Winter Olympics

I heard someone last week say that long before there were "reality TV" shows, there was the Olympics on TV. Even if you are not a sports fan, just watch the lead in stories that NBC runs before any sporting event. If you are like me, you watch a heartfelt story about some girl from a small town in Iowa who was raised by gophers and overcame bad eating habits and now is part of the "greatest downhill doubles curling luge team ever. "

A few minutes ago, Mandi and I finished eating chinese food and sat down to watch the Games from Turino, Italy. Next up was the "pairs short program" in figure skating (I don't know much about it, but I was glad that the word short was in it so we could get to the really technical events...like doubles luge). Mandi asked me, "aren't you a big figure skating fan." As I gave her the courtesy laugh for the Saturday night attempt at sarcasm, I saw that she wasn't kidding and was immediately in a panic that she might have said something like this to people that we know (I do watch SOME chick flicks, but even I draw the line).

Anyway, the first pair that was up was the American team. Before they began, they did this huge buildup of something that the team was going to attempt called a "throw triple axle" in which the guy tosses the girl and she spins (I'm guessing 3 times) in the air before she lands. Part of the buildup was a video of them crashing several times in practice and then telling us that they hit this thing about 20% of the time. That works ok in baseball, but crap, not exactly the A-game that you want to bring to the Olympics.

Needless to say, I had to stay in it just to see if they could pull this thing off (constantly reminding myself that it is the "short program"). So about a minute into this thing, here it comes...

They go into it...SCORE...huge landing...great form...so much grace...

I'm standing up...arms in the air...screaming "they did it"...

crap...I'm cheering out loud for figure skating...

Tomorrow night I am buying a case of beer and painting my body red/white/blue for the long program...

brad