2006 Turin Winter Olympics Blog

Kim Lawler writes:

How many pins will be issued for trading/sale by the U.S. Olympic Committee and where can we get them? (sneaky way to stump you and find out where to get Women’s hockey pins).

If you solve that….How many total Official 2006 Olympic pins are the Olympic Committee and other countries planning to sell? (official pins, not counting “sponsor” pins)

Thanks.KL

Well, Kim, this really is a trick question. For one thing, new pins are often issued during the Olympics. For example, in 2002 a pin commemorating the silver medals of the ski team was issued. Obviously, they didn’t create that one ahead of time.

Also, I need a bit of a clarification. Are you only interested in USOC pins, or all US pins?

So far, the official Olympic team store only has three pins available, including a one year to go pin.

I’ve also found a couple of sites that have extensive lists of pins (sponsor, mascots, etc.). One has the “official” USOC collection, and it has seven in it— no women’s hockey, I’m sorry to say, although they do have a generic hockey pin on another page.

I’m going to continue to research this once I receive clarification, and I’ll be back with an answer or an admission of defeat. Check the comment section for updates.

In the meantime, there’s a great site that explains about all the different types of pins available. It makes for some fun reading.

You can now take our second weekly Winter Olympics Trivia Quiz.

We hope you enjoy it! Be sure to let us know how you did or anything that you found particularly interesting.

Click here and test your knowledge of the Winter Olympics.

So, I have a confession to make. I really like reality television. In fact, it makes up a large percentage of the television I watch. So, last week I was watching The Learning Channel (probably Trading Spaces or What Not To Wear— I’m not really sure which) when I saw a preview for a new show— Ice Diaries. It follows the stories of four Olympic hopeful figure skaters- Alissa Czisny, Danielle Kahle, Beatrisa Liang, and Sandy Rucker.

Now, Sandy Rucker is on Team B for the U.S. Figure Skating Team. (Team A consists of Sasha Cohen and Michelle Kwan.) She was Junior National Champion last year, but she’s been battling a back injury. On the show, she seems tired and burned out. But she’s the most experienced and well-known of the four and therefore, you would think, a favorite to make the 2006 Olympic team. However, she is not listed to skate at Nationals, so I don’t know if that means she is injured and not planning to compete or if she didn’t make Nationals.

The other three are from Team C. Of the three, Alissa Czisny seems the most driven. Danielle Kahle is a doll and the typical girl next door. I have a soft spot in my heart for her. Her Mom is a single mother and has five children. Since I have five children, I can identitify. Beatrisa (or Bebe, as she’s known) is the one that I feel like I know the least about.

From checking the U.S. Figure Skating site, I know that Bebe and Alissa competed in Skate America after Sasha Cohen and Michelle Kwan withdrew with injuries. I’m horrible about waiting for results of shows, so quit reading if you don’t like spoilers: Alissa finished 2nd and Bebe finished 4th. Alissa went on to skate at Skate Canada and finished first. Just from watching the show, I thought she was the most driven and, therefore, the most likely of the four to end up at the winter Olympics with a medal hanging around her neck.

We’ll soon know who will be competing, as the U.S. Nationals started yesterday. You can watch coverage on ESPN starting later this week. The Senior Ladies short program is on Thursday, followed on Friday by the long program. The Senior Men compete at the end of the week, as well. So, we should know the Olympic team by next weekend.

Mark Bridgwater was planning to spend next month in Italy, competing in the 2006 Turin Olympics. Instead, he’ll be recovering from knee reconstruction surgery after an injury to his anterior cruciate ligament on the slopes of Hunter Mountain, New York, last week ended his Olympic dreams.

In other skiing news, Benjamin Raich, of Austria, won a World Cup giant slalom, the last before next month’s Olympics, overtaking Daron Rahlves atop the overall standings. This was Raich’s second straight giant slalom win.

Bode Miller, who is the overall champion, finished 14th.

The U.S. Olympic team will be announced Jan. 25. BodeMiller, Daron Rahlves and Erik Schlopy have qualified for the giant slalom squad. The last spot will be filled by Ted Ligety or James Cochran.

Canadian Duff Gibson will represent Canada in the Olympics for the second time when he competes in the skeleton in Turin in February. He also represented Canada in the skeleton in the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. But when he’s not sliding headfirst down an icy mountain, he’s fighting fires. You see, Duff Gibson is a firefighter.

He’s also a very determined man. Gibson went through dozens of sports before settling on skeleton. His goal was always to represent his country in the Olympics.

In the 2002 Olympics, he came in 10th. This was not enough for him. He really wants a medal. So, next month he’ll be back in Turin, Italy, sliding down a hill on a small sled. You can read more about Duff here.

We wrote earlier about the Ethiopian ski team, now there’s an attempt to qualify someone for the Ghana ski team. Time is getting short to qualify, and team Ghana (Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong) is low on funds. If you’d like to read more about Kwame and support his cause, visit his site at http://ghanaskiteam.com/index.htm

If you have any ideas about how to help Kwame, please leave them in the comments section.

Shaun Palmer, 37, is one qualifying event away from completing his comeback to Olympic sports. After six years away from snowboarding, Palmer started his comeback in December. Now, barring any major mistakes, he looks like a lock for the third place on the Olympic team for snowboardcross.

