Sports Guy North

With my wife's birthday, Valentine's day and our anniversary all lying within a week, I have been a little distracted lately. But I'm back now for another installment, albeit a little shorter than normal. I hear that something's going on over in Europe right now, so I thought I'd preview a couple of the sports in competition. This isn't going to be very easy for me, because most of the events in the Olympics just aren't in my scope of interest. I mean, if speed skating was really that good, then you'd probably watch it more often than once every four years. At least it's the winter Olympics and not the summer games, there's only so much you can say about 50 different lengths of running events.

Women's Hockey

A day of competition is behind us, and 4 games were played. Finland beat Germany 3-0 and Sweden beat Russia 3-1. Two games that seem pretty even, although I didn't catch any of the action. A couple games I did see pieces of were the Americans defeating the Swiss 6-0, and Canada over my mom and some of her friends 16-0 without really putting much effort into it after the first 5 minutes. It was one of those games where you could see the girls doing the normal Canadian struggle between not wanting to light up the board and never even reacting when they scored, and having to worry about what score the Americans would put up against their competition since tie breaks in the tournament are done based on goals scored. The reason they have to worry about this now is that, while Canada and the Americans are still leagues ahead of everyone else, Sweden seems to be pulling away into it's own middle calibre ahead of the rest. Although unlikely, both the Canadians and the Americans would rather put off facing the Swedes so they have a 99.9% chance of making the finals rather than a 99.5% chance. And in there lies the problem with women's international hockey competitions. There are only 2 teams. Granted it is better than when Canada won 100% of the tournaments, but it's still not really good. Until the playing field levels out a bit there just isn't going to be that much interest in women's hockey. An eighth of hockey fans in North America may watch a round robin game, but that might be a very high estimate. Maybe double that will bother with the gold medal game if its Canada USA. But that's pretty much it.

On another note, I have to wonder how female athletes, especially in hockey, who have had to fight their entire lives to show that women should be respected in their sport as much as men, feel about the audience in the arena being filled with female cheerleaders. I'm guessing at least a few of them are less than comfortable with it.

Prediction: Gold-USA, Silver-Canada, Bronze-Sweden

Luge

Obviously the men's doubles are the huge draw in this sport. There is nothing like seeing a mans ass lying on another mans crotch as they speed along a track of ice. Look at that picture - there are actually 2 guys in it. How does a partnership in this "sport" even get set up? Even ignoring the fact that getting into luge in the first place is a confusing happening, once you're into it does some guy just come up to you and ask you if you prefer the top or the bottom? If us so far outside of the luging world find the need to question the doubles every four years, imagine what it's like actually being in the competitions. The guys who just do the singles must have a million jokes about back doors and intruders alone. But nonetheless I'll try to predict what will happen in these events.

Men's Singles - Gold-Italy, Silver-Russia, Bronze-USA, Top Canadian-15th
Women's Singles - Gold-Germany, Silver-Italy, Bronze-Germany Top American-4th, Top Canadian-11th
The Big Boys - Gold-Germany, Silver-USA, Bronze-Canada

Duathlon

What? Is this not in the Olympics anymore? Am I just missing it in the schedule? What happened? Nothing says international sporting competition like combining skiing and guns. This is a travesty. Speaking of which, I heard that the next summer Olympics will be the last games with both Baseball and Softball. This is the largest summer sport by far in North America and the Caribbean, it's huge in Asia, and probably the only really interesting team sport in the summer games (my apologies to the enourmous Water Polo community that exists out there). I guess that there is just more interest in the world in Trampoline than in Baseball, that's the only way to explain yet another questionable choice in a very questionable tournament. And yet National Pride just makes everyone eat up these games, and watch some of the most boring television out there. They actually televise most of a marathon. Seriously.