Highlights/Lowlights of the Olympic Games So Far

After tomorrow, the Winter Olympics are halfway done. It's time to take a look at the highlights and lowlights so far of this year's competition so far.

To me, from an American perspective, there's been a lot more good than bad. We currently sit at 18 medals, 6 of which are gold, and currently lead every other country in terms of most medals and gold. I think we're in great shape to collect the most medals and still like our chances for most golds, but that will be a closer race. Onto the highlights.

Highlights

Hannah Kearney's Gold in the Women's Moguls
Any first gold medal for a country is special and important, but the fact that she beat one of her biggest rivals and one of the best Mogul skiiers in the world in Canadian Jenn Heil, on Heil's home turf, is incredible. I think many people doubted that she would be able to beat Jenn, but she pulled off the upset for the first American gold.

J.R. Celski's Bronze Medal in the 1,500 Meter
A few months after cutting himself very badly, the fact that J.R. Celski got as far as he did, let alone a bronze medal is quite an accomplishment. He showed in this race that he may be the future American face for the men in short track after Apolo Ohno retires.

Nordic Combined
This is something two-fold to be proud of. The Nordic Combined Race beat the Daytona 500 in terms of viewership. Think about that. Supposedly, the country's most watched sport(it's not a sport, in my opinion) gets beaten by an event that not many Americans are exposed to, nor have we ever been that good in it. That, however, would also change thanks to the United States big three competitors for the sport in Johnny Spillane, Todd Lodwick and Bill Demong. They finished second, fourth, and sixth, respectively. More importantly, they have shown that the United States will be a threat in future Nordic Combined events.

United States Hockey Teams
I was just reading a blog on cbssports.com saying how a performance like yesterday by the United States men will never be good enough to beat Canada. The score was 6-1. The idiot blogger said that we let them hang around for way too long. THE SCORE WAS 3-1 BEFORE YOU COULD BLINK AN EYE! That's not letting them hang around. It was a comfortable win by the United States and they should be very content with how they're playing so far and will obviously have to play a great game to beat Canada Sunday night and win their pool. Their other win was Switzerland, who they took care of fairly easily and beat them 3-1. And another thing, the blogger obviously wrote his blog prematurely as Canada needed to win in a shootout to beat the Swiss. In that method of thinking, if Canada plays like that, they'll never be able to beat the United States. On the other side, the women have just been completely dominant again, outscoring their competition 31-1. As usual, it looks like it will be them and Canada to decide who will win the gold medal.

Lindsey Vonn's Gold in Downhil Skiing
After all the hype and doubt that went on regarding her bruised shin, much of America wanted to see Lindsey win this and prove that she could overcome her injury and she did. She went through this course very well and was able to beat her countrywoman Julia Mancuso for gold. It was a great scene when they showed her in joyous tears and you could really see then how badly she wanted it and how hard she worked for it and didn't want her injury to prevent her from doing her best.

Julia Mancuso
After Lindsey got all the hype after her gold, a lot of the talk was how impressive Mancuso's run was. Many people doubted her ability to get silver. Yesterday, after Vonn's fall, Mancuso took another silver in the Super Combined, another event where she wasn't expected to get the silver. If she keeps this up, she could potentially overshadow Lindsey and become the "it-girl" of this year's Olympics. I expect Lindsey to finish out stronger than Julia, however, but we'll see. Nonetheless, both have had great performances so far.

Wednesday Night
This Wednesday was the greatest night for the Americans in Winter Olympics history. In the span of about 5 hours, the United States picked up 3 gold medals and 6 overall. Shani Davis repeated as the men's 1000 meter champion and Chad Hedrick also picked up a bronze. Lindsey had also won her medal which was shown on primetime. But it was...

Shaun White
Shaun White deserves his own space for me to praise him. How impressive were his two runs on Wednesday, particularly his second run...and that was already when he won the competition. For him to do the Double McTwist 1260 with the gold already being won prior to him even doing that, shows how much of a professional he is and that he wanted to challenge himself because he knows how good he is and wanted to push himself to do even better. That was as dominant a performance for an individual that you're ever going to see in the Olympics. He blew away his competition and made it look easy. He also has such a down to earth personality that you can't help but like him. He is also cross-generational, while he is a role model to a lot of kids, I think he's also someone that a lot of parents can relate to as well. And lastly, the way he has revolutionized snowboarding is incredible. I think an underrated aspect in people's legacies is what have they done to evolve a sport or add something different to it, and Shaun White unequivocally has and I hope to see him at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Evan Lysacek's Gold
This was another feel-good story for the Americans. Evan was second place after the short program and in order to beat Evgeni Plushenko, who is one hell of an athlete, he needed to skate the program of a lifetime to win. Plushenko is also the first person to medal three times in a row in figure skating since 1932, which really shows you how great he is. Earlier in the day, Plushenko had criticized Lysacek for not having a quad in his repertoire, which was due to an injury that Evan suffered a few months ago, but thanks to his technique being better as well as him having more jumps than Evgeni in the final two minutes where everything is doubled, Lysacek was able to cut down a legend and bring America another improbable gold.

