The Daily Sport-February 8th

Ok, so golf has yet again played a role in me missing a blog post. IF I were a bad fiancé, I would say it was my lovely fiancé’s fault that I didn’t get to enter a blog post yesterday due to her surprise visit last night, BUT…I’m not so it was of course my fault that I missed out on disappointing ALL of you readers out there. 

 With that, I’ll get to the point and today/tonight’s edition of The Daily Sport. It will of course be on the only topic to keep us sports fans from momentarily forgetting that this is the first weekend of the year without meaningful football for another 29 weeks (Yikes): The Olympics. 

This, the twenty-second winter games of the Olympiad, will offer a multitude of excitement, diversity, drama, and sports storylines for viewers all over the world. For me, the Olympics are great; they spike interest in sports I otherwise have no interest in, elevate athletes my age to superstar status worthy of cult-like followings, and ramp up some good ole-fashioned patriotism. 

I’ll probably dive into more detail in a few of my other more detailed, various Olympic sport-specific editions of the Daily Sport, so today I’ll just leave you all with  a bullet-pointed list of some initial thoughts as we sit in the middle of the opening weekend of the 2-week event.

-1^st off, the Olympics started Thursday night (it’s now Saturday) and I’m already pretty sick of Figure Skating. And that’s not Figure Skating’s fault (believe it or not) it’s the inclusion of the Olympics’ newest event: Team Figure Skating. Basically it’s a point-based event that adds up all of the individual figure skating events and rewards a national team with a medal. Isn’t that basically a microcosm of the Olympics itself, except solely based off Figure Skating…Figure Skating?!?! The Winter games now has its version of the Summer games’ diving events…congrats.

-2^nd, I can’t freaking wait for Hockey. It’s the only major sport that our country cares about (because as much as I want us to, we, as a whole, just don’t give a damn about soccer-but that’s a point for another edition) that we enter the Olympics as something other than the favorite. It truly has so many characteristics of sports we love: traditional rivalries, involvement of the best professional athletes the world has to offer, and big-time superstars that draw national appeal.  

-3^rd, If you’ve never watched curling (I know, its curling-literally people slowly skating sweeping brooms over ice to play a glorified game of shuffleboard, a retirement-home based sport) then you’re missing out on something truly great. The strategy, emotions, and intensity involved make it truly a prime-time event (or at least prime-time when the Olympics are on). 

-4^th, Speed Skating (at least the shorter distance races) are awesome. It is high-paced, exciting, and truly intense as literally one slip-up can cost even the greatest favorite in the race an entire 4 years of training. Also, Americans are pretty good in these events so its always fun to watch the US kick some other countries’ asses every now and then. Speed Skating is like the Winter version of Swimming events.

-5^th and finally, I’ll list some of the other major events I’m looking forward to:

-Bode Miller skiing like a drunken madman in the Men’s Downhill

-The Luge and Bobsled events (Go Team Jamaica)

-Moguls events

-Biathlon (Cross country skiing combined with circuit-stations where the skiers stop to shoot at targets down range) where the competitors often have their running noses leaving frozen mucous down the side of their faces-pretty epic

-Shaun White trying to win a third-straight gold medal in the Men’s Halfpipe

Today will be better than yesterday.