NearPup

Ya, this was a great advert of the relay as an event.

I’m confused at how people thought a new aerial event would be a “free gold for China”. China is even better at chocking away Olympic golds in aerials than Canada is.

Kind of a joke of an event with only six teams, and not very "gender equal", but oh well. This is the first aerials Olympic medal for Canada since 2002, so that's the end of a pretty bad drought. After a rough couple years of rebuilding I'm very optimistic about this young Canadian team, Miha Fontaine in particular is really promising - he should be at his best two or three Olympics from now, 18 is very young for aerials. I think one medal was a pretty reasonable goal for the aerials team, and it's already done from the start. Really happy for Ashley Caldwell, she's been consistently very good over the years. The curse of the Chine aerials team continues, only one Olympic gold all time for such a consistently dominant team is shocking.

It's now been 12 years since lost a luge race at the Olympic without crashing or making a major mistake, but that was close. Feels like is unlucky to not win any of the events here given the season they've had.

I really, really much prefer having the medal ceremonies immediately rather than having them at a medal plaza.

Score doesn't really matter in this instance, Chen was far enough ahead that any panel of judges on the planet would have given it to him.

In that case we might as well get rid of the big globe too.

All the great male Canadian skiers over the year, and James Crawford is only the fourth one to win an Olympic medal. Kind of wild. Also of course this is the first time a Canadian man wins an Olympic medal in an Alpine Skiing race other than the downhill or super-g.

I want the combined preserved in some form because there should be an Olympic event for the all-rounders. The most important prize in the sport is the overall world cup, there should be an event at major championship that is tailored to the kind of skier that does all the disciplines.

You sound surprised :P

Worth mentioning that his holiness, the more revered Thomas Bach, Olympic champion, Montreal 1976, Fencing is in attendance for this, the most prestigious event on the Alpine skiing calendar.

As it stands this ties the best ever Winter Olympic result for .

At the risk of jinxing it, Crawford won bronze. There is nobody left that can catch him.

I think we can objectively say that the Alpine Combined is the best race on the Olympic program, actually.

In order to not give an advantage to those who suck at downhill. One too many people won a super combined after finishing 30th in the downhill.

Not sure if people noticed, but Canada's waxing appeared to be the best yesterday. That's a big reason why I'm very bullish on Grondin (not to jinx him).

ez gold for Chen.

Medal for !

Yesterday was the easiest one, there was never at any point any doubt Vlhova would win. (Okay I have a lot of doubts until the last second)

I concur, shut the contest down, nobody is touching that run.

I feel like if the FIS were just a little smarter they would push to keep the combined *and* included the parallel event.

Based on the first run I don't think either Dukurs will win a medal

Crawford was 4th at the worlds last year. Given how well he has skied so far these Olympics I think he has a very real medal chance. But of course the combined is completely unpredictable. Worlds last year also had a Super-G rather than a downhill, so this will be significantly harder for the slalom specialists.

The thing ITG is "useful" for is knowing what IFs want to be made public while keeping some plausible deniability. Which is why in this instance I'm unfortunately pretty sure the reporting is accurate.

No.