3,500 cases/week early this year to 30 cases/week in June and Beth and I being well past reproductive age, we'll be wearing long pants and long sleeve shirts every day as well as applying DEET to all exposed skin. Sean, at the time of this writing, is still weighing the cost of the discomfort of wearing long clothes when he would rather wear shorts and a t-shirt versus the estimated 15 in 6+ million chance of contracting Zika. We're also going to keep our pockets empty and put our valuables (money, tickets, passports, etc.) in pouches hung around our necks with cut-proof wires. We are also going to leave our jewelry and iWatches at home and try to appear as anonymous as possible - or at least as anonymous as anyone can be when standing 6 foot 4 and wearing a vest and hat covered with hundreds of Olympic pins. Can we still find ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time? Sure, but we know that we've done what we could to minimize our risks.

As in previous blogs, we are not sure about the availability or quality of Wi-Fi in Rio so I'll try to give you an overview of our first couple of days there. We've got a flight at around noon tomorrow (August 4th) from San Jose to Houston. There, we have about a 3-hour layover before getting on a red-eye to Rio de Janeiro. We arrive in Rio around 9am on Friday, August 5th - the morning before the Opening Ceremonies and will be staying at the hotel Vermont (http://www.hotelvermont.com.br/) a couple blocks from Ipanema beach (as in the song "The Girl from Ipanema"). There is a quite long story explaining how we ended up in this hotel, but I'll save that for another day.

Until tomorrow (or whenever I get internet access), stay tuned!

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.