HIPAA Blog

[ Friday, February 24, 2006 ]

 

Curling: I caught the live Bronze medal match between the US men and Great Britain. They were in the 4th end when I turned it on, with the US up by a couple of points, and I recorded it while I did kid drop-off duty and hit the gym. It was over by the time I got back home to get ready for work, but I re-wound the TIVO and watched the last couple of rocks. The US had a 1-point lead in the 10th end, with the hammer, which is a bad, bad position for the British (who included curlers from Scotland, where curling was invented and where the quarry for curling stones is). They played great strategy, piling up the blockers and even leaving only 3 stones -- all British -- in the house when Pete "Pizza Man" Fenson, the US skip, was up with the last stone, but there was no way to keep Fenson from running their best stone out of the house and replacing it with the US stone. I thought we'd see a lot of the "curl girls" and had high hopes for them, but they played like a bunch of Bimidjiots. It was up the the men, who brought home the US' first ever curling medal.

I also saw (tape delay, I presume) the tail end of the women's gold medal match, which was fabulous. The announcers were very disappointed with the Swedish team's decision to clear out some blockers, thinking they were giving away the game to the Swiss. In fact, the Swiss looked to be in great shape, but the Swedish skip's last stone took out two Swiss rocks to seal the victory. It was mighty impressive. But neither the Swedish team (with one exception, Anna Svaerd, on the right in both pictures) nor the Swiss teams were as, shall we say, photogenic as the American curl girls. Oh well, that's the way it goes sometimes.

UPDATE: I have learned that the Swedish curling team (without Anna Svaerd, though) starred in a heavy metal rock video with the band Hammerfall prior to heading to Torino. Heavy metal music is very big in the Scandinavian countries, probably because the winters are so long and depressing. I will try to find a copy of the video or a link to post it.

And, of course, much more curling news here (scroll down to the picture of Japanese fans to see the "rockhead" headgear).

Jeff [12:07 PM]

Comments: Post a Comment
http://www.blogger.com/template-edit.g?blogID=3380636 Blogger: HIPAA Blog - Edit your Template