2006 Turin Winter Olympics Blog

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.

Want to watch the creation of the 2006 Turin Olympics figure skating team? Check out the televised championships on television this weekend.

Tonight from 10:30 p.m. to 1 a.m.* (set your Tivo) on ESPN 2, you can watch pairs and ice dance competition.

Tomorrow, from 4-6 p.m., ABC will televise the Men’s program. This will be followed from 8-11 p.m. by the Ladies program, also on ABC. This will be particularly exciting, but will it mean that the three winners are going to Turin? Or will Michelle Kwan bump one of the ladies and attend the Olympics in her stead?

If you miss those broadcasts, you can see the rebroadcast on Sunday on ESPN 2. Men’s and ladies programs can be seen from 1-2:30 p.m. Ice dancing and pairs will air from 2:30-4 p.m.

And, finally, the U.S. Championships Exhibition will air on ABC on Sunday from 4-6 p.m.

For more rebroadcast times, as well as broadcast times of other Championship events, visit the U.S. Figure Skating’s official site.

*All times Eastern time zone. Check your local listings for local air times.

The Olympics are often full of comeback stories. Over the next few blog posts, I will be telling some of the stories of Olympians who will be competing in Turin against the odds. Look for stories about a skier who will be skiing in the 2006 Olympics, thanks to tissue donation from a dead man; a curler whose personal life almost caused her to quit; a singles skater who hopes to make a comeback in pairs skating. If you know of a comeback story that we should cover, tell us about it in the commets section.

By the time this post is read, the pairs teams to compete in the Turin Olympics will already be known. One of the hopefuls is Naomi Nari Nam, along with her partner, Themistocles Leftheris.

In 1997, as an 11 year old, Nam won the novice division in ladies skating. Two years later, at her first senior nationals, she finished second to Kwan. She was expected to compete in the Salt Lake City Olympics and, possibly, to medal.

But injuries prevented her from competing in the 2001 nationals. She thought she was suffering from a stress fracture in her hip. It wasn’t a stress fracture. She had popped the hip out of its socket and tore cartilage—an injury like the one Tara Lipinski suffered.

After having the same surgery Lipinski had, Nam found herself faced with a dilemna— what to do abou skating. While she still loved skating, she was unsure whether her body could handle the rigors of singles skating anymore. So, her thoughts turned to pairs.

She has been with her partner since only June. After Wednesday’s short program, they were in third. The top two pairs teams will go to the Olympics in Turin. After this weekend, we’ll update you on whether Naomi Nari Nam and Themistocles Leftheris will be packing their bags to compete for Olympic gold.

Update— Naomi Nari Nam and Themistocles Leftheris barely placed fifth, overall. Considering they’ve only been skating together for a few months, I would say that their chances of doing well in future events is good.

Alisa Camplin is a long-shot for a medal in Turin. Freestyle aerialist Camplin, who was a gold medalist at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City four years ago, had radical knee surgery in October. Her knee was repaired with a patella tendon from a donor cadaver.

This week in Deer Valley, Utah, she will be competing in her first competition just 12 weeks after the surgery. It is fitting that she is making her comeback in Deer Valley, since that is the site of her Olympic medal performance.

Camplin has already qualified for the Turin Olympics and will perform only basic aerial tricks in her comeback. While the team doctor says that it is unlikely that she will medal in Turin, the fact that she will be competing at all is pretty remarkable.