It was another late breakfast for me, I am going to find it hard to get back to those early mornings when I get back home! Yes more scrambled egg, yogurt and coffee, it’s a bit like groundhog day every morning!
Today it’s the ladies 1,000 meters and the original Dance for me, we are showing all 18 pairs in the speed skating so I need to do a lot of preparation. It takes about three hours to get all the stats together for a speed skating commentary and you only end up using half of them, however my experience tells me that you are always better to be safe than sorry.
 |
Well after getting all the biographies together I was ready, we went live at 17:00 and it was very exciting. Marianne Timmer from the Netherlands was the winner which was great because she had been disqualified in the 500 meters due to a false start. There is a new rule this year that whoever has the second false start is disqualified and unfortunately the skater she was paired with in the 500 had a very controversial call which ended up being her demise! |
p1
After the speed, yes you guessed it the mad dash to the Palevela for the original dance. When I got outside it was snowing a blizzard! Great! I had no hat and was wearing leather shoes perfect, for there was about three inches of snow on the ground. The fifteen minute walk suddenly looked like it was going to be an adventure requiring good balance and thermal feet! I quickly discovered that when the leather soles of my shoes make contact with the snow it is just about the same as when the bobsleigh runners make contact with the track, I was slipping and sliding all over the place. This was definitely a journey I did not want to repeat. Thankfully the queue at the security gate was small so arrived in after about 25 minutes looking like a drowned rat!
Thankfully we hadn’t gone an air yet so I had time to dry out and settle down.
Well I don’t know if you saw the original but I have never seen anything like it, there were so many falls and some of them quite bad. I think I counted 6 teams that fell, can you ever remember anything like that? Without a doubt the new judging system is pushing the ice dancers hard and with pressure of Olympic competition they can’t handle it.
There was a team early on that took a tumble, and then the Lithuanians both went over. Both Italian teams fell and then the Canadians had a horrible fall on the last lift; I hope they will be able to finish the event.
p2
The results of the original look like this:
p3
After the skating it was off to try and find a taxi, it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack, not a chance. It was absolutely freezing and the conditions under foot had not improved. We decided to have something to eat near to the arena and then get a taxi after that.
A good decision it turned out to be……… We all indulged in some authentic Italian Pasta and some local red wine which was exceptional and only 13 euros a bottle! Don’t worry, we only had the one bottle between us and after an hour went on our merry way to the media village. The taxi ride home was nothing if not exciting. It had been snowing all evening and the roads are treacherous, but for some reason this didn’t make the slightest difference to how the Italians drive. We were wheel spinning from the lights, the back end was sliding about all over the place, but somehow we felt confident that the driver knew what he was doing. In hindsight I should have been hanging on for grim death volunteering to walk my way home, which would have got me back in time for breakfast. (I mean scrambled egg and yogurt)
In the end it was all fine, we arrived safely and crashed out after another day of Olympic drama……………..
Ziggy (my German colleague) has some photos of us which he promises to bring today, so with any luck you will have a photo of the dynamic duo tomorrow!
p4
|
Back