Quaker2001

The 2 athletes I was pulling hardest for 4 years ago were Jessie Diggins and John Shuster. And that will be the case again this time around. Fully plan on pulling an all-nighter to watch the individual sprints!

I live in New York. The spike here is ridiculous. At our worst, both early on in the pandemic and around this time last year, we had at most around 5,000 cases per day. During this spike, we were hitting 40,000 per day, but it took only a couple of months to go back down to where we were in early December. And this is with most of the city vaccinated. We were unprepared for how transmissible Omicron has been. If this had happened a couple of weeks earlier, maybe not such a big deal. But we're just starting to see the downslope of the case numbers, so it'll be at least another month before they start to level out

That's kinda my point though. Started out with a lot, people thought it would be more, and then every medal event was finished to completion. This time, the lead-up has been all these stories and the closed loops and quarantine camps and China's zero COVID policy. So we'll still be hearing about this in a few days. Whether or not it has a major effect on competition remains to be seen. But like you said, for those reasons, pretty nonsensical of certain sports federations to have World Cup events so close to the start and not to give anything more of a buffer to get to Beijing, isolate if they need to, and be ready if someone tests positive.

Are we that surprised though? There were a lot of positives before Tokyo as well, but it wasn't as big of a story. We knew this was going to be a story

It says analyst for him instead of reporter, so maybe he will be in the booth with Hicks rather than calling it from Beijing. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing though

Bode has some decent insight, but his excitement level wasn't there. It's almost like he wasn't that interested in watching someone else in the ski races he used to be in. NBC had announced Ligety would be there a couple of weeks ago, glad he's on board. Curious to see if Porino is in Stamford or Beijing. Either way, he's the most consistent thing in NBC's alpine coverage all these years. No idea what the story with Singer is. They used him in 2002, but haven't had him on there since. Not that I mind Leigh Diffey. And yes, incredible to still have John Morgan. I think this will be his 11th Olympics for American television. He's been around so long, he did 2 Games for ABC. "SPEEEEED!"

For those watching from the United States... THE WINTER OLYMPICS BEGIN THIS WEEK — 84 COMMENTATORS JOIN NBC OLYMPICS’ COVERAGE OF THE XXIV OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES

Good to hear. Would hate for a country like Australia to have qualified for a team sport and not have them be able to compter

Correct. Both networks saw it as a win. CBS got the windfall from the Super Bowl a year earlier than they were supposed to, plus it helped the advertising market for the NCAA Tournament and the Final Four (which was on CBS last year, but not this year). And they wouldn't have to compete against NBC's Olympics coverage. And because the date of the game only got changed in the last year, NBC got the ISU folks to change the figure skating schedule so they'd get the free dance the night of the Super Bowl

The Super Bowl would have originally been a week earlier except the NFL chose this year to extend the regular season. So the Olympics and Super Bowl would have clashed anyway. I'll have 3 screens (plus my computer) going, 1 less than the Summer Olympics. So I should be covered. Big event that night is figure skating, plus the 4th run of the women's monobob will hit right around when the game is ending.

Who Dey!

Epic match. Glad it went long enough to see the finish when I woke up this morning. Vamos Rafa! 21 slams!!

Wow, I was actually at the Millrose Games today! That's disappointing about Crouser, thought we saw a piece of history there

Sources: U.S. Olympic bobsled team dealing with COVID-19 'nightmare' Affects the skeleton team as well. Multiple positives involved. Which makes it very fortunate the bobsleigh competition doesn't start until the 2nd half of the games

What an age we live in that Canadians are talking about getting a VPN to watch American coverage rather than the other way around! Worth noting that cable-authenticated users will be able to get coverage through the NBC Sports App and through nbcolympics.com as they have in the past. The addition of Peacock is a major game-changer for cord-cutters, especially after the mess they made of Tokyo. And to @NearPup's point.. I subscribed as of a couple of weeks ago and have been watching a lot of biathlon. We'll see if I keep it after the Paralympics. @Triplecast My best guess is that anything airing on cable in the US will be the NBC announcers and the rest (think all the curling and hockey not on TV) will be the OBS feed, but likely with announcers. I have my spreadsheet (linked in my signature) to keep track. Stay connected either here or on Twitter to help me stay updated

Team USA en route to Beijing..

Given all the COVID restrictions, probably not a smart idea for a large mass of people to gather together, Last thing China needs is to knock a bunch of athletes out of commission because if 1 person with COVID shows up without a strong enough mask, it could infect many other athletes

Just trying to bump up that team size!

Seen plenty of football stadiums for them like that as well. That's why it's next to impossible to build a suitable large scale athletics venue in the United States. None of these billion dollar NFL stadiums would every leave that much room between the stands and the playing field

U.S. gets another Olympic ski jumping spot Most notably, they're up to 4 men's jumpers, so they'll get to compete in the men's team event

Hockey has a much larger footprint than many sports including basketball and volleyball. Yes, most arenas in North America are versatile enough that they work for both hockey and basketball. And then in the rare instances they need more floor space, such as for a concert, they can make that work too

The problem with Barclays was that it was too small to fit a hockey rink, so it never worked there. This is the opposite problem.. too much space. That's tough to get when we're talking about a hockey ice surface. And you're right, this looks extremely ugly

What the Fukuoka?