Lowlights

Nodar Kumaritashvili's Death
Unfortunately, I think the lasting image ofthe 2010 Winter Olympics will be the graphic video of Nodar flying off the luge and into a unprotected steel beam and later died, which is unfortunate. The first couple days of the games were overtaken with the emotion of his death and how they changed the luge so that it wouldn't happen again. For someone at 21 to die is terrible and the fact that he died on a training run getting ready for his Olympic Debut makes it even more tragic. Shame on the Canadian team by the way for saying it was his fault, only about 12 hours after his death. How heartless can you be? It's stupidity like that which is why Canada gets a bad rap sometimes.

Obviously everything will pale in comparison to Nodar's death, but here are several more things I think have been some of the lowpoints so far.

Opening Ceremony
This is usually an overrated event as it is. My only favorite part generally is the parade of nations and the lighting of the torch. I could totalyl deal without all the artistry stuff which makes the event take forever. And the opening ceremony has become such an integral part to the Olympic that to me, the media kind of shoves it down your throat and almost forces you to like it. But let's get this straight, this wasn't Beijing. I'm not a fan of the artistry, but in Beijing, they put on one hell of a show for its worldwide audience. Nothing in this year's ceremony was spectacular and the end with the torch just solidified it with the scene with Wayne Gretzky waiting there for several minutes waiting for the fourth arm to come up, which never did. It was a bad time for something like that to go wrong. I thought the end, however was pretty cool, where it was all the Canadian people running to catch up with Gretzky on his way to lighting the torch. A scene like that told you how important Gretzky was and continues to be in Canada.

The Weather
This is a good and bad thing. The weather postponed Lindsey's early runs which helped her heal her shin a little bit. I also like how there's more events than originally expected still to come in the second half of the Olympics, but at the same time, a few of the events have been postponed, which obviously is never a good thing. Tons and tons of snowboarding ticket money has been refunded too, because it has been so warm that much of the area for viewers has turned into slush. But the weather over the next week looks to be good and Canada should have a good finish.

United States Curling Teams
As good as our hockey teams have been, the same could be said for how bad our curling teams have done so far. The United States Men haven't gotten blown out yet, but haven't won yet either. They've lost 7-5 to Germany, 6-5 to Norway, 7-6 to Switzerland and 7-6 to Denmark. The women have lost 6-5 to Germany, 9-7 to Japan and 7-6 to Denmark. This has undoubtedly been our worst sport and I don't think we make the playoffs on either side. Hopefully we'll be able to finish strong at least.

Lindsey Jacobellis
This is a perfect exampleof why you should never showboat. You may never get another chance at gold. Lindsey in Torino, got a silver medal, but she had blew away the field until she showboated at the end and fell which cost her the gold medal. She had a chance to redeem herself this year, but did not and clipped the board of one of her competitors and lost in the semifinals. She did wind up winning the 5th place heat, but unfortunately, we only remember the Gold winner most of the time. She is still pretty young and I think we could expect to see her at another Olympics 4 years from now where hopefully she'll win gold.

Women's Halfpipe
This is kind of a glass half-empty, half-full thing. We won both silver and bronze but at the same time, gave up our dominance as a world power in snowboarding, to an Australian, no less. However, it is understandable because Torah Bright lives in Utah, so I'm sure most of her training is done on American courses. The two medals are nice, but I definitely would've traded both those in for one of the American girls to have gold. Gretchen Bleiler and Elena Hight fell in both their second turns, which is a shame because at the very least I think Gretchen had a good shot to medal. I'm sure we'll see a very strong field for the United States again four years from now.

So those are the highlights and lowlights in my opinion of the Olympic Games so far, and I'll recap the second half of those at the close of the Olympic Games next Sunday.

