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Kazak_Hstan
Apr 28, 2014

Grimey Drawer
REAL DOWNHILL HOURS WHO UP

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African AIDS cum
Feb 29, 2012


Welcome back, welcome back, welcome baaaack
Nolan Kasper to win the slalom, book it

HookShot
Dec 26, 2005
Jansrud is gonna wanna die when he sees those split times.

DC Murderverse
Nov 10, 2016

"Tell that to Zod's snapped neck!"

Kazak_Hstan posted:

“I just want to throw it out there, it might be her husband’s fault”

lol bode

oh that's what he was apologizing for. i heard the apology and i knew he had said something dumb

HookShot
Dec 26, 2005
I mean, definitely believe it was a joke, Bode knows Veith has missed almost two full years of competition coming back from multiple knee surgeries.

bawfuls
Oct 28, 2009

Anyone watching women’s GS right now? Mikaela is 14 away from starting and was in 2nd place after the first run.

HookShot
Dec 26, 2005
Yes.

Tessa lay it down after the major fuckup in run 1, but I doubt it’ll be enough.

bawfuls
Oct 28, 2009

:swoon:

HookShot
Dec 26, 2005
She is literally my loving hero. So god drat good. You can make an argument for her being the GOAT and she's only 22.

Ola
Jul 19, 2004

Whew, a relief that ultra favorite Shiffrin got that gold. Pretty amazing for us Norwegians as well. We have won a lot in alpine, but that was the first women's olympic alpine medal since 1936 and the first downhill gold ever.

e: hehe, Kjetil said "Aksel, you badass" to the camera.

Ola fucked around with this message at 07:31 on Feb 15, 2018

African AIDS cum
Feb 29, 2012


Welcome back, welcome back, welcome baaaack

HookShot posted:

You can make an argument for her being the GOAT and she's only 22.

She is great but no way

Dawgystyle
Aug 31, 2004

"Smith was rattled, running for his life''

Ola posted:

Whew, a relief that ultra favorite Shiffrin got that gold. Pretty amazing for us Norwegians as well. We have won a lot in alpine, but that was the first women's olympic alpine medal since 1936 and the first downhill gold ever.

e: hehe, Kjetil said "Aksel, you badass" to the camera.

Shiffrin was not the "ultra favorite" in GS that she will be in slalom tomorrow. At best, she was a favorite alongside Worley and Rebensburg. Make no mistake, this was a huge win for her. I'd probably even call it an upset.

African AIDS cum
Feb 29, 2012


Welcome back, welcome back, welcome baaaack

Ola posted:

Whew, a relief that ultra favorite Shiffrin got that gold. Pretty amazing for us Norwegians as well. We have won a lot in alpine, but that was the first women's olympic alpine medal since 1936 and the first downhill gold ever.

e: hehe, Kjetil said "Aksel, you badass" to the camera.

I remember when Aksel used to tease him about staying up late playing World of Warcraft before races

Ola
Jul 19, 2004

Dawgystyle posted:

Shiffrin was not the "ultra favorite" in GS that she will be in slalom tomorrow. At best, she was a favorite alongside Worley and Rebensburg. Make no mistake, this was a huge win for her. I'd probably even call it an upset.

Yes, you're right, but like Hirscher getting the combination gold, it takes the pressure off. She can now relax and attack the slalom with nothing (or not that much) to lose. I suppose it was a bigger deal for Hirscher since he had no previous gold.

bawfuls
Oct 28, 2009

African AIDS cum posted:

She is great but no way
She's got a ways to go in her career to pass Vonn for the title of GOAT American ski racer, but considering she's only 22 years old there's certainly time. She's already half way to Vonn's WC win total, but the crystal globes will take time (and avoiding injury of course). She's got a pretty commanding lead on this year's Overall right now.

When she (presumably) wins slalom tomorrow, she will become the first American skier to win 3 Olympic golds, and half way to tying Bode's USA-best 6 total medals. That is of course not as indicative of GOAT status as World Cup wins.

bawfuls fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Feb 15, 2018

Dawgystyle
Aug 31, 2004

"Smith was rattled, running for his life''

bawfuls posted:

She's got a ways to go in her career to pass Vonn for the title of GOAT American ski racer, but considering she's only 22 years old there's certainly time. She's already half way to Vonn's WC win total, but the crystal globes will take time (and avoiding injury of course). She's got a pretty commanding lead on this year's Overall right now.

When she (presumably) wins slalom tomorrow, she will become the first American skier to win 3 Olympic golds, and half way to tying Bode's USA-best 6 total medals. That is of course not as indicative of GOAT status as World Cup wins.

I think it's fair to say that she is probably the GOAT if we only compared careers up to their 23rd birthday. Overall, she's not quite there yet but no reason to think she won't get there barring a serious injury. She is already the best female slalom skier in history. She'll have 2 WC overall titles after this season, 3 world championship titles, and at least 2 Olympic golds. Quite a resume at 22.

Of course, injury is a big X-factor in a sport as dangerous as alpine skiing. Janica Kostelic had a similar career trajectory before it got derailed by injury (less WC wins but more Olympic/worlds titles).

African AIDS cum
Feb 29, 2012


Welcome back, welcome back, welcome baaaack
Lindsey has also won world cup races in all disciplines.

HookShot
Dec 26, 2005
And the only one Shiffrin is missing is Super G. Vonn was 27 when she got her wins in all disciplines.

Lindsey Vonn had won 6 world cup races at this point in her career.

Shiffrin has 41. She is absolutely incredible in every single way.

African AIDS cum
Feb 29, 2012


Welcome back, welcome back, welcome baaaack

HookShot posted:

And the only one Shiffrin is missing is Super G. Vonn was 27 when she got her wins in all disciplines.