Palmer had fallen into drug use that put him in a coma last year. Can he come back from that near-fatal episode to medal in Turin? Only time will tell, but what a story that would be.

Samsung Corporation ran a contest honoring people who have helped others by using their cell phone. The winner received a trip to Italy and a chance to carry the torch in the 2006 Olympic relay. So, who won? There were 15 winners. Here are a couple of their stories:

Nils Magnuson won because of a heroic, selfless act that saved the life of a woman in the mountains outside of Los Angeles. While mountain biking, Mr. Magnuson came across a woman under attack by a mountain lion. He distracted the lion and called local authorities, who arrived just in time to save the woman’s life. Nils was selected to represent the many people who act heroically everyday using their mobile phones to help strangers, but usually go unrecognized. For his bravery, Mr. Magnuson will get to be a part of Olympics history.

Mike Corner heard an amber alert on the radio while driving down Interstate-80 in Pennsylvania. The alert was for a missing young girl who had been kidnapped by her father, who had just murdered his wife. He spotted the car and the little girl who had been kidnapped. He followed the car for about 30 miles while he was talking on a cell phone with the State Police. As a result of the call, the little girl was found safely.

We congratulate the heroes and Samsung for allowing them to be a part of Olympic tradition.

Turin will be the first Olympics with the new scoring system generated after the last Olympics figure skating fiasco. I’ve been reading articles that mention the new scoring system, but I finally read an article that actually explains what it consists of. It seems like there are pros and cons to the new system. A newer, less well-known skater may have more of a chance— that seems to be a pro to me. On the con side, in my opinion, the judges’ scores are now anonymous. You’ll no longer know if it’s that pesky Russian judge (or French, or German, or whatever) causing your favorite person grief. It will just be an anonymously generated score.

The U.S. post office unveiled the 2006 Olympic stamp today in a ceremony in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The stamp, which features a downhill skier running a slalom course, will be available for the first time during the ceremony and at local Colorado Springs post offices.

The rest of the nation will have to wait until Thursday to get one. The cost of the stamp is 39 cents. Artist John Mattos came up with the design.

It’s interesting to me that downhill skiing was the sport of choice. I wonder if that reflects that skiing is the most popular sport. Our own scientifically invalid poll on this site, showed that figure skating was an overwhelming favorite. In an upcoming blog, I will explore the history of U.S. Olympic stamps.

Good news, Olympics fans! If you want to watch the games, you’ll have 40 more hours to watch than at the Salt Lake City games. There will be 416 hours of coverage, about 200 hours of that live. I had to laugh when I saw the coverage would average 24.5 hours per day (NBC hasn’t actually figured out a way to extend the day in order to sell extra advertising. That’s over all of the NBC Universal networks—NBC, USA, MSNBC, CNBC, NBC HD and Universal HD). That would make a great headline. Olympics gets 24 hour day extended— extra half hour during Turin Olympics.

We’ll be covering every single second of the 416 hours of coverage! Okay, maybe not every single second. I mean, we do have lives, other than this blog. But we’ll certainly try to bring you the highlights, the lowlights, and the “we can’t believe that happened” moments.

U.S. skeleton coach Tim Nardiello lost an appeal Tuesday that would have allowed him to join his Olympics-bound team at a World Cup competition this weekend in Germany. Nardiello, who has been on paid administrative leave since Dec. 31 after two sexual-harassment complaints were made against him, is expected to continue appealing in hopes of coaching the U.S. team at the Winter Olympics next month in Turin, Italy. The U.S. Olympic Committee will have the final say on whether Nardiello joins the team.

In other news, Zach Lund, America’s best hope for a medal in skeleton, has been suspended by the International Bobsleigh and Tobogganing Federation (FIBT) after he tested positive for an anti-baldness drug, which may mask performance-enhancing drugs, at a World Cup event last month.

Presumably, he just has problems with male-pattern baldness. Poor guy, not only does he have to face being thrown out of the sport he loves, but he also has to have his private concern over hair loss paraded in front of the world.

Yes, sports fans, you read correctly. Now, instead of fantasy basketball or football, you can participate in fantasy skating teams. Pick your favorites to win U.S. Championships, European Championships, ISU Four Continents Championships, Olympic Winter Games and World Championships. You can sign up, choose your teams, or simply read more about it at the U.S. Figure Skating site.

DHL is sponsoring the 2006 Olympic Spirit Awards for the Olympics and Paralympics. You can go to their site and vote each day. While you’re there, you can also register to win their “Be an Olympian for a Day” sweepstakes. The winner wins a trip to Colorado Springs to see the Olympians train. If you win, maybe you can be a guest blogger and let the rest of us know what it’s like to be an Olympian for a day.

You can read more about the Olympic Spirit Awards here.

For the first time since it became an Olympic sport in 2002, the freestyle skiing events will take place at night during the Turin Olympics. When I read that, I thought, “Are they insane? How could you do that kind of skiing under glaring artificial lights?” But, apparently, the skiers think it’s fine. Some of them actually prefer it. It seems that it creates fewer shadows and, therefore, in many ways is easier for them to ski under than sunlight. The exception is when the lights are turned up too bright for television coverage. Hopefully, NBC will get that right and not call for overlighting at the Olympics.