Some of the stuff done tonight has been awesome. The ski jumper made by the people on the ice was incredible.
YUCK.. The Italian Olympic Games committee must have done their research in Pasadena,TX…that was one UGLY torch.
I think they talk about it, so they can show how they can put their political differences aside for two weeks.
The Bank of Norway opening up today. I will place a small wager on Ole Einar Bjørndalen finishing in the top 3 of the biathlon event, or as bnb would call it "Nordic Skiing event with a gun". He should be the fav to win the event, with being good allround - fast skiier, fast and good shooter. Well of course in the 20km, if you miss a few you will be way behind so the shooting is key (one minute added time every miss). The course is rumoured to be suiting him very well, so should be able to make up a miss or two on the other top guys. I figure 1.65 is decently paid for a top 3 finish - but time will tell. He is 3.00 to win the event. Another good bet I feel is in the 5000m speedskating event. Chad Hedrick (USA) is favored to win the event, but I feel his odds are low (1.90) compared to his chances. Eskil Ervik pays over twice as much (4.25) and they have been close the last few times they have done the event. Ervik also starts in the last pair and will have the benefit of knowing what time to beat. SI btw holds Ervik as the fav in the event (think it was due to slower Ice in Turin the quickest venues, but Hedrick has proven to be good on both, although maybe having more of an advantage on fast ice. In case someone else like World Record holder Sven Kramer (4.50) mingles I found one option that pairs up Hedrick (1.30) and Ervik (3.25) only and whoever finishes best of the 2 wins that bet. I feel that is a good payoff for Ervik, as I feel a payback of roughly 1.70 (Hedrick) and 2.00 (Ervik) would reflect better the quality/likelyhood of winning the matchup than the grossly underpaid (1.30) that they gave Hedrick.
As a former professional sports handicapper, I must say your knowledge on these Euro centric events is great. Are you Euro by any chance?
Everybody root for hometown hero Hendrick. He's from Spring/Klein and has a lot of friends here. He eats at Strack's a lot for you local people...when he lived here about once a week. My Dad knows him OK...even before he started ice skating and was the inline Champion. His story is pretty unreal, to go from no ice experience to dominating a sport in about 3 years is pretty great. Go Chad!!!
Yupp, Euro. boville even pointed me to a sportbook that had Ervik at 5.2 times the money so I put in a small bet there as well. Have a couple matchup bets at a few events as well, but mostly on a added spice while watching the event as I doubt I will get lucky to win it (parlayed 6 winners for a total payback of 22 - doomed to fail)
curling...hands down, favorite winter sport. i like alot of the skiing as well, olympic hockey is so much better than the NHL.
I love the Winter Olympics. I'll be watching as much as I can. Since it's not as fun to watch by yourself, I'm trying to have friends over to watch as much of it with me as possible. Of course, the ones I had last night were hyper, couldn't pay attention to the Opening Ceremonies for more than a minute, and started playing with my keyboard which is in the same room. Then one of them decides we're going to stay up all night, so I got to see most of the Opening Ceremonies again on the rebroadcast. And there were, of course, hot male athletes in abundance. As I continue to watch and remember who they are, I'll post the names here. I was going to be the bbs expert on figure skating, but I don't know - looks like a lot of other people already know a lot about it. There are some hot skaters in the men's competition, btw.
The Opening Ceremony was pretty boring but we still watched it all. I've been watching women's hockey all day. Team USA started out slow but in the 3rd period really put a beat down on the Swiss. Sweden also started out slow but played well down the stretch and beat a decent Russian team. I'm really looking forward to some of the more prime time type events. It starts in about 20 minutes I think.
I'll declare you the expert if you can please make sense of this new scoring system. I can't figure out wat the hell's a good score anymore! I'm watching pairs right now and thought the Americans did well but didn't get great scores, so I dunno.
No kidding. I'm completely lost as well and did not think that the 2nd pair of Chinese skaters (the one where the chick didn't land the throw) should have been scored as high as they were. It was funny how the American dude basically said that they knew that they were going to be screwed before they even took the ice.
regarding speedskating, you don't exactly expect to see a Texan and a black dude on a winter olympics team. but the Texan brought home the gold (of course) and apparently shani davis is favored in one of the other events and good in another.
Someone please explain to me how this Chinese figure skating pair can fall, hard, on a throw, have to stop the whole routine, finally get started again and skate the rest of the performance but clearly make more mistakes, yet somehow still end up w/ the silver? It's a courageous performance definitely, but in any other sport, and in past figure skating competitions, if you fall (doesn't matter how risky the move is), you're out. She not only fail, but struggled through the rest of the performance. I really don't get this new scoring system at all.
