Chloe Kim is my hero
Community
I don't watch much of the Olympics but I have been waiting for the women's half Pipe competition. I have been following Chloe Kim for some time. She was snowboarding when she was four years old. She was too young to be in the last winter Olympics so this was her first. She won the gold metal for the United States. She speaks three languages and is a very smart young woman. Her parents were born in Korea but became American citizens many years ago.
And Kelly Clark got robbed!
Kim is amazing. But watch for White to light the men's half pipe up.
Matt
I agree with SB and Grey Ghost.
I happened to see her two runs. I have never been a fan of this type of sport of the winter Olympics in general, but WOW!
I used to love the Olympics and esp. the Winter Olympics.
But all of these new events which have been added over the past many years turn me off.
I'll take Franz Klammer's breathtaking, death defying, hell-bent-for-leather Gold Medal run in the 1976 Olympics Men's downhill as the most exciting thing I've ever seen in any sport.
It seems the Olympic Committee has banned all of the videos of this race save the one at the link. Sorry, but I can't find the embed code for this and you'll have to wait a minute or two before the race video appears in the link.
Every time I change the channel to watch the Olympics, all I ever get is Curling.
Curling????? The program guide says "Ski Jumping and Bobsled"...and I still get Curling. WTF?????
It would be more exciting to sit on my front porch in a t-shirt and skivvies watching the rain fall in 35F. weather. It's difficult to find any excitement whatsoever in someone sweeping the ice out from in front of a sliding rock while their team mates scream guttural utterances at them.
Curling is dominated by Minnesotans!!
We'll take what we can get!
"We'll take what we can get!" We have seen who you elect.
Actually I tune into curling mostly for the comedic value. It's such a preposterous and idiotic spectacle it can't help but be funny.
I was changing channels the other night and curling was on..... One player had slipped on the ice and fell down. Appeared to hurt his wrist.... You would have thought it was the old Wide World of Sports ski jumping wipe out from the way the announcers were carrying on!!! LOLOLOLOLOL
"Curling is dominated by Minnesotans!!"
That's because you don't have to lift weights, run marathons, wear spandex, or count calories. In fact, the more Hamms you drink the better you get! Kind of like bowling, only more fun!
If you don't like women's snowboarding just stare at this picture of Silje Norendal until you change your mind.
Curling is not a sport.... it's a drinking game.
I have not been keeping up with the olympics or the snowboarding scene. I though this thread "Cloe Kim" was about the Kardasian sisters. LOL After years of snowboarding and working in the industry, all I can say is snowboard chicks rule and are hotter than skier chicks. They are not a disappointment like Vonn was.
I'd curl up with her.
Matt
Not to start the rating game, but where is the crossbow shooter from NY to tell us these girls are a 4?
Shaun White got a 98.5 in the prelims.
Yep, White looked like he was getting 10' higher out of the pipe than any of the other athletes. A man among boys.
Matt
Hmm, parents immigrated and became US Citizens. Well that’s a Novel Idea.
My gripe is that Shaun Whites medal run will be shown the last 1/2 hour of prime time TV. They will keep saying “coming up Shaun Whites 1/2 pipe run”. They’ll say that all night to keep people watching.
Kyle: Remember Klammer's run like it was yesterday. The camera angles were SO close you could see the snow coming off his skis when he went over a bump and he had one ski under control and the other about to go ballistic. He definitely put it ALL on the line. He could very well have wound up as a train wreck.
I'm not a downhill skier, but that kind of ski competition is what I like to watch. The snowboarding stuff is neat to watch, but once you see a few of them go you've seen it all. I get bored after a few minutes.
I like Bode Miller as one of the all time US greats. If he could harness his full potential, no one could touch him. But generally he went a little too far over the edge and crashed. Same for Sasha Cohen at figure skating, who was jumping quads in practice. If she didn't crash, no one in the world could compare. Except maybe Oksana Baiul.
Why does that girl have her finger on the trigger? You'd think she would know better...
You dirty ol men...Lol
The Russian Curler has 'em all a Twitter...After looking, I agree! :-)
At the end of the Franz Klammer video, note the last stat on the list:
In his 1972 downhill races, he AVERAGED an incredible 111kph, which is 68.5 mph!
Think about that one for a few minutes!
I get antsy going 70 mph in a car, I can't imagine what that must be like on skis!
Kyle,
These days the women downhill racers hit speeds over 80 mph. Men often reach speeds of 95 mph.
I downhill ski 30-40 days every winter. My buddies and I have apps on our phones that record things like total miles skied, vertical feet, and top speed. A few of us routinely hit speeds in excess of 60 mph when we cruise the groomed runs.
Matt
Matt,
Those are crazy speeds for sure.
OTOH, "Reaching" speeds like that is not the same thing as averaging those speeds from a standing start all the way to the bottom of the hill.
The point was Klammer's average speed may seem unthinkable to a non-skier, but it isn't that fast by today's standards.
Matt
Here's a short clip from lengthy piece from The Guardian on Klammer's trip down the mountain in 1976:
(emphasis mine)
Franz Klammer was the last of the big names to go. Looking back, I can see that the pressure on the 22-year-old was immense. He'd won eight out of nine World Cup downhills the year before, all three races in 1976. There were 66,000 spectators lining the course and surrounding the finish line, most of them Austrian. He was the favourite. The man who might have been his biggest rival, Switzerland's Roland Collombin had broken his back 18 months before. Klammer was on home territory. He had one chance. If he messed it up then, frankly, he was buggered.
