There was video. He aborted one jump, getting zero credit for it. He fell on his butt in another one, but got some reduced number of points. The judges prefer going for it and planting body parts on the ice to chickening out.
The current curling is this weird mixed doubles version that's kind of like watching couples fight.
They showed some training runs for the men's downhill. That's one of those events where viewers have to wonder how anyone learning it survives long enough to make it to the big time.
The opening ceremonies already happened, but tonight NBC will try their best to make them look live.
I was on the men's downhill team in college at CU in Boulder Colorado. I also competed in the giant slalom. I had, have, a very compact build, I sink in water, it gave me a downhill advantage. It also didn't hurt that I grew up about 20 miles away from Stoner Ski Area, and that was where I learned to ski.
You've probably never heard of that Colorado ski area. Most people haven't. It didn't have any easy or moderate runs, it was all 40 to 45 degree slope. Short runs but very fast. T-bar lifts to build up leg muscles.
There is a secret to it. If the slope is steep enough when you do fall down because of the angle of incidence is so small you don't hit the ground very hard. You just sort of glide along the surface until you slow down some and can get back up. That also applies to ski jumping.
At Telluride Ski Area in the olden days the Mammoth Slide Run began with 40 foot cliff we would jump off. The landing was on about a 60 to 70 degree slope which tapered off to about 45 degrees. If I fell down it didn't matter that much, I would slide down to where the slope flattened out to 45 degrees and then get back up. In years since the ski area has worked around that cliff and it's now out of bounds.
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