Dude! Snowboarders totally punk security
U.S. women go out of bounds for test run before 1-2 finish in final
WINTER OLYMPICS |
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BARDONECCHIA, Italy - American snowboarders Hannah Teter and Gretchen Bleiler lived up to their sport’s free-spirit reputation Monday — for a very conventional reason.
Just before the final round of the halfpipe, Teter, Bleiler and assistant coach Ricky Bower found themselves stuck on the wrong part of the mountain. They had to duck under ropes and ride into closed areas to get back to the top of the competition area.
The snowboarders had hoped a long “free run” would loosen them up physically and mentally, as it did for men’s gold medalist Shaun White on Sunday.
They had to beg security officers to let them ski under the ropes.
“We were like, ‘Can we please get by, these girls are in the finals?’ And they said no way,” Bower said.
They asked another set of guards, and again were denied. Then they went around a bend and Teter, the eventual gold medal winner, urged Bower and Bleiler, who would win silver, to join her under the ropes. Bower hesitated.
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So they went.
“We started going down the hill and the security guards are yelling at us and I’m just like, ‘This is just not a way to start the women’s final.’ It actually turned out to be a good thing,” Bower said. “It was a total snowboarder move.”
They ended up in a field of powder left untracked since being closed to keep the public from the competition venue.
“We found the powder — and that is snowboarding — so we got some powder in and we came down and she got a gold medal and I got a silver and voila,” Bleiler said.
Straight curl
What happens to curling when the stones don’t curl? They’re finding out at the Olympics.
Curling ice is sprayed with water droplets in a process called pebbling that leaves little bumps. The friction of the stones against the pebbles is what causes the stones to curl — as much as four feet or more.
But some ice has more curl than other ice. And competitors are complaining that the Olympic ice doesn’t curl much at all.
“I like more swingy ice,” defending men’s champion Paal Trulsen of Norway said this weekend. “Hopefully we’ll get some more curl. That’s why they call it curling.”
The speed and curl of ice is determined by factors like the temperature in the venue and of the water that’s sprayed on it, and the size of the holes in the sprayer. Olympic icemaker Leif Ohman said he designed the ice to be fast so the curlers use less effort to push off and more on the technique of their release.
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Another issue is that the Olympic curling stones are relatively new — about a year old in a sport that has been around five centuries — and stones with rougher bottoms have more friction and more swing. Ohman said he is working on the problem.
“We’ll do our best to make it curl a little more,” he said.
Sweet 16
Grandma’s gone, but the kid’s sticking around.
While Anne Abernathy, the 52-year-old known as “Grandma Luge” pulled out of the Winter Games with a broken wrist, 16-year-old Sarah Podorieszach was 12th Monday after the first day of her Olympic debut.
On a day when a number of women crashed during the first two runs down the luge track at Cesana, the teenager was able to stay out of trouble, setting herself up for a finish that would rank higher than any of her World Cup results this season.
Podorieszach, who was born in Canada but races under the Italian flag, was born one year after Abernathy appeared in her first Olympics for the U.S. Virgin Islands at Calgary in 1988.
“I’m actually Canadian and Italian. I have dual citizenship,” Podorieszach said. “I was raised in Calgary, but I live in northeast Italy for seven months of the year. I love it there.”
Podorieszach finished 29th overall in this season’s World Cup, posting her best race results of 21st at Oberhof and Koenigssee.
Podorieszach, who lives in the town of Chienes, hopes to return to Canada and medal at the 2010 Games in Vancouver.
“I am still young, luge takes a lot of experience,” she said. “Right now I’m not worried about being first. But I hope to get a podium in Vancouver. It’s good for me ... two home countries for the Olympics.”
Afghan ice
A hint of Afghanistan in the middle of the Italian Alps?
The men’s downhill and slalom courses in the Alpine Olympic hub of Sestriere both carry the name “Kandahar” — more often associated with the former Taliban stronghold than with skiing.
And, in fact, the connection between the courses where skiers are racing for gold and the southern Afghan city is more than a coincidence.
In the late 19th century, a general named Frederick Sleigh Roberts won a crucial battle for the British Empire at the southern Afghan city, earning him the title “Lord Kandahar.”
Upon returning to Britain, Roberts became an avid patron of Alpine skiing and the first major downhill race was named after him. Held in 1911 at Crans-Montana, Switzerland, it was called the “Roberts of Kandahar Challenge.”
Soon afterward, other ski resorts began applying the name Kandahar to competitions that were forerunners to today’s World Cup races.
There are Kandahar courses across Europe, from Chamonix, France to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.
For these Winter Games, Sestriere’s Kandahar Banchetta hosts the men’s downhill, downhill combined and Super-G. Kandahar Giovanni Alberto Agnelli — named after the late nephew of Fiat founder Gianni Agnelli — is the site of both men’s and women’s slalom and giant slalom. Both courses have been hosting Alpine ski races since the 1950s.
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