2022 Winter Olympics

[Pedrito]

Canada eliminated from mixed doubles curling by Italy!

I am glad BB is not here to see this

The duo also lost to Australia. A national disgrace really.

Italia dominated the competition thru and thru. Went undefeated and unchallenged winning 8-1 and 8-5 in the medal round.

Grey Fox, big curling fan.

...and she is nice and has a beautiful smile 

L.

[Eddie Teach]

Canada eliminated from mixed doubles curling by Italy!

I am glad BB is not here to see this

I suspect he saw it anyway.

[Valmy]

I am glad BB is not here to see this

He left?

Berkut apparently stalked him into leaving. I don't know.

[Valmy]

Canada eliminated from mixed doubles curling by Italy!

I am glad BB is not here to see this

I suspect he saw it anyway.

We may never know now.

[Valmy]

...and she is nice and has a beautiful smile 

L.

Is she a relative of yours or something?

[Josquius]

I caught some half pipe snow boarding yesterday.
Fairly ridiculous event really. Such a huge facility for such a niche. Also.

1: Just me or is half of the American team Chinese American? Seems to be loads of them.
2: wow snowboarders are all young.

Oh. And I heard the news about a figure scater doing some super bar raising epic new move....

BBC News - Winter Olympics: Kamila Valieva failed drug test confirmed
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/winter-olympics/60329120

AH.

[The Brain]

Sad to prepare so much for a test and still fail.

[Maladict]

They'll probably use this as the CB for the Ukraine invasion.

Also, Lollobrigida (yes, related)

[DGuller]

Sad to prepare so much for a test and still fail.

[Savonarola]

I caught some half pipe snow boarding yesterday.
Fairly ridiculous event really. Such a huge facility for such a niche. Also.

1: Just me or is half of the American team Chinese American? Seems to be loads of them.
2: wow snowboarders are all young.

In the US figure skating and snowboarding teams have a huge Asian representation.  The New York Times had an article on the latter.

I'm afraid we've reached the dreaded third generation (in a large number, I mean) of Asian immigrants.  To quote the greatest actor in the world (when he was on 30 Rock):  We are an immigrant nation. The first generation works their fingers to the bone making things. The next generation goes to college and innovates new ideas. The third generation... snowboards and takes improv classes.

[viper37]

It's not from these olympics, but it's funny as hell

Olympic trolling level

The athlete is reciting verbatim this monologue from Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra.

[Sheilbh]

I have yet again found myself ignoring the sports with any physical prowess and obsessing over the curling

[Josquius]

Caught a bit on the weekend. Downhill skiing.
Quite enjoyed this guy, Benjamin Alexander.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/winter-olympics/60365580

Basically a 38 year old brit who in 2016 was DJing at a Canadian ski resort where he decided to try skiing out and found he quite enjoyed it. Figured he wouldn't qualify for the British team so applied for Jamaican citizenship and qualified against zero opposition to represent them.
In the event his sole goal was to finish thus guaranteeing he wouldn't be in last place as many trying to win ended up falling.

[Savonarola]

Caught a bit on the weekend. Downhill skiing.
Quite enjoyed this guy, Benjamin Alexander.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/winter-olympics/60365580

Basically a 38 year old brit who in 2016 was DJing at a Canadian ski resort where he decided to try skiing out and found he quite enjoyed it. Figured he wouldn't qualify for the British team so applied for Jamaican citizenship and qualified against zero opposition to represent them.
In the event his sole goal was to finish thus guaranteeing he wouldn't be in last place as many trying to win ended up falling.

Cracked just had an article on how to qualify for the Olympics (as with anything else from Cracked, take this with a grain of salt.):

Anyone Can Trick The System And Qualify For The Olympics
© Provided by Cracked

The Olympics is not, like some people think, a match-up of the absolute best athletes in the world. It's a match-up of people who have just happened to have qualified for the Olympics. Often, those are the best athletes in the world, but it's also possible to game the system, which was how Elizabeth Swaney became an Olympic skier in 2018 despite not being a very good skier at all.

The first trick that helped Swaney was that the Olympics does not admit, say, the top 300 skiers in the world. If they did, maybe they'd end up with 100 from the US, 100 from Canada, 100 from Switzerland, and that's it, which wouldn't be very fun for anyone. Instead, they allocate each country slots, so dozens of countries compete. In 2018, the US would end up with 30 slots total and 4 for Swaney's sport of women's halfpipe, the max possible. Swaney stood no chance of being one of those four women. But she could compete for Hungary (she had a grandparent from Hungary) since they were otherwise sending no skiers at all.

So, could she just sign up to represent Hungary and then qualify automatically? No, that would be ridiculous. She had to meet two qualifications—which, when we break them down, are also ridiculous.

First, she had to place in the top 30 of a skiing World Cup event. That sounds challenging. But many women's World Cup events have fewer than 30 competitors total, which means so long as you take part, you place. Qualifying for these events, it seems, is easy and just a matter of filling up the right forms.

The second requirement was more complicated. Skiers receive points depending on how well they do in various events during the years leading up to the Olympics, and to qualify for the Olympics, you have to accrue 50 of these FIS points. Swaney got these points by ... participating in a whole lot of events. Never winning any, or doing very well, but taking part in more of them than any other skier and so racking up all the points necessary. So, even "scamming" the Olympics, as some people called it, took a lot of time and work.

When the games played out in South Korea, she finished last of course, and commentators were baffled by her simple skiing style.

And yet, during those qualifying matches, she often hadn't ranked last. Most skiers try to win, skiing fast and pulling off tricks. Inevitably, some of them mess up and crash. Swaney, however, just wanted to finish each event, so she never tried anything fancy and always made it to the end. Brings to mind the tortoise and the hare. Or that one ski episode of South Park.

[The Brain]

I don't see how that is tricking the system. The Olympics have always been the place to watch hilariously poor athletes compete against the best.