The buzzer went. The crowd yelped like sea lions. Klammer dressed in the lurid colours of a DC comic superhero – bright yellow bodysuit, red boots and helmet – careened down the mountainside with such blatant disregard for his own safety it was like he was a teenage hoodlum joyriding in a stolen body. He leapt, he bounced, he bumped.
His skis flew out at odd angles. He teetered perpetually on the edge of disaster. At times he seemed to be falling more than skiing. It was a performance of such reckless bravado and wild freedom it's hard to imagine that anyone watching – including Bernard Russi – wasn't urging the Austrian to succeed. Behind at the split, he recovered to win by 0.33 seconds.
Of all the sport I watched in the 1970s nothing – not Gordon Banks's save in Mexico, the Rumble in the Jungle or Emlyn Hughes hugging Princess Anne on a Question of Sport – made such an impression on me. Thinking about it now I realise something: I remember the whole of Klammer's run at Innsbruck in vivid colour. Odd, because I know for a fact that the television I watched it on was black-and-white."
Matt,
No doubt skis are better and athletes are better now than they were 42 years ago.
Yet to go THAT much faster today than he did then has to mean the courses are simply steeper, does it not?
Course for course the 1976 Kammer would get his ass kicked by virtually anyone in the field today. Training is that much better, athletes have the ability to push that much harder.
"Yet to go THAT much faster today than he did then has to mean the courses are simply steeper, does it not?
No. Many of today's races are on the same courses they were in Klammer's day. Equipment and training are the biggest reasons the skiers are faster today.
Matt
Matt,
Do you have any data showing the average speeds of today's downhillers vs those of Klammer's vintage?
That would be interesting to see.
"Course for course the 1976 Kammer would get his ass kicked by virtually anyone in the field today." I'm not so sure. "Anyone in the field today" racing on Kammer's ski and boot model would not be a contender.
"Watching Mixed Doubles Curling and really hoping Cornhole becomes an Olympic sport."
Kyle,
Think about your game of golf. Some of the top courses haven't changed in 40 years, yet the lowest scores on them have. Why is that?
Matt
I actually watched a curling match live when we made a stop over in Nova Scotia when I was in the Navy......
GG..... I think the answer to that is obvious...... the rampant use of steroids in golf............... :-)
LOL Roids, not just for WWF, the Tour, or baseball anymore!
LOL Roids, not just for WWF, the Tour, or baseball anymore!
LOL! Yeah, John Daly is a poster child for steroid abuse, BB.
;-)
Matt
Daly is the poster child for alcohol abuse and incredibly bad judgement. But this is the first time I've ever seen him linked with steroids.
The point seems to still elude you, Kyle. i'm pretty sure BB was being sarcastic, as was I.
Matt
Skiing fast on groomed runs is relatively easy, IMO.
Check out Warren Miller's films, if you want to see real skiers.
Matt
Shaun White won the gold for men's half pipe. That guy is amazing.
A little tough watching Sean White drag the American flag around on the ground afterwards... but I imagine he was lost in the moment and not completely aware of how he was handling the flag someone gave him.
Ingemar Stenmark was my hero, won about 90 titles, wasn't allowed in the 1984 Olympics because he didn't go through the NSSA or an agent for his endorsements. Lost to only USAs Steve Marhe in 1988. Although he skied the fastest salom run that year. Go figure. Retired at 33 about a year or two younger than Shaun.
Cleaned house on one of those stars of all sport competitions, was featured in Dancing with the Stars too.
I didn't like seeing White dragging the flag around, and I've heard the guy is a real prick.
I'll give White a pass on the flag. He was lost in a clearly emotional moment for him. The guy just gave the most impressive performance of his entire career on the sport's biggest stage to win gold for his country after a long, hard comeback. He is truly an amazing athlete. I was in awe watching those guys in the half pipe. One little mistake and they could be paralyzed or dead.
That was one of the greatest Olympic moments I've ever watched. Shaun White laid it all out there and came out victorious. I ain't gonna lie, I got emotional watching it.
The flag thing doesn't bug me. It was just unfortunate, he was so caught up in the moment he didn't realize what he was doing. There was absolutely no malice intended.
Flag etiquette at the Olympics has always been very poor by spectators and athletes alike. It used to bother me, but now I realize that most people are just ignorant to how the US flag should be handled.
Matt
I too was a little disappointed when the flag hit the ground, but really ticked when he stepped on it. Great athlete, and I was cheering him on, but it's not his first rodeo (3x gold), so he should really know better.
Shaun did not intend to drag or step on the flag. If you truly understand flag etiquette, you realize incidental ground contact is not the issue. If he dropped it and drug it and then stomped on it, I would be the first in line of his detractors. This dude reached the pinnacle of his career and was elated. No harm, no foul.
James
Not a huge deal but if Olympians aren't aware of how to treat the flag, that would be a big disappointment.
All I could think when I saw that was can someone PLEASE help the guy out and drape it over his shoulders or something..... The Olympic committee probably noticed it too and I'll bet they do something to correct it... Like not handling a flag to an emotional athlete after an emotional victory... unless it's on a small flag pole or something....
