Hot Pants, Olympic Style

Norway boys, and the UK girls, show us how its done.

The Norwegian Men's Curling Team (above) stood out from the crowd with their choice of harlequin pants:

"My Second is a real flashy dresser and he is trying to convert the rest of the team," Ulsrud, the team captain, said of the pattern."

Successfully, it seems. (btw, those blue, grey, white & red diamond golf pants are from a U.S. co called 'Loudmouth')


So it was intentional, wasn't it?...


Unlike this poor British bobsled babe:




Lucky Gillian Cooke was wearing a thong, since her bottom has been seen 'round the world.

"It has certainly raised the profile of our sport." she sportingly said. "I knew straight away it had split but I had to carry on otherwise we would have forfeited the race and I wasn't prepared to do that. My bum was freezing by the time we got to the end of the run, though!"

Ironically, the "wardrobe malfunction" occurred while the women's bobsleigh team were testing high performance body suits.

Now they know which one works for publicity.

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OPEN-ing shot

The U.S. Open started this week, the day after the Olympics ended. And I found out that's why Andy Roddick (former #1) skipped being on our Olympic team... he wanted to be rested for the Open. I suppose the wish for a medal was outweighed by prize money, since even the worst Open player gets $3000 for qualifying. But check this:

U.S. Open Prize Money (2007)

Singles (Men's or Women's brackets)
Winner gets $1,400,000, 2nd place gets $700,000

Doubles (Men's, or Women's brackets)
Winners each get $200,000 , 2nd place $100,000 each.

Mixed Doubles (Teams of 1 male/1 female)
Winners each get $75,000, 2nd place, $35,000 each

Wow, so you & a partner can play your hearts out and win the Mixed Doubles title, (ta-da!) and still each make le$$ than someone who came in 15th in Singles play? (U.S. Open stats)

Now we know why there are so few 'mixed' partnerships!
But how did those prizes get so uneven, anyway? Do viewers (or advertisers?) really not want to watch 'mixed' teams?

Olympic Oops

A portrait of Myra Hindley, the Moors Murderess convicted of killing children, was included in the British images in the 'London 2012' Olympics montage shown to Beijing athletes. 'Oops'

It was actually a photo of an artwork 'Myra' made out of children’s hand prints, done by artist Marcus Harvey several years ago as part of a Shock Art showing. So, is showing a picture of this the same thing as showing an actual photo of the woman herself? Since she is recognisable, I can understand why relatives of her victims would object even though it was presented as part of a piece of art. Original article from the Telegraph. (incl. 2 min video)

Truly Uneven

The Associated Press tries to explain why Liukin, who tied with He, nevertheless ended up with the silver medal:

He and Liukin both finished with 16.725. They had identical 7.7 start values (the measure of a routine's difficulty) and they each had a 9.025 for execution after the highest and lowest of the six judges' marks were tossed out. The execution mark is based on the perfect 10 scale, and the first tie-break takes the average of the four deductions that counted*. He and Liukin were still tied after that.

For the second tie-break, the three lowest deductions that counted are averaged. When that was done, He had .933 in deductions and Liukin had .966.

Got that?

Weirdly, this rule is only in the current Olympics.
Yes, its true. Had this taken place in years past, or in the Nationals, or during the World Championships then two golds would have been awarded.

Seems like the 'uneven' part of this event was in the new rules.
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eta:
*No info given re: who decided which deductions count either.

plus:
A valid rant about how this seems 'funky' to viewers. (4 min)

Medal Mettle

Just giving a bit of love to the U.S.'s bronze medalists.
The United States has over thirty bronze medals in the Beijing games, but we rarely get to see these 'third tier' athletes do their thing or collect their medals. So here's a big congrats to the folks that worked so hard to collect that hardware.

Go here to see the list of our bronze medalists:

Because Bronze is golden too...

P.S. BTW, who names a girl 'Beezie', anyway? (16 sec video)

No Slowpokes

USA women took gold, silver & bronze in sabre!

One of my old roommates was a fencer. And in her honor I pay attention every time they show women's sabre, foil, or epee matches during the Olympics. And this year I was amazed to see our USA ladies pull off a sweep, the first ever for an American team - wtg!

Interview (2 min) with our Ward (bronze) and Zagunis (gold), 2/3rds of our sweeping sabre three. *Sorry, Jacobsen (silver) wasn't there.