Olympics Round-Up 2: The... Ugly

Well, the women's snowboard cross, first-ever in the Olympics, I believe, just confirmed what I've always thought about Americans. We may be hegemons, and we may come out on top, but we celebrate it with the embarrassing tendency to "showboat", as the commentators would say.

Attention during the women's snowboard cross was on the only American, of course, in this case some 20-yr-old curly-haired blonde named Lindsey Jacobellis. She's world champ and in the final, she pulled out ahead of everyone else with some crafty maneuvering and was very, very far ahead near the end. It was clear she was getting the gold. No one had a chance of catching her, partly because Maelle Ricker, a Canadian with the fastest qualifying time, crashed out and had to be taken away in a stretcher (we didn't hear about her though... she's Canadian, after all) and fellow Canadian Dominique Maltais crashed into the net, leaving only Swedish Tanja Frieden far behind.

And then "Lucky Lindsey" revealed her true American side. Coming up over the last hill, she grabbed her board and did a little twist worthy of the half-pipe or X-Games, landed unevenly and crashed. As she stopped skidding and got back up, Frieden passed her and won the gold. Jacobellis ended up with silver (the girl who crashed into the net got bronze). Everyone was humiliated for her. You could see her parents screaming in the stands for her to get up, then realizing it was too late.

She'd later claim that she was trying to stabilize herself and it "didn't work", but everyone, even the American-centric commentators, could tell that she was showing off, thinking the gold was certain and she could be a little flamboyant. One wonders what this means for American foreign and economic policy. We're pretty far ahead of the competition right now (India? China? the EU?) but if we showboat we might just crash and burn while the "slow and steady" slide on past.

Olympics Round-Up 1: The Good Guys

I just finished watching the pairs' figure skating long program in the Olympics. It was the best figure skating long program I have ever seen, and that's saying a lot, after many nationals, grand prixes, worlds, and Olympics. It wasn't that the skating itself was magnificent. It was the skaters.

The first (notable) pair, Shen and Zhao, were a little wobbly in their skating, but it was very minor. Zhao had just a year ago pulled out of Worlds because of a ruptured tendon in his ankle - we saw video footage and it was very gory indeed. He's only been jumping for two weeks before the Olympics and everyone was so goddamn nervous in the short program, especially his partner - on their first jump, her hand touched down though his jump was perfect, no doubt because she was preoccupied with him landing on that ankle. That they managed to do their long program flawlessly was wonderful.

The second pair were the Russians, Totmiyanina and Marinin, famous for her concussion in Worlds the year before last. They were doing a lift and his arm must have slipped because she went crashing to the ice and lay unconscious for a few minutes before getting carted off to the hospital. Apparently he's been the one struggling with the recovery because he's afraid he'll drop her again, and the healing process they talked about was incredibly touching. They are clearly the best pair in the world, beating the other pairs by a long shot, but no doubt that's thanks to their mutual recovery.

The third pair were, I must admit, my favorites... Zhang and Zhang. I was already rooting for them because I thought he was cute, a built Chinese guy. They were novices compared to the others, and had no injuries to speak of... before they went on the ice. They were supposed to be attempting a quadruple throw, but she didn't complete the rotation and landed on her legs, her right knee bearing the brunt of the fall. She could barely stand up - he had to escort her off the ice, the music stopped, and they could have easily forfeited. She could hardly skate. But they didn't forfeit - after consulting the trainer, they went back out, skated around through the first part of their program, and picked up right where they fell. They did another throw, two jumps, and she was perfect. It was obvious she was in pain, but she skated through it. It was heartwrenchingly beautiful. After the fall the Chinese teams were totally mortified, and the Russians were speechless - after all, they have some experience with injury. But they showed incredible gut and heart. He picked her up in the kiss-and-cry area and waved to the crowd.

Anyway, the Russians won, Zhang and Zhang got silver, and Shen and Zhao bronze. A phenomenal competition... actually showed the potential goodness of humanity, as opposed to the bitchy negativity of Salt Lake in 2002. As I told Kim, though figure skating is a little too dramatic for its own good, it's because of injuries like these, and the possibility of either whining about it or skating through it. With pairs, the drama's just pumped up further - and all three of these pairs really just made me feel a little better about the species.