The olympics

So I haven't watched the olympics in years. I think the fever first really hit me in middle school with Mary Lou Retton. But sometime in college, I just stopped watching.

Well, tonight, I am hooked again. The women's snowboarding team totally got me hooked- Gretchen Bleiler and Hannah Teter are super cool. I got such a kick out of watching this sport where the women's physical shape aren't on display (snowboarding gear is super baggy and androgynous) and the commentators were saying things like " oh, she is really pushing the boundaries of snowboarding. And here, there really is no difference between the men's and the women's competition" or " she is doing something quite a few men wouldn't even try". I love that these females are really doing some hard core stuff and getting recognized for it.

Then on to the pairs figure skating. The commentators there were absolutely obnoxious. They kept trash talking the Russian team. The awesome thing about that competition is that the two major winners (the gold and silver place pairs) had to overcome some major difficulty for this competition. The Russian pair, who won the gold, had a major fall two years back, where in the female member fell unconscious on the rink and suffered a major concussion. So they had to overcome some confidence issues even after she got better. The Chinese pair- well, theirs was during the competition. The female didn't land properly after a throw- a very technically difficult throw, one that no other pair had ever attempted. It was some like a quadruple salchow? In any case, she landed badly, went down on her left leg in a way that bent her knee out. Her partner helped her off the ice because she was hurting so bad. She was wiping the tears from her face when she told the coach she wanted to finish her program. And finish they did. They nailed every jump, turn, throw, spin and fancy footstep in the rest of their program. They definitely deserved the medal!

I have Olympics fever now.
Whoo hoo!!!!