Friday, February 17, 2006

Olympics - Skeleton Racing

I love watching the Olympics, but I really hate how the networks cover it. Too many sob stories, too much choppy coverage (I couldn't stay up until 11 pm waiting for the final results even when I wasn't pregnant -- last night I made it until 9:05).

But, like I said, the Olympics rule. Last night was women's skeleton (who came up w/ that name?**) -- which is like luge but it's headfirst. The woman who placed fourth was 2 months pregnant. That bears repeating -- 2 months pregnant. I haven't recovered from that factoid yet -- when I was 2 months pregnant I was nauseous all the time, having these weird mini fainting spells, and plenty tired. I CANNOT IMAGINE jumping on my stomach and going 75 miles/hour head-first down an icy curvy track on a little sled w/ no brakes experiencing the symptoms of being 2 months pregnant. Crazy. Article about her here.

Another note about the skeleton racing -- James keeps saying how much he'd love to try that sport . I'm not so sure -- I think he'd try it a couple of times and decide there aren't enough gadgets involved to keep him interested :)

** OK, I'm a Reference Librarian, I had to find out. Turns out skeleton is the oldest sledding event -- it was invented in 1884 in Switzerland. It didn't make it into the Olympics permanently until 2002 (why did it take so long for them to figure out how cool it was??). The name comes from the sled -- which was originally a stripped-down frame, like a skeleton.

Comments:
I heard about that woman too! And thought exactly the same thing ... I only didn't know how she finished, as I caught only a blip of either her first or second race down that track ... just kept staring, incredulous ...

Btw, I caved and got DVR. It's all or nothing - either digital cable with DVR or nothing at all, since there is no way I can watch a program when it's scheduled un-interrupted ....
 
Masha - that's not caving, that's using your limited free time efficiently, nothing wrong w/ that!
 
Post a Comment



<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?