2006 Winter Olympics

[Berzerker]

Okay, I'm not much into the Olympics except in sports that dont need judges to rate participants and I love watching the downhill. So, being from the USA and not knowing who we have going for us, who should we look out for and in what events?

Here's a chance for the Euros to brag all about their athletes...

What stars will be representing your country? I'd like a little context when watching foreigners dominate the skiing events.

[Asher]

Team Canada -- a who's who of the NHL.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Bode Miller - USA and Daron Rahlves - USA, both could win the downhill, and any of the other 4 skiing events.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Olympics
NBC's coverage

NBC is ultra-jingoistic (not like it'd be any better if Fox had it, though). I just want to see the best atheletes, I don't care if they are American and are going to "bring home the gold". I don't care if you think this is "America's best team ever". Gah!

[Arrian]

Olympics
NBC's coverage

NBC is ultra-jingoistic (not like it'd be any better if Fox had it, though). I just want to see the best atheletes, I don't care if they are American and are going to "bring home the gold". I don't care if you think this is "America's best team ever". Gah!

QFT.

The networks are still in cold war mode in their Olympics coverage. It really is irritating.

-Arrian

[OneFootInTheGrave]

I just have one thing to say

JANICAAAAAAA

Here is to hoping she wins something (or a lot)...

she could in theory be the first one ever to win 5 out of 5 alpine events, but this kind of is the first time it doesn't seem impossible, so if anyone could do it ever than it's her now.

She won every discipline this season, and just showed that she can rule if she really goes for it, last slalom before the Olympics, 1.45 sec faster in second run than anyone else enough for 1.33 sec win... Last time she was not doing downhill but she got 3+1... now she skis every discipline, and she won in every one of them this season.

Now the greatest threat is Anja Paerson, who is almost as good this season (did not finish quite a few runs though, but is still close second in world cup) She won in 4 out of 5 disciplines this season, she could in theory win it all too . The one combination this season went to Janica (of course) ... and well it will be interesting.

I guess it is great that there are two skies with so much potential out there, as otherwise it could be boring if there was just one of them as they are both really superb (sort of like Shumacher during his F1 reign) ... but this way... huh... will be interesting

Not to diss our Austiran fellows, but their girls are not all rounders at the moment, a few slalom/giant slalom specialists, and a few speed events specialists.

For men, Rocca in Slalom, Herminator, Walchofer the other three disciplines, and Raich or Miller with a chance everywhere. Ok perhaps Raich not in downhill ... Perhaps Aamodt gets his last medal in Turin though. I wish Ivica Kostelic could so something in slalom, but he seemed to be totally out of form this seasion after injury.

[Gangerolf]

Remember this name: Marit Bjørgen (cross country). She could get 4 gold medals, inshallah

[Pekka]

Man, no one cares about cross country, that's like the most boring sport of ALL TIME. It's like the salamimarathon, first 5 minutes, quite OK, the last 309 hours, who cares!

Asher, oh your evil Canadian teams are keeping our players back! It's quite obvious the teams won't let their players to play in our team, first Kipper then Lehtonen. They have both semi confirmed it was the team decision, not their personal ones. In so many words, it's super obvious. Of course they can do that though, and they need to look out for themselves, but would we see the same for team Canada? No we wouldn't!

S. Kapanen, same thing. Flyers won't let him play. He could, but they won't let him basically. We only have two legit injuries and instead we're losing 6 players for **** like this.

So we have a bad team now going in, and now Pitkänen is having 'problems', wtf?!

This be our second team going in now, since we have soon lost 3rd of the players. And we all know why many of them can't come, it's not that they are THAT badly injured.

Crap!

Oh well.

We will dominate half pipe (snowboarding), ski jump, moguls, hopefully skiing gives us at least one, but hopefully two medals, and some other prospects also. We'll see!

[KrazyHorse]

There's only one medal that matters in the Olympics. Everything else is a sideshow.

[Pekka]

Exactly. Half Pipe.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
There's only one medal that matters in the Olympics. Everything else is a sideshow.

the curling medal

Curlers in Canada
872,000 people play curling in Canada
- 487,000 (56%) are regular curlers (10 or more times per year)
- 128,000 (15%) are occasional curlers (3-9 times per year)
- 257,000 (29%) are socialcurlers (once or twice)

[Imran Siddiqui]

Curling

[Odin]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
There's only one medal that matters in the Olympics. Everything else is a sideshow.

Hockey:

USA! USA! USA!

[Kassiopeia]

Originally posted by Pekka
We will dominate half pipe (snowboarding), ski jump, moguls, hopefully skiing gives us at least one, but hopefully two medals, and some other prospects also. We'll see!

And Hannu Manninen is going to utterly pwn Nordic combined.

[Gangerolf]

Here's hoping Norway is best nation again (As in the most gold medals and/or highest medal count, both are OK).

Actually, I'll go as far as saying I think we are going to get 15 gold medals.