I’m not a big one for the Olympics, winter or otherwise, but I admit to getting a little caught up on the way home from work. It was the final of the women’s “Skeleton” (basically sliding fast as **** down a windy ice tunnel, flat on your back and feet first so you can’t see what you’re about to cripple yourself on) and a Brit had done a great second run. With each successive competitor, she moved from top four… to Bronze… to Silver… and stayed there.
A girl from Wiltshire, where it snows for about 3 days a year, was beaten only by a native of Switzerland which is 75% mountains and frozen water. OK, my statistics may be off slightly, but you get my point. Shelley Rudman only made it to the Olympics because of fundraising by her local pub.
Well bloody done!
Also on the subject of the Olympics, has anyone noticed how impressive the coverage of some of the events is? The time lapse on the snowboarding and the superimpositon of various runs on the downhill skiing are exceptional. Mind, Colin McRae Rally on the PC beat the Beeb with the “ghost car” idea they’ve based the latter on.
Have you seen the photograph of the three winners? Remarkably for a sport that involves them flying face first at 80mph+ on a tea tray, they are all quite pretty – not a bent nose or gap-toothed smile among them. I noticed that her boyfriend who competes in the male evcent, appears to have a black eye though.
I was listening to an interview with her coach this morning and apparently in 5-6 years, the only injury they’ve had is a sprained wrist.
No mention of what happened before that to explain why he’s only prepared to talk about the last 5-6 years though.
Sorry to be an Olympic spod, but the medal in the skeleton they go down head first (even scarier in my book). It’s the luge where they go feet first. Tho’ it was very impressive.
I always wondered what the difference was, but they *did* jeep referring to it as the Skeleton on the radio.
I do know, however, that it’s the only “doubles” even where there’s no specification on the gender of the two participants. MM, FF or MF can all enter the same event – there’s no separate “men’s double”, “female” and “mixed”.