Skeleton Crew
The winter Olympics have ended, leaving us with that vague sense we too could take up bobsleighing, if only we could sprint, had quad muscles the size of rocket launchers and lived in a cold climate (isn’t it just like a big boy version of billy carting?)
Whether or not you’re a fan, there’s something quite restful about watching sports you’ve no usual interest in. And it’s easy enough to race out, tennis racket in hand, during the Australian Open (‘look at me I’m just like Ash Barty!’) but not so simple to ski-jump over one hundred metres at speeds topping 95km per hour. As for the Skeleton (macabre name not helping), shooting through a tube of ice on a tea-tray on skates is not my idea of fun. Meanwhile curling seems suspiciously easy, like a chilly version of lawn bowls (and surely all that ice sweeping is just cheating?)
As for keeping up with the complicated scoring systems, you can forget it. If you remember watching Torvill and Dean’s mesmerising all sixes Bolero performance – the top possible score – I’m here to tell you things have moved on. No wonder the ice dancing was making no sense. There’s a cumulative technical score where judges mark the jumps and twirls, then that gets multiplied by some sort of factor, including the grade of execution and skating ability. One triple pike axle looks the same as the next in my book, but then I’m not a judge.
Which is just as well, as judges are culpable and corruptible. Hence the change to today’s scoring system, brought about from the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002. A Canadian pair were second to the Russians, despite a flawless performance versus an error riddled one. We non-judges might not know the first thing about scoring ice skating, but if someone falls over a lot and the next person doesn’t, that seems pretty clear. It turned out that some judges were less than unbiased, trading off scores and deductions with each other for their compatriot competitors in other events.
These Olympics had their fair share of controversy, along with a few bloopers. It’s been so cold in Beijing, minus fifteen degrees or less, that some events were in the balance. The cross-country skiers were on notice – they cancel the event at sub twenty as the athletes can’t get enough oxygen into their lungs. They all consistently collapse over the finishing line in a crumpled heap, not dissimilar to my Year Eight attempts at (land based) cross-country running. It certainly was exhausting watching them. The commentators were so frozen they were slurring.
One Norwegian skier, coming off the back of two weeks isolating after a positive Covid test, was alas not at his best. After a promising start to his multi-discipline event, he took a wrong turn – easy to do in a blizzard - and dropped from first to eighth place.
‘My body is not working,’ he said afterwards, and who can blame him in minus twenty-degrees. My old battered Mini in England conked out at anything under minus ten.
At least he could use Covid and the temperature as excuses, unlike the 1992 Russian four-man bobsled team. Pusher Three slipped and scrambled to get in, finally making it in position two, facing backwards. Since there’s only one pilot and the other pushers are there solely to push and jump in, it counts as a definite fail.
Maybe I’ll take up a new winter sport. The local ice rink is just up the road and even I can slide around on my chest if that’s all it takes.