The Waaahhh!-nter Olympics (WAS Sarah Hughes - from my home town!)

[moongirlk]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Kathryn" <kcawte at k...> wrote:
> To be fair to the Russians not all their complaints are totally out 
of order. <snip explanation of relay issue>

I agree with you.  They have some legitimate complaints, and if 
they'd dealt with them with some dignity, decorum, or even just a 
touch of maturity, I'd care.  Especially with the cross-country 
skier, who legitimately might have done nothing wrong (I understand 
the elevated hemoglobin levels can occur naturally sometimes).  But 
when they threaten to take their ball and stomp off home, hurting 
their own athletes more than anyone else, I just can't be bothered 
with them.  

> I bet the hockey team are pleased though, hang on our skaters and 
skiers missed out on gold, so you're not going to let us try and win 
one? Piss off a group of guys with body armour and big sticks, not 
the best plan!

Hee!

Jenny from Ravenclaw said:

>Did anyone else watch the figure skating last night? While I was 
>really rooting for Sasha Cohen (I think she has more talent than any 
>of them), I was pleased that Sarah Hughes won the Gold.

Cohen is really talented, and I think she's going to push all the 
other skaters to their limits, but I don't enjoy watching her as much 
as I do Sarah Hughes.  The best way I can describe it is that Cohen 
skates with precision and determination, but Hughes skates with joy.  
I think the results were just right this time, and Hughes was so 
sweet about it all!

Cindy said:
>There definitely is something weird about the scoring system, 
>though. Let's say Slutskaya had been a disaster and landed no 
>triples at all (or suffered an injury halfway through her program). 
>Assume everyone else skates exactly the same way. Why on earth 
>should that mean that Kwan gets the gold and Hughes gets silver? Why 
>don't they just add the points in the short and the points in the 
>long, weight them in some reasonable way, and declare a winner, 
>regardless of who beats whom in the long program? I don't get it.  
>Anyway, it was the correct result, without a doubt, thank goodness. 
>Sarah Hughes is so humble and seems so nice.

All I can say is "ditto".  When they announced Slutskaya's scores and 
showed Hughes I was on the phone with my mom, and I kept saying -
 "Does that mean she won?  Are you sure she won??"  It shouldn't be 
that hard to figure out who won.  Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll 
get rid of the weird ordinal portion of the scoring when they revamp 
the judging. I totally agree about Sarah Hughes.  She's so normal and 
happy and I'm thrilled for her.

>Oh, and Jennifer Robinson had the best skating dress by a country 
>mile. All white, no sequins. Beautiful! Maybe Kwan and Slutskaya 
>would have hit their jumps had they not been weighed down by 5 
>pounds of sequins and other hardware. Sarah gets second place in the 
>lovely dress competition, Cohen and Kwan tie for third, and 
>Slutskaya . . . ahem.

Agreed.  The women's finals were much more consistant with our taste 
rules than the ice dancers, but there was still way too much flesh-
tone netting and rather a lot of random sparkly stuff.

Terry said:

>People really need to learn to take a loss when they get it, and use 
>it to decide what they could do better in the future, and if a 
>ruling does need to be contested, it ought to be done in a sensible, 
>calm, fair fashion. Threatening one's opponents or bringing up a 
>lawsuit isn't the way to win friends and influence people.  If 
>anything, it's a very good way to alienate people who might, having 
>heard both sides of a situation, have been willing to take a second 
>look.

Exactly.  If I knew where to send it, I'd forward this along to a 
couple of people!

kimberly
looking forward to the exhibitions where everyone can let loose and 
have a good time.