2006 Turin Winter Olympics Blog

In early training runs this week, Daron Rahlves bested World Cup downhill champion Michael Walchhofer by more than a full second. This puts Rahlves in an excellent position to win Olympic Gold. Bode Miller, the reigning downhill world champion, finished 16th, 2.75 seconds back.

There’s a cute article that contains the ABC’s of the Turin Olympics. It was a quick easy read, and I even learned something.

The ANSA news agency has just reported that Stefania Belmondo, Italy’s most decorated winter Olympian, will light the cauldron at the opening ceremony of the Turin Olympics tonight. Belmondo, who won 10 cross-country medals in her career including golds in 2002 and 1992, beat out fellow favourite skiing legend Alberto Tomba for the honour.

Of course when you take into consideration the time difference, this was kept secret up to the last minute.

Just added a page listing websites and blogs that are covering the Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy. So if you are looking for more winter olympic information check out our new Winter Olympics Websites page.

If there are links we missed, please leave them in the comments.

In case you just can’t wait to see for yourself— or in case you have to miss the opening night ceremony tonight, here is a taste of the Turin Olympics Opening Ceremony.

Things to watch for:

A Ferrari
Fireworks
Rollerbladers with flames shooting out behind them
Kenya’s one-member team
Yoko Ono
Peter Gabriel
Pavarotti

Historic moment:

All women carrying the Olympic flag (The eight women were Oscar-winning actress Sophia Loren, Chilean writer and activist Isabel Allende and Wangari Maathai Kenya, the winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace prize for her environmental work to promote peace, American actress Susan Sarandon, and three Olympic medal winners. They were Nawal El Moutawakel of Morocco, Manuela Di Centa of Italy, and Maria Mutola of Mozambique. The eighth was Cambodian human rights activist Somaly Mam.)
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Germany brought home the first gold in the 2006 Turin Olympics. Michael Greis managed to cross the finish line before Norway’s Ole Einar Bjoerndalen, clinching gold in the biathlon. Bjoerndalen finished 16 seconds behind Greis, whose time was 54 minutes, 23 seconds. Fellow Norwegian, Halvard Hanevold, took the bronze in 55:31.9.

Hey, don’t shoot the messenger! Her injuries are bothering her. She’s had bad practices. She has mentioned that she may withdraw if she’s not healthy enough. We’ll just have to watch and see. I don’t know how many days it will be before she comes to a final decision, but I’ll keep you informed.

The results are in from our last poll about predictions for U.S. gold. Which U.S. athlete did our readers think might bring home the gold? 32% percent predicted Michelle Kwan, which is ironic since she may not even be competing now. She was followed by Apolo Ohno at 28%. I voted for Chad Hedrick, and I’m already right since he won in the 5000 today.

Here are the poll results:

Michelle Kwan: 32% (447)
Bode Miller: 19% (266)
Apolo Ohno: 28% (388)
Chad Hedrick: 9% (133)
Lindsey Jacobellis: 6% (82)
Jeremy Bloom: 6% (89)

Total Votes : 1405

Today I am posting the medal count before the day’s coverage is over. I’m debating what to do in the future. So, dear readers, what do you think? Are you going to be bummed to know who has won an event before you have a chance to watch the event? Or do you want to read results here as soon as possible?

Norway leads in the total number of medals, with 2 silver and 2 bronze. The silvers came in women’s Moguls and men’s Biathlon. Norway brought home the bronze in Nordic Combined and men’s Biathlon.

Germany already leads with the number of golds, after capturing a gold in Nordic Combined and men’s Biathlon.

Canada captured gold in women’s Moguls.

The United States’ Chad Hedrick began his march towards five gold medals with a gold in the 5000 meter speedskating race.

Austria and The Netherlands both have one silver medal in and Nordic Combined and men’s 5000 m. speedskating.

France and Italy round out the medal count with one bronze each in women’s Moguls and the Men’s 5000 m. speedskating.

Okay, I must admit, I don’t fully get the new figure skating scoring system (I’m going to have to start watching the one hour show that they’re showing each evening on USA). Teams that I thought were boring, at best, are doing much better than teams that I thought did great.

Of course, I’m biased. Your hand touches down when you’re landing a jump? Minus 50 points. You fall on your rear? No medal for you. Trip on a toe pick? A one year suspension.

Dick Buttons is having a cow over the fact that none of the pair skaters know how to do a proper sit spin. Something about that makes me laugh.

Americans Rena Inoue and John Baldwin landed the first throw triple Axel in international skating. I thought they did a great job, but the end of the short program found them in sixth with 61.27 points.

The top three skating pairs going into the long program are Russia’s Tatyana Totmiyanina and Maxim Marinin, China’s Zhang Dan and Zhang Hao, and Russians Maria Petrova and Aleksei Tikhonov.

What’s on tomorrow? Look for women’s 3000m speed skating finals, men and women’s cross-country pursuit competition, men’s singles luge finals, men’s downhill finals, men’s 1500m short track speed skating final, K95 ski jumping final, men’s halfpipe snowboarding finals (my kids are so looking forward to seeing the Flying Tomato), women’s 3000m short track relay and 500m, and award ceremonies. You can also see women’s ice hockey (Canada vs. Russia and USA vs. Germany).

I mentioned this briefly in a couple of different places yesterday, but I really thought it deserved more coverage, since he is a Texas boy. He received a ton of coverage last night on our local television stations. If you saw the coverage, you know that yesterday was the anniversary of his grandmother, whom he was very close to, passing away, so he considered it a very special time to win.

I don’t know if you caught it, but at the very end of the NBC broadcast (well, before they started broadcasting again an hour later), they mentioned two fortune cookies that Chad Hedrick had gotten recently. Apparently, he’s a bit superstitious (I guess that’s why he wrote his deceased grandmother’s name on his skate yesterday), and he keeps his fortunes. The two fortunes that he had kept were “Soon You will be sitting on top of the world” and “Your Golden Oppurtunity is coming very soon”.

Way to go Chad!

Citing stiffness in her groin injury, Michelle Kwan withdrew from the Olympics earlier today. The team doctor recommended the withdrawal, as her injury had worsened.

Emily Hughes (younger sister of gold medal figure skater Sarah Hughes) has already been placed on the team. I thought alternates usually travelled with the team, but apparently not, since Hughes is snowed in in New York, due to heavy blizzards.

Michelle Kwan will leave Turin to avoid being a distraction.

I will be posting news as soon as I know it, but I will post SPOILER in the title of anything that will ruin the surprise for anyone who wants to wait.

Waah! I’m saddened to report that American Daron Rahlves finished WAY out of medal contention. Bode Miller also failed to medal, although this event isn’t really the sport where he excells. So, who did win?

Surprisingly, a skier from France. This was really one of those out of left field Olympic moments. Antoine Deneriaz, 29, has not won a World Cup race in more than two years. Deneriaz has won three World Cup races but had never done better than eighth in a world championships or Olympic Games.

Austrian Fritz Strobl , who had hoped to become the first Olympic downhill champion to successfully defend his title, told reporters “This means that the Olympic law holds true—the law that the guy who wins the Olympics is always someone unexpected”.

Here are the rest of the results from the downhill:

Silver Michael Walchhofer Austria
Bronze Bruno Kernen Switzerland