Your PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics anticipation thread!

man i know i was hating on pairs the other day but now i'm sucked in; figure skating is no question the best of the fake sports

Great gold medal performance in the pairs and Shiffrin begins her rampage with her own.

i am excited for snow cross weee

I was excited for the snowcross but the 10 hours of Olympics I recorded over night didn't contain 1 second of it. It was on the other channel, the one without a published schedule...

Oh, it's on now. From the semi finals at least. So now I know how it finishes..

Is that iron man?

i am excited for snow cross weee

here i make a 'don't eat the yellow snow' post out of the sense of duty which comes from seeing the word 'snow' next to the word 'wee'

lol

snowcross was fun but goddang it was all over in a nanosecond

that's why i'm happy watching all the qualifiers etc: 18 rounds in total, over 4 hours

https://www.pyeongchang2018.com/en/game-time/results/OWG2018/en/snowboard/daily-schedule-date=2018-02-15.htm

still, women's tonight and the ski version on 21 and 23. ski slope and big air (indoors!) to look forward to too.

it’s like snowboarding christmas

but christmas is every year

i said LIKE

what's the controv with the uk skellington bob suits? they look like all the others.

There like the UK cycling skin suits they have ridges sewn into them to improve aerodynamics

UK Sport has taken a very systematic approach to increasing the gold medal tallies it goes something like this.

1)Find an ignored Olympic sport, preferable one that is amateurish.
2) Bring a previously unheard of level of professionalism, sports science and training to it
3) scour suburban comprehensives for kids who embody whatever weird physiological or psychological traits required for the sport
4) bung them lottery money so they can train full time
5) spend previously unheard of amounts of money on optimising the kit to give them an edge

Also in recent years UK sport has targeted women at sports that just equalised their media rallies or were forced to open up to women’s competition.

Skeleton appears to be the red-headed step child of sliding sports, possibly because the big Germans that dominate the rest of the sliders think going down head first is just too crazy and IIRC women’s competition only started at Sochi making it the ideal winter sport for teamGB to carve out a niche.

great post

uk attitude to olympics as exemplified in coverage and social media response is the worst fucking jingoistic nonsense

mind you look at us, a couple of old westminsters carping at this inclusive get-medals-quick scheme. good god, why isn't fives an olympic sport? bring back the bally corinthian spirit

the focus on medals, on gcse results, on statistical supremacy...this is why our country is a shithole

All well and good

But that routine just there was incredible

And there's lots of things that make ye a suitable tbf

> UK Sport has taken a very systematic approach to increasing the gold medal tallies

you say that, but women's bob has been running since 2002 when we got bronze, silver in 2006, gold in 2010 and 2014. that's 8, maybe 16, years for other countries to notice and do something about it.

> scour suburban comprehensives

they all seem posh to me.

St Michael's Preparatory School - posh

born in Cambridge and brought up in Bath, being educated at Hayesfield School Technology College, Beechen Cliff School and the University of Bath. Her father is a professor of chemistry at the University of Bath - posh

participated in equestrian sports, particularly eventing - posh

University of Bath seems to be a common thread

i hope laura deas is better prepared than http://www.lauradeas.co.uk/

TBF I based my selection criteria on my knowledge of track cycling.

I think the Winter Olympics always plays second fiddle in the eyes of the administrators, so there isn’t the same focus on getting and maintaining an edge.

I’m not sure there are many countries that plough as much state/lottery money into Olympic sport.

lol I swear I didn't know how to answer this and it told me that my best fit is the luge (followed by bobsled)

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/winter-olympics-quiz/

Just finished watching the men's figure skating and my god, Yuzuru Hanyu is an actual alien.

How did he do THAT after three months off recovering from an ankle injury? It's unreal.

Am sad for my boy Julian Yee, did really well in his Olympic debut but missed out on qualifying for tmr's free skate by one spot. :/

Hanyu was something straight out of Fantasia, my god. Like a fairytale prince. Wow wow wow.

I felt sad for Chen, how lonely & weird it must be when you can’t stop your nerves & then sitting on camera forever with no words, ugh
I hope he got to have a good cry or receive a hug

yeah it was painful to watch. The pressure on him must have been insane, poor kid.

Hanyu has 5 quads planned for tmr. O_O I remember no one put on two clean runs at Sochi, I wonder if he'll manage it this time. Even without Chen, between Hanyu, Javi, Shoma, and Jin, it feels like a much more competitive field this year.

lol I swear I didn't know how to answer this and it told me that my best fit is the luge (followed by bobsled)

i for one support tombot's seemingly fated journey to the 2022 winter olympics in beijing

good luck buddy you're gonna need it

i got freestyle skiing which uh seems optimistic at best

i got figure skating

ilx winter sports cru UNITE

i'll warn you now i am not gonna be a pretty sight in lycra

Had to miss last night's coverage due to higher purposes (ie Black Panther) so running the morning catchup now at work. Yipes at the sound of what happened to Chen.

i’m putting together a routine to Bertie Higgins Key Largo its gonna be LIT

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTjy71fVxcTv9Fca2ds4ltppCt30mJ0_5Hpm_7dvn3kFIcCr1sDuQ

The OAR badges amuse me, they are like the plain cigarette packaging of logos

The design of the OAR kits is much better than the standard Russian Winter Olympics ones in most years but it doesn’t look like you can buy them anywhere.

The kits appear to vary per event - the American snowboard cross team wasn't wearing the NASA style kit the slope style and half pipe team were.

Loved those stripey bottoms the Italians were wearing, usefully distinctive.

i've always had a soft spot for the russian kits - all those paisleys everywhere, they've been reliably bonkers compared to other countries

The Ester Ledecka story is awesome. I need to go back and watch the super-g now

Well done Mr Atkins for having been born in Birmingham, meaning UK get a second medal.

Elise Christie aka Paula Radcliffe on Ice.

The Ester Ledecka story is awesome. I need to go back and watch the super-g now

― El Tomboto, Sunday, 18 February 2018 2:03 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ILX doesn’t seem have a lot of love for alpine skiiing but the course for downhill and super-g has produced some reallly good racing.

who the fuck are these bell-ends doing commentary on the ski-ing on bbc1 right now? For a man brought up on the patrician tones of Barry Davies, this is hard to stomach

"This guy loves skiing... like the Colonel loves chicken"

"He couldn't look any more American... look at him, he looks awesome"

If you keen the freestyle bros. They are on again and should shut up.

i sorta.. like him ツ)_/¯

i think his bombast suits the events and he is v knowledgable. maybe it's that something as relatively esoteric as super-g is getting the same scorchingly breathless treatment as, say an FA cup final from the commentator

Fourcade reverses Sochi and a nation rejoices

Can't get enough of people's reactions of Ester Ledecká's gold medal run. Including her own reaction: https://www.nbcolympics.com/video/ester-ledecka-i-dont-know-what-happened

I hope she does great in snowboarding too.

After the luge and skeleton those bobsleighs look like juggernauts going down that course.

Ed and Tim, the extreme commentators, are a lot of the reason I enjoy those things. They must do 10 hours of commentary every day.

(They got chastised last time and have toned it down slightly)