Happy Year of the Horse!


Random IdHOP News Update for 2/18/02

  Well, the 2002 Winter Olympics are in full swing over in Salt Lake
City, and you know what that means:  there is nothing else in the world
worth reporting on.  If it's not Olympic-related, I seriously doubt I'd
even be aware of it right now.  So, without further delay, here's my
official mid-Games report...


  First off, logically, the opening ceremony... it was good, I don't
think it topped the Sydney ceremony but I really can't hold that against
them.  They brought out the entire 1980 US hockey team to light the
torch, which was cool, and, since this is America, they brought out John
Williams to compose and conduct the 2002 Olympic theme.

  But on to the games -- Cross-country skiing and the biathalon both
have offered some close finishes this year, which is amazing considering
these races go anywhere from 10 to 50 kilometers and are still decided
by a matter of inches (I'm not going to go through all the medalists
here, since they're easy enough to find on olympics.com).

  If close finishes are not your thing, though, and you prefer total
blowouts, then you should be watching the women's hockey matches.  The
North American teams are pretty much walking over everyone there, and
the Canadian team has yet to give up a single goal.  The men's hockey
games seem more evenly matched, both are done with the round robins and
have moved on to the tournaments.

  Back to the ski slopes, though, the Winter Games, moreso than the
Summer games, have a few of the more "X-Treme" events like the snowboard
halfpipe (which the Americans took 4 out of the 6 medals for), aerial
skiing, and freestyle moguls, which are just some fun sports to watch,
and people do some rather downright insane things.

  Australia won its first ever Winter Games gold medal just recently,
with Steve Bradbury on short track speed skating, in a bit of a fluke
victory where all four other racers, who were all several seconds ahead
of him, collided right before the finish line and left him the last man
standing and a gold medalist.  (As a side note to this story, Apolo
Anton Ohno, who was in the lead before the crash (which was caused by
someone else) and wound up with silver was still absolutely thrilled
with it (as he and anyone else certainly should be), which was real nice
to see after media overcoverage of this one other story.)

  Still in speedskating, but this time the women's 1000m, Chris Witty
managed to not only win gold but set a world record -- despite the fact
that she had *mono*.

  ... and then there's curling.  A peculiar event to say the least, I'd
say I'm one of a minority of Americans who understands the basic rules
of the sport and perhaps the only one to have watched more televised
curling since Nagano than televised professional baseball.  If you've
never actually just watched a game (i.e. "what the heck *is* this?  i'm
gonna go watch something else now.") it's worth at least giving it a
chance.

  There's plenty of sports I haven't covered yet, but they're all still
cool (no pun intended)... I'll wait to cover them another time...

Until then, enjoy the rest of the Games...

  -- Ky


P.S.  Forgive me for something so unrelated to the Olympics, but between
the past two news posts, we've plugged every webcomic I read *except*
Megatokyo (www.megatokyo.com), and I'd feel bad leaving them out so I'm
plugging them now.