Airing some thoughts on the 2010 Winter Games
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
The Alberta Clipper is about to bring its big chill to Chicago, and the Canadian air leads to thoughts of the Great White North (Eh?), which leads to thoughts of the next Winter Olympics, which are in Vancouver, even if that city’s climate usually is more temperate than our soon-to-be frozen tundra.
Which is a long-winded way of saying it’s a good time to check in on the winter sports scene.
Ten things I know, and you should, 13 months before the 2010 opening ceremony:
1. Rarely has the singles competition at a U.S. figure skating championship been as hard to handicap as it is at the 2009 event in Cleveland later this month. There are three
legitimate contenders for the men’s title (Evan Lysacek, Johnny Weir, Jeremy Abbott), with Stephen Carriere a longshot, and maybe five for the women’s (Mirai Nagasu, Caroline Zhang, Rachael Flatt, Ashley Wagner, Alissa Czisny). My picks? Weir and Zhang. But I wouldn’t want to bet on it.
2. You know figure skating has an injury problem when even ice dancers are dropping like flies. World champions Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder of France will miss the upcoming European Championships because she needs surgery after injuring her shoulder at last month’s Grand Prix final. Reigning Olympic silver medalists Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto of the U.S. dropped out of the Grand Prix event because of his bad back. Then, this afternoon, U.S. figure skating announced Agosto’s injury would force the five-time national champions to skip the U.S. championships.
3. Anticipation was high for the U.S. ski team after Lindsey Vonn and Bode Miller brought the World Cup alpine overall titles back to the United States (and Ted Ligety won the giant slalom title) last season. But highlights have been few so far this season. Miller is as maddeningly inconsistent as ever, making the podium in just two of 15 starts, failing to finish six races and getting disqualified in his last for an equipment violation. Vonn started fast, winning two of the first five races, but has struggled of late, with DNFs in four of her last six. Ligety has two podium finishes in giant slalom but only two other top-10s. Maybe the team will get hot at the right time: the World Alpine Championships in early February.
4. U.S. Nordic combined skiers already are hot. Bill Demong has a first and two seconds on the World Cup this season. Todd Lodwick finished second in his first two races after coming back from a two-year retirement. But the nagging truth is no U.S. skier ever has won an Olympic medal in the sport. Will that end next year?
5. Shani Davis won his first national sprint speedskating title last month. Chad Hedrick won his first all-around title, ending Davis’ six-year reign. The two were embittered rivals at the 2006 Olympics, but their relationship now seems purely that of highly competitive rivals.
6. Chicago’s Davis came away from the last Olympics with a gold medal, a silver medal and a lot of baggage weighing on his image. He hopes to shed it at the 2010 Games. ‘It’s important for me,’’ Davis recently told Gary D’Amato of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. ‘At the end of the day, people remember you by your Olympic performances. This is my third Olympics. I really want to make a long-lasting good impression. You only live life once, and I don’t want to be remembered as a guy that someone really didn’t get a chance to know. I want to make sure that people understand me and know who I am, not only what I can do on the ice but as a person.’’
7. This year’s ski jumping sensation is not an anorexic kid, like the sport’s most recent revelations, but veteran Wolfgang Loitzl of Austria. Loitzl, 29 next week, had never won a World Cup individual event until 2009, when he reeled off three straight victories for the overall title in the sport’s most prestigious annual event, the Four Hills Tournament in Germany and Austria.
8. No need to have a Zamboni for the women’s event at the 2009 world figure skating championships in Los Angeles. Based on a statistical analysis by former figure skating judge Jack Curtis, the skaters likely will clean the ice with their bodies. According to Curtis, 93% of the women’s programs at the 2007 and 2008 worlds had a botched jump.
9. Setting the Bar(ra) lower: Olympics guru Luciano Barra of Italy, a consultant for the Chicago 2016 bid who has been at 16 Winter and Summer Games, sees a big drop in U.S. medals at the next Winter Olympics. In his first projection of 2010 results, Barra gives the U.S. 16 medals, as compared with 25 in 2006. Crystal-ball gazing may be only a hobby for Barra, but he came within nine medals of the U.S. total at the Beijing Summer Games (he had 101; the U.S. won 110) despite being too optimistic about Team USA’s gold haul (he projected 49; the U.S. won 36). Barra will revise the 2010 projections after the results of several 2009 world championships are in.
10. The most impressive streak in sports continues: Going into this weekend’s action, German women have won 85 straight World Cup luge events. Their last loss was Nov. 29, 1997. Yes, there aren’t that many countries in the sport, but 12 years?
-- Philip Hersh
