Best US XC results at Olys? Kikkan...and Hakkinen's 10th & 13th!
 

Offhand it seems to me that the biathlete Hakkinen did the best for the
US at the Oly's this time with a 10th and 13th. But of course I never
heard of him til today.

I noticed that US skiers were never mentioned or pictured in the two
times I watched XC coverage of 3 events on NBC. Even if they weren't
doing so hot they should've been mentioned, profiled, etc. Sheesh.

--JP

In article .com,
wrote:

Offhand it seems to me that the biathlete Hakkinen did the best for the
US at the Oly's this time with a 10th and 13th. But of course I never
heard of him til today.

According to some online accounts, in his first race Hakkinen had a
split bullet (it hit the target glancingly but did not knock it down);
had that target fallen, he would have been on the podium.

I noticed that US skiers were never mentioned or pictured in the two
times I watched XC coverage of 3 events on NBC. Even if they weren't
doing so hot they should've been mentioned, profiled, etc. Sheesh.

Be careful what you wish for -- you might get it. In coverage of
Olympic gymnastics years ago, the networks routinely ignored many of the
world's best gymnasts and concentrated instead on the Americans, even
when the latter were falling off the apparatus, while Akinori Nakayama
was performing his spectacular, world-beating high bar routine or
Miroslav Cerar was on pommel horse. On the whole, I would suggest that
the networks' recent tendency to focus upon the real contenders is an
improvement, particularly when the duration of the coverage of "minor"
sports like gymnastics and Nordic skiing is pretty limited.

--JP

Well, I'd like to see how our skiers look in comparison regardless of
whether that's good or bad. I just don't know. The public doesn't know.
I think it would be helpful either way. --JP

The Olympic camera work was an international feed (note the break ups
on the screen the first couple days). Thus the best athletes got the
camera time. If NBC did the camera work you can be sure that
American's would have been front and center, from a ratings standpoint,
if nothing else. On a couple of occasions the US announcers apologized
for the lack of US camera time.

My question is, what happened to the 50K XC coverage on the last day
that was listed in all the papers? NBC seems to have just dropped that
and went with an overview of the games.

i thought the announcers showed excitement and made it understandable
to neo-phytes.
Robbin's did screw up twice.
He said the Italian leader in the last leg of the relay hardly looked
like his was pumping, when he was obviously pushing it to the max
AND he totally flubbed
Justin Wadsworth's name when discussing Beckie Scott,
but i think it was just a brain-fart, still, you'd think.well, forget
it. I'm not Robbin's age, so maybe i can't empathize.

Hakkinen had the second fastest ski time in one of the races, which
was impressive, and his shooting was decent.

Interesting comments from Len Johnson at the Jenex site
http://www.jenex.com/news/index.html

Most interesting parts are comments/comparison to Chinese team and US
Biathlon -- see below:

JT

"The Chinese Program is working, the US 2005 & 2006 Program is not:
The Chinese ski program is relatively new, but the results are coming
at a rapid pace. The new program director was previously in charge of
the Swedish ski team. Since skiing has no real history in China, they
picked athletes based on aerobic and general athletic ability and sent
them to Scandinavia to learn how to ski. In the 10 K race today, one
Chinese finished 18th in a time of 29'34". The best American was
Wagner with a time of 31'41". That's over two minutes faster than the
best American in a 10 K race. Wagner lost over 12 seconds per
kilometer to the Chinese woman and the rest off the US skiers a lot
more."
"The fifth fastest ski time in the 20 K Biathlon was a Chinese. When
we see how fast Jay Hakkinen skis, compared to the men on the US ski
Team, we know something is wrong. Jay, who has been living in Germany,
has his own training program. How can skiers as talented as Kris
Freeman, Andrew Johnson and Carl Swenson be so far back in the two
races they have entered to date this month. Let's hope that in the
race on Friday they break out and show that they can ski. They are
like a totally different team from the results at Val Di Fiemme in
2003."

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something interesting about Chinese sports training, in general, from
what i've read, is that they place a tremendous amount of emphasis on
training the brain, on mental discipline.
do you think our racers are mentally tough enough? (Yes,i realise
that's a pretty loaded question.) I would think in biathlon having
focus and concentration like a laser beam would help a little bit.

It was on at 7-8pm Sunday, with a special in between. The torrent is up
at denness.com, but so far the feed has been spotty.

Gene

"Ralph Scott" wrote:

The Olympic camera work was an international feed (note the break ups
on the screen the first couple days). Thus the best athletes got the
camera time. If NBC did the camera work you can be sure that
American's would have been front and center, from a ratings
standpoint, if nothing else. On a couple of occasions the US
announcers apologized for the lack of US camera time.

My question is, what happened to the 50K XC coverage on the last day
that was listed in all the papers? NBC seems to have just dropped
that and went with an overview of the games.

rocket science is next...

Anybody helping with the 50k mens and the biathlon mass start torrents?
Over the past 36 hrs it looks like there have been some successful
downloads (completed) but I've gotten absolutely nowhere. A few mg on
the first and zip on the biathlons.

Gene

Gene Goldenfeld wrote:

It was on at 7-8pm Sunday, with a special in between. The torrent is
up at denness.com, but so far the feed has been spotty.

Gene

"Ralph Scott" wrote:

The Olympic camera work was an international feed (note the break
ups on the screen the first couple days). Thus the best athletes
got the camera time. If NBC did the camera work you can be sure
that American's would have been front and center, from a ratings
standpoint, if nothing else. On a couple of occasions the US
announcers apologized for the lack of US camera time.

My question is, what happened to the 50K XC coverage on the last day
that was listed in all the papers? NBC seems to have just dropped
that and went with an overview of the games.