More Olympic Sports Patter

(This post should keep you in the conversational loop should the topic turn to Vancouver.)

There are people of color in the pairs skating.... from Germany and the US.  This is an unusual occurrence.

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Dick Button has aged well.  (You don't need to know who he is, just that he looks good for a guy who won the last of his 2 consecutive gold medals in 1952.)

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I love getting a little ahead with Comcast's recording box and then watching the Olympics with ff-ability.... that is, the ability to fastforward if they fall or tip over or are just boring. After all, it's hours and hours and hours of watching somebody else's child perform.  Fun for a while, but then.....

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There was a creepy story about the Chinese coach who has been away from his family for 2 decades after dedicating himself to creating an Olympic quality skating program in China. His kids didn't recognize him, nor he them.  All because he was laughed at during his first performance outside China.....  in 1980.

Tuesday

The first skater we saw started life abandoned on a Brazillian street. Adopted and raised in France he was discovered at age 4 on a public rink (the Schwabs' Drugstore of story of ice skating?) . The announcers told me that this was his first time on the world stage.  Though his performance was kind of twitchy at times (and twitchy is not an adjective normally associated with ice skating, if you think about it) it was also a delightful representation of what the games are all about, for me at least - one world.. And then came his long program on Thursday night. It was lyrical and sensual really hot. His outfit was showy but not annoyingly Ice Capades spangles and sparkles; it was sensual without being slutty.

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Takahiro Kozuka skated to Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze - now how cool is that? And Shaun White played air guitar to the National Anthem during his medal ceremony on Thursday.  There was no disrespect at all - he was delightfully, joyfully, proudly and totally in the moment.  Also very cool.
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Johnny Weir, the US skater with the outrageous outfits, looks ridiculous and I may be laughing but he's a good skater in his pink laced bustier with the pink tassel.... and then he's hugging a black velvet pillow which matches his outfit and I'm still laughing.... but I'm also wondering how the Catholic Church feels about this ambiguously gendered fellow crossing himself before and after every  performance.  I'm not judging, I'm truly wondering. Is this a "proud he's one of us" or "maybe no one will notice" moment? 

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The Belgian skater wore a skeleton costume and Evan Lysacek had feathers at his wrists, fuzzy pipe cleaners on his shoulders and sequins banding his chest and the Italian was a scarecrow or maybe a farmer and it was a toss-up which outfit was worse.  Then I saw a story about Evan's first skating costume, which he'd only wear if he could be a super-hero.  The Junior Gold Medalist had yellow bolts of lightning across his chest.  As the proud mother of a cape-wearing SpiderMan/Zorro I was suddenly able to see beyond the glitz to the kid who just wanted to do something anything better than his sister did.  This, I think, is a case where sibing rivalry turns out to be a good thing.

Wednesday
Lots of laughing and crying.  Some of the crying was happy crying  But it was still crying.
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Girls went careening down icy slopes at alarming rates of speed and quite a few of them crashed and tumbled and slid down the course..... one crossed the finish line sled-ishly, sitting upright on her butt on the snow.  She wasn't smiling.
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Lindsey Vonn was crying during those crashes and laughing and shrieking when she won and tender and still looking for reassurance from her husband once she found him in the crowd. Girls are so different from boys, aren't they? 
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The half-pipe is really steep, which I did not realize while watching the X Games.  Let me be clear - it's really really steep, steep as in ladder steep, as in no way in the world do I even stand at the top let alone propel myself down its sides on a chemically-engineered slab steep steep.  You have to be a special kind of person to do that, especially while wearing a red/white/blue madras pullover.
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Still don't believe me?  What about that snowboard announcing team? They are very special people; just listen to them exclaim over the fact that the members of the Finnish team actually speak Finnish to one another. 
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And just so you know, it's official - Shaun White is the cutest thing on the planet. And he is a much better skateboarder than anyone else in these games, to my completely un-informed eye. He is also an A+ interview.  I really don't want to know if anyone knows anything skanky about him...... leave me alone in my bliss, please.  The world will not be a better place if you ruin him for me. Losing Tiger was enough.
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Thursday
I'm sure there will be things on which to comment, but I learned a valuable lesson today which I'd like to share with you.  When putting a cooktop-to-oven pan back on the cooktop after the oven part you should really remember... really really remember.... like, seriously pay attention here..... that the handle will be very hot and you shouldn't try to move it over to make room for anything at all.  Not for a long long time. 
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Typing is a challenge, so I added comments as I composed this post above, rather than give Thursday its own section. I hope it can forgive me.