I also loved watching the snowboard cross. That was FUN! And how stupid that US girl is. Even my mom in Scotland enjoyed it. I was amazed that she know what I was talking about, but she's spending a lot of time watching the Olympics as she had some minor surgery on a leg and can't really do much else!

JJ5, I think Shani Davis was quite right not to participate in that weird relay event. My son runs track and you'll notice that in the Summer Olympics, the relays are not run until after the individual events. No competitor who has trained for many years to excel in a specific event should be asked, never mind compelled, to compete in a "team" event which could jeapordize their performance in "their" event. The fault here is in the scheduling.

Unless they are part of a real team, like a hockey team for instance, Olympic competitors are their to win a medal for themselves. I would like to see a lot less emphasis on medal counts for countries. That is really not what it's all about.

<The event I'm most interested in now is the 1500 speed skate tonight.>

JJ5, the men's 1500 is Tuesday.

Glad you posted that, I would have been looking for it tonight. They said tomorrow when they were interviewing- and it is tomorrow already. They were wrong.

And yes, the relay races should always be last and no one who has given their life to a sport should ever be "made" to sacrifice his or her race for that relay entity. It should always be last in every sport. It is in swimming, and in track. I don't know why they would put it where they did.

Re: JJ5's comment on Shani Davis:

"The man should get work as a diplomat after his skating days are over"

Are you kidding? He had a HUGE CHIP on his shoulder in that post-race interview you so highly tout. I found him to be very bitter and difficult to care about.

You have no concept way- and it was absolutely a miracle that he didn't say something VERY rude to that woman reporter. You have no idea what she especially and her cronies had done in the days leading up to this event over his bowing out of the team relay.

He stayed focused on his race and he won it.

The media always makes itself look so "civilized". I do think the look on his face to her was priceless. Bitter! Most people wouldn't have even stopped at all to let her ramble, I wouldn't have.

That's concept why, not way.

And yes, he did have a chip- one put there at exactly a time he didn't need a chip to be loaded on.

I thing if more people knew the full back story behind the long track drama involving Shani Davis and Chad Hedrick - and understood the stupidity of the scheduling of the weird team relay event, perhaps then it is Chad Hedrick that would appear to have the chip on his shoulder. The 1500 should be very interesting, indeed.

A thought this piece on MSN was interesting: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11432269/

Mark

Okay, I really need to pay more attention when I'm posting. My last post should start out "I think..." and should end with "I thought".

It doesn't matter how you say it, luv2cthings, you're right.

As a mother of sons who wore skates out before they wore out shoes, I know. To obtain ice time without private $$ reserves is a miracle within itself.

Cross over stars often don't have a clue to protocols in their own venues.

Earlier today I was asking about the ice dancer who was taken to the hospital last night. It looks like she has no broken bones, but she's still in a lot of pain. This article says she'll attempt to skate tonight. I can only imagine how hard this will be for her. I really hope she can get through it. She must be a tough lady.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/200....ap/index.html

luv2cthings, I also totally agree.

JJ5, I don't excuse Shani Davis' attitude following his win. He needs badly to learn how to deal with the media and to remember that that face was seen world-wide and few people take the time to delve into the reasons why he's not thrilled with that reporter. and why should we? He won a gold medal. that was his goal. Would it have killed him to be happy about it?

Since you asked - actually, no, I'm not watching. The Olympics have gotten so far off track, no longer rewarding the individual achievement but the nation-vs.-nation huzzah that was never the intent, and the money spent on prep plus the flag-waiving is just too much of a turn-off.

Give me a type of event where - in summer - a Roger Bannister can win and I'll watch again. Remember him? A true amateur.

WK

The olympics have always been nationalistic. The athletes go there to represent their countries; if your country doesn't place you there, you don't go. There has never been an unattached athlete. They are under the control of their national federations. They play the national anthems, not the athlete's favorite song. As long ago as the Nazi's, the games were used for nationalistic purposes, and certainly we can remember the USSR's block of subsidized and medicated athrletes. It frustrates me sometimes to think that the fourth or fifth best competitor doesn't appear in the Olympics, because his nation would only bring its top three.

Mr. Davis, and his chip, no doubt appeared involuntarily, but when the TV people pay all that money for the rights to the games, they also have the athletes placed under an obligation to appear for interviews when the broadcasters schedule them, not when the athlete feels like it. Perhaps he lacks the wisdom to understand that the entire economic structure of most sports is supported by the media; without media coverage and money, he would probably be dodging cow pies while he skated around some frozen pasture. I'll be very surprised to see him on a Wheaties box.

I just watch my favorite sports, skipping the pageantry and the uninformed interviews and bios, hoping to see an excellent contest, no matter who is in it, no matter who wins. I think the coverage has improved as NBC doesn't appear to be limiting its coverage to US teams, as the networks too often did in the past.

Mr. Davis has ducked a lot more than cow pies coming up, let me tell you.

I'm not justifying his scowl, but I don't think people here have an inkling. I was all ready for the Black Power, Blackstone Nation, or other current salute. How short our memories. You don't understand the cultural context. It's different.

Believe me, he does not want to be on the Wheaties box. You aren't going to see a smile out of him until he is done, and maybe not even then. Much more than game face, he took it as a personal dis and it was.

He's in our paper today, with a long interview- and he doesn't care about the funding or media $$- he cares about his city and his neighborhood.

Historically in the ancient Olympics and also in the modern- it was a time of peace, but country and origin were never forgotten. They were central to the entity. Also the same folks would go right back to war at the end.

I think the ice dancers last night were fun to watch but still not up to the past levels. All three who won medals skated clean beautiful programs.

In the ice dancing last night, I think the Italian couple were robbed. I have never seen a more passionate routine, it was real passion though, not manufactured for the audience. They had tripped up the day before and were not speaking since then but went ahead and skated. I was mesmerized.

I guess they didn't do some little thing according to the judges standards, who knows.

clevelandbrown, You're right that the Olympics have always been nationalistic. Even In "Chariots of Fire" that is obvious. The difference now is that quite a few of the athletes change nationality just to compete in the Olympics. They may have no ties at all to the country they now represent. Of course, the perfect example of this is the woman ice dancer who won a silver medal yesterday. She is Canadian and became an American citizen on New Year's Eve last year through a special bill in Congress for the sole reason of winning a medal for the US. That is wrong IMO.

The ice dancing left me pretty bored. Some of the music was awful and the routines that went with it were pretty mechanical. I thought it was pretty nervy of the Israeli couple to skate to "Bolero". It's not as if there's any shortage of available music.

JJ5, if he cares about his sport, he has to care about funding, he doesn't have a choice. And he needs to get over himself. He's not the only athlete-black, white, pink, blue, or whatever- who has had to struggle to get to where he is, and he won't be the last.

Didn't you love the Italian ice dancing couple! I thought she was going to rip him apart! Wow, what a dame!!!

Yes, that is the couple I wrote about above. It sure made for an interesting routine, like the Apache Dancers of Paris. It really sticks in my mind even today.

SeaUrchin, under the old scoring system, the Italian's program would've been scored better, but under this new system, the judges can't give credit for skills that aren't there. Unfortunately the male of that pair isn't that strong of a skater. In person, they are very "scratchy" which is the sign of a team that doesn't use their blades very well. I saw them compete in 2002, and while extremely charismatic, not technically as good as many others in the field.

I found that one of the better ice dance competitions in many years, with any one of the top 8 able to be on the podium, it really came down to mistakes and how technically packed the program was. Unlike the mens' free skate, where Plushenko just had to show up and he'd win...no one could catch him, not much of a competition.

Sorry to ramble, I'm quite passionate about my skating!