No Country for Old Men

As surely everyone has heard by now, either through NBC promos or countless articles in newspapers, the Winter Olympics begin on Friday and go all the way through to Sunday, February 28th. To me, the Summer Olympics are far more enjoyable than the Winter ones. There's a lot more sporting events going on, some of which in America, we never get a chance to see on television such as table tennis, equestrian or fencing. NBC and their affiliates do a heck of a job covering it, especially ever since Athens. They have kicked up their level of coverage to a staggering level, and I love watching every moment of it. I also like them a lot more than the Winter ones because some of the sports you know were being played by the Ancient Greeks in the original Olympiad. You could see them doing track and field or archery. I really doubt they were alpine skiing or speed skating(although speed skating is one of my favorite events in the winter ones). Of course both comes with criticism, what constitutes what as a sport, the doping scandals and more as well as summer always dealing with why should there be sports where the ultimate prize isnt the gold such as Tennis where its a grand slam title or Baseball where its a world series. If you ask Kobe what he wants more, a NBA title or the gold, you can bet he's gonna say an NBA title. There's a lot of pride in that, there's hardly any beating Angola by 50 points in group play. But I enjoy the summer olympics because it has a little bit of everything for a sports fan. There's 31 sports so there's something to watch for everyone and a lot of them are different ones which America doesn't get to see often so that's a plus as well.

Some of you may be wondering the significance of the title of this blog. I mentioned pride in the last paragraph and this is the general theme of this post, but what happened to American pride in the winter Olympics. I feel it very much in the Summer ones. You know Michael Phelps was thrilled to win all those for America and to show the world that they're the crown jewel in swimming. I especially felt it in the Jason Lezak come back in the 4x100 freestyle relay race and then again in Phelps epic race against Miroslav Cavic where Phelps won by.001 of a second. I could also feel American pride with Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh in beach volleyball. You could tell how hard they trained and really wanted to bring the title back to America and then lastly of course, with the basketball team having disgraced the country by missing gold in the 2004 Olympics, wanted to show that they were back on top in the basketball world. I don't feel the pride in the Winter Olympics. Times have changed over the last 2 decades or so. Now I feel that most of our modern athletes in the Winter Olympics are self-serving brats who couldn't give a rats ass about their country. I am absolutely ashamed as to what took place in Torino 4 years ago between Bode Miller receiving all the hype and doing absolutely nothing. I don't want idiots like him to as he put it "party and socialize at an Olympic level." There's a time and place for that, but to not give a damn about your country and then continuously give half-assed efforts over there is an embarrassment. Where is all the hype this year over him? It's gone and thank god. Then you have perhaps the most self-serving athlete of the Winter Olympics and that's Shani Davis. I'm not going to go as hard on him. I don't have a problem with him doing his training by himself or even him not doing the team pursuit to do a couple extra things on his own. But the way he acted in Torino to the media was a disgrace as well. He really snubbed Melissa Stark after what could've been a great moment in Olympic history after he became the first African American to win gold in an individual event, offering her curt answers because she supposedly praised his teammate more than him. Throughout the entire Olympics, it seemed like he unnecessarily brought race into everything and while his achievement should've been a great thing, it simply turned into a sour and bitter occasion. I am expecting great things this year from Shani and this will be the year where I'll decide if I can forget his attitude at Torino and remember him for what he does (and says) this year. And lastly, perhaps the defining visual of the 2006 Torino Olympics for Americans was Lindsay Jacobellis's showoat trick which cost her the gold. Somehow she seemed perfectly content with silver which is a disgrace and she didn't mseem too unhappy with herself which is a joke. If she never wins a gold that should haunt her for the rest of her life, but as I said, it doesn't seem like many individuals give a damn about their country or even how well they perform individually in the Olympics. Shani, clearly does which is why I still have tons of respect for hm for what he's been able to accompish so far. Our best hopes this year I think are Shani Davis, Lindsay Vonn and our hockey teams I'm sure guys like Shaun White and Chad Hedrick will perform well, but I expect the 3 I mentioned to be the things we remember when the Winter Olympics close 2 and a half weeks from now. We have to have more national and personal pride in the Winter Olympic games and even if we lose, we have to give it our all. If you're not, you have no business competing on your country's team. I hope this mentality changes and I think it will. I think there's been a lot of growing up especially by Bode Miller, but think Shani and Lindsay have done some growing up as well. This year's theme to me is repeat or redemption. Will they repeat their performances and more importantly actions at this year's games or will they redeem themselves with better performances and have the mount of pride that past Olympians have had. The choice is their's alone and they have their fate in their hands. But it starts with having more pride in themselves and their country. No matter how many beatings our country takes physically and verbally, we are still the United States of America and it's time to show the world once again what we are capable of doing. Hope everyone enjoys the games and I'm sure I'll be talking about them again over the next couple weeks.