February 17, 2006
Olympic Comedy gold
Feb. 17 - Canada has won the gold and silver medals in the men's skeleton events! Great news, but ... um, what is a skeleton event? I didn't know and Mark didn't know so I did a quick google and came up with one answer by by Michael Rosenberg of the
Detroit Free Press in an extremely humorous article
Why skeleton is a dumb sport.
A brief primer: Skeleton is exactly like luge, except that instead of flying down the track on your butt, you fly down the track on your stomach. Skeleton athletes (that's what they call themselves, which is title inflation of the worst kind) say skeleton requires a totally different skill set than luge. Let's just take their word for it. Otherwise, they might explain.
I know: It sounds like a ridiculous, inane, stupid, non-sport kind of sport. But that's what people said when luge first became an Olympic sport in 1964, and now, 42 years later, many of those same people are dead. So maybe we shouldn't question it.
Aw, unruffle your fur. He's poking fun at the U.S. team, not the Canadian team, and tells you much more than you want to know about how the "U.S. skeleton team brought sex, drugs and violence to these Winter Olympics, and not even in a good way."
Mark and I can't quite figure out how a hair restorative can be considered a performance enhancing drug (in sports, for crying out loud. Sheesh.)
Posted by: Debbye at
06:30 PM
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It is like this. You run like hell pushing a cafeteria tray with two steel runners on the bottom, until you cant run no more, and then you flop on it, and steer it down a Bobsled run at 70mph. Whatever you want to call it, it isn't for sissies.
Seriously though, poking fun at it is fine, but I didn't see anyone in the US complaining when they won gold in Men's Skeleton at Salt Lake. Us Canucks will take our medals where we can get them.
Luge is boring....except when you screw up and end up unconscious. With Skeleton, you can see the guys steering as they come down the track.....
Posted by: Mark in Bowmanville at February 18, 2006 03:00 AM (pD+Bc)
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Thanks for providing some actual knowledge, Mark!
I keep thinking about sliding into base feet first or head first, and Pete Rose (I think) pointing out that the head first slide gets the picture on the Sports page. As you said, not for sissies.
Posted by: Debbye at February 18, 2006 07:36 AM (j4VfO)
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As I told my daughter, its called skeleton because if you mess up at 80+ mph you end up as one.
Posted by: wayne at February 19, 2006 01:13 AM (PAh+W)
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Wayne is correct. I was going to kid about it, but now my view has changed.
It is the finest of sport, daring, risk, and fear. And it's made of GOLD. TG
Posted by: TonyGuitar at February 19, 2006 03:02 AM (rmMzv)
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Some ten or fifteen years ago I noticed that the top ten luge times were all within about a tenth of a second of each other. Stretching the race out to two hours meant that the first ten finishers would cross the finish line between two hours and one hour, fifty-nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds. I mean, it's a ten-way
tie, ferchrissakes!
Posted by: Tuning Spork at February 19, 2006 02:42 PM (6hEda)
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