Snow Skills

Seth Wescott has won Gold in the Winter Olympics and becomes the first Gold Medalist for the Snowboard Cross event. In the first round of the competition Seth Wescott finished ahead of Francois Boivin, Stefano Pozzolini, and Jonte Grundelius. In the quarter finals Seth Wescott soared past Dieter Krassnig, Francois Bovin (again) and Itaru Chimura.

Moving on to the semi-finals Seth Wescott finished second behind Paul Delerue but ahead of Jason Smith, Dieter Krassnig which was good enough to advance to the finals. Then in the final round Seth Wescott finished ahead of Radoslav Zidek, Paul-Henri Delerue, and Jordi Font for the Gold metal.

Heading into the fifth day of competition at the Torino 2006 Games, here’s some quick news items:

American Seth Wescott will be practicing today for tomorrow’s Men’s Snowboard Cross (SBX) event. This will be the first Games where SBX is an event and, as the 2005 World Cup Snowboard Cross Champion, is surely the competitor that everyone will be watching.

The U.S. Olympic Snowboard Team is already off to a great start. Shawn White and Danny Kass took gold and silver, respectively, in the Men’s Halfpipe on Sunday and were followed by Hannah Teeter and Gretchen Bleiler taking gold and silver in the Women’s Halfpipe on Monday. And just in case it seems that snowboarding is becoming mainstream, check out this funny article about the girls ducking a rope and riding a closed trail before the finals.

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Today is the Men’s Combined Event at the Torino 2006 Games; the racers will compete in both a downhill and a slalom course. The downhill event will be first followed by the slalom, with the medals going to the racers who can show a broad range of skills by being fast in both. The challenge of fhe Combined is that these two events have very little in common except that they’re both alpine skiing. It takes an extra special skier to be able to excel at two disimilar activities in the same day; we can learn alot about skiing skills by watching the Combined and comparing how the racers change their movements between the downhill and slalom.

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The Torino 2006 Opening Ceremonies lived up to expectations; it was surely an amazing and dramatic melange of many images and sounds. One of the themes of the ceremony was passion, consistent with the Torino medals with their center hole exposing the passion of the athletes. The costumes included brilliant white by Giorgio Armani to red-suited speed skaters who had flame trailing from their helmets (representing the Sparks of Passion). The celebrities included Sofia Loren and Susan Sarandon, who helped to carry the Olympic flag into the stadium. The productions included a mass of dancers forming a beating heart and a tribute to the Alps including dancing cows. The music ranged from a cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine” by Peter Gabriel and Yoko Ono to a grand aria (Nessun Dorma) by Luciano Pavarotti. And they even worked a bright red Ferrari Grand Prix racing car into the event!

And who lit the Olympic Cauldron?
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The men’s downhill events at Torino 2006 are today; our hopes are with Bode and Darren for fast snow and faster times. Since everything goes to an extreme when you’re going 86 mph, (135 kph), you can learn a lot about balance by watching downhillers as some movements become very obvious. Balance is key at that speed; to understand more about balance in skiing, watch where the racer’s hands are.

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Torino 2006 begins today! The Opening Ceremonies will be televised tonight in the USA, starting at 8 pm local. The United States Olympic Committee has made a terrific decision in selecting Chris Witty to carry the American flag and lead her teammates into the stadium. The teams generally march in in alphabetical order, based on their spelling in the native language of the host country. In Italian, the USA is Stati Uniti, so Chris will bring in the American flag as the 67th nation out of the 85 nations attending the Games. Greece will be the first country, as is tradition, and the host country, Italy, will be last.

This will be Chris’ fifth Olympics and she’s won three medals along the way. She’s competed in Winter Games including Lillehammer 1994, 1998 Nagano, and Salt Lake City 2002 in speed skating, winning a gold, a silver, and a bronze mdeal along the way. She also competed in the 2000 Sydney Games in track cycling and became the ninth American athlete to compete in both summer and winter games. Chris achieved these amazing accomplishments in the face of personal demons caused by sexual abuse as a child.

Check out the Opening Ceremonies tonight; NBC is estimating that 2 billion people will be joining you as viewers. Even if you don’t enjoy big productions, its an amazing moment when the people of the world literally come together and Chris Witty will surely be part of tonight’s history.

The opening ceremonies are expected to be a theatric epic and the lighting of the Olympic Flame is surely one of the defining moments of an Olympic Games. There have been many memorable moments at both Summer and Winter Games, involving a variety of athletes and notable persons making dramatic statements. At the 1992 Barcelona Games, archer Antonio Rebollo, a paralympic athlete, shot a burning arrow into the Olympic Flame cauldron from a platform at the opposite end of the stadium. At Lillehammer 1994, the Olympic torch was finally brought into the stadium by a ski jumper, who flew off a nordic ramp, landed, and lit the cauldron. In Sydney 2000, the lighting of the Flame by Australian Olympian aboriginal runner Cathy Freeman was clearly a strong statement of reconciliation by the Australian government for a legacy of injustice to aborigines.

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On the Sprint blog Seth Wescott talks about he mentally approaches competitions.

For me the mental preparation for boarding is a never-ending process. … I like presenting myself with challenges every day to overcome and get stronger both mentally and physically. I talk a lot about the big mountain and freeriding equation. … I go to Alaska every year, and put myself into situations that are completely outside of competition to push me to another level, so I can come back to competition and a more controlled environment with a clear head.

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Seth Wescott was on the Late Show with David Letterman show last night giving the “Top 10 Reasons I’m looking forward to the Olympics”. I couldn’t help but notice the t-shirt he was wearing…. “Sugarloaf makes me happy”. I bet he made them happy too.
Watch a tiny snip from the show by clicking on the photo. Quicktime movie, 7.7 MB.

The Winter Olympics is surely the elite of sporting competitions with regard to the limited number of athletes who are ultimately successful in their events. Consider that the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens dished out at least 925 medals in 28 different sports. Not all sports are created equal, but the Summer Games has many sports with many different variations of events. Swimming is particularly a sport where the medals seem to be awarded in excess. At the end of the Summer Games, someone is the best in the world at doing the freestyle 2 laps in the pool. Somebody else is the best at freestyle 4 laps, another at 8 laps, another at 2 laps in breaststroke, etc. etc. With so many events, it’s not uncommon for an swimmers to have the opportunity to win multiple medals in different events at the same Games.

Rowing is another example where dozens of medals are awarded for essentially the same activity. There’s one person, two person, 4 person, and 8 person teams competing in several different lengths of events. With all due respect to the built-like-brick-outhouse rowing athletes of the world, at some point it’s just rowing a boat, no matter how many are doing it or how far you’re going.

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