Lindsey Vonn had won 6 world cup races at this point in her career.

Shiffrin has 41. She is absolutely incredible in every single way.

Yeah she isn't the GOAT though

pork never goes bad
May 16, 2008

Future GOAT, current kid

HookShot
Dec 26, 2005
Women's slalom Run 1 - 8pm EST

Men's Super G - 9pm EST

Women's slalom Run 2 - 11:15pm EST



I've got skeleton training tonight so I won't be around at all, and won't be checking this thread until the morning after I get to see the two races.

I'm hoping for/expecting a Shiffrin/Hansdotter/Holdener podium in slalom (Estelle Alphand as the super dark horse medal pick) and Jansrud/Svindal/Reichelt in Super G. That's right, I think the Norwegians can do the double, but swapping around a little.

HookShot fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Feb 15, 2018

bawfuls
Oct 28, 2009

Mikaela is 4th out of the gate on run 1 here, so probably 5 minutes or so from now.

Vertical Lime
Dec 11, 2004

that wasn't encouraging

bawfuls
Oct 28, 2009

Not the best start :/

wyoak
Feb 14, 2005

a glass case of emotion

Fallen Rib
Shiffrin....shook!?

Josh Lyman
May 24, 2009


I don’t know much about skiing, but it seems unlikely that Mikaela will make up the .48 seconds AND 3 people in front of her.

Kazak_Hstan
Apr 28, 2014

Grimey Drawer
This super g course is fun to watch.

African AIDS cum
Feb 29, 2012


Welcome back, welcome back, welcome baaaack

Josh Lyman posted:

I don’t know much about skiing, but it seems unlikely that Mikaela will make up the .48 seconds AND 3 people in front of her.

She has multiple times

African AIDS cum
Feb 29, 2012


Welcome back, welcome back, welcome baaaack
Teddy just skied out and said the F word

bawfuls
Oct 28, 2009

African AIDS cum posted:

She has multiple times
She didn't today :smith:

Kazak_Hstan
Apr 28, 2014

Grimey Drawer
According to the graphic NBC had up before her run she had only done it once, in 2013.

Fourth is not bad the day after winning the GS, she skied well.

Syncopated
Oct 21, 2010
:sweden:

Jeza
Feb 13, 2011

The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.
It was pretty sad that the final Austrian lady (Schild?) would clearly have won Gold if she hadn't got tripped up at the very end. She was the only person who really gained time against Gallhuber on the final run. She was up like 0.75 seconds against her with only like 1/5th to go, would have slam dunked the Gold by over half a second if she hadn't flubbed it. Probably going to be traumatised by that for life.

HookShot
Dec 26, 2005
Women's Super G begins at 9pm EST

Lindsey Vonn 1
Lara Gut 5
Tina Weirather 7
Nicole Schmidhofer 9
Sofia Goggia 13
Anna Veith 15

Mikaela Shiffrin is not racing the Super G. This is not a surprise and the people out there claiming she could potentially win five Olympic medals are loving idiots. Even Tina Maze, who was an established racer in all five disciplines unlike Shiffrin right now, couldn't manage it at World Champs in the middle of the greatest season in Alpine Skiing history. It's just incredibly tiring, and especially since Mikaela would have expended a ton of mental energy on the days when the races got cancelled (I know it's easy to think that "oh well it got cancelled you never actually did anything why are you tired?" but it's actually mentally completely exhausting and super draining) I'm not the least bit surprised she's not racing.

I'm legit shocked, but I think the change in the schedule hosed her over. Getting mentally ready for your biggest event the day after winning a gold medal in another event that you were one of the favourites in but definitely not the favourite has to be super effing hard.

She said after her win in 2014 that between celebrating, interviews and everything she didn't sleep for over a day after winning that gold. I'm sure she made an effort to actually sleep this time, but it still can't have been easy.

I'm glad we're back to only one race a day now.

HookShot
Dec 26, 2005
Women's Super G is delayed two hours (this is the second pushback) so it's now on at 10pm EST. Hopefully. The forecast shows winds at the top should die down a bit in the afternoon, hopefully to low enough that a safe and fair race can happen.

HookShot fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Feb 17, 2018

CapnAndy
Feb 27, 2004

Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.
If there's only one run and Vonn is now in fourth, can someone explain to me why the announcer keeps asking about her chance of not getting a medal?

Vertical Lime
Dec 11, 2004

CapnAndy posted:

If there's only one run and Vonn is now in fourth, can someone explain to me why the announcer keeps asking about her chance of not getting a medal?

because they're contractually obligated to not go one second without bringing her up

dammit would've been nice for a liechtenstein gold

wyoak
Feb 14, 2005

a glass case of emotion

Fallen Rib
Man the rest of the field gets no respect

Is winning from a late position that rare?

frankenfreak
Feb 16, 2007

I SCORED 85% ON A QUIZ ABOUT MONDAY NIGHT RAW AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY TEXT

#bastionboogerbrigade
Oh my god, Ledecka just standing there not able to grasp what she just did.

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HookShot
Dec 26, 2005

wyoak posted:

Man the rest of the field gets no respect

Is winning from a late position that rare?

In a word, yes.

In speed events (it's slightly different in tech) the people ranked 1-10 in the world all get to choose the odd-numbered bibs between 1 and 19.

Then, the people ranked 11-20 in the world are all put into a random draw to get the odd numbered bibs between 2 and 20.

The people ranked 20 to 30 are then drawn with those bib numbers, and then it goes in order based on world ranking (ie. bib 31 is the 31st ranked, 32 is 32nd ranked, etc). So when you get back there, it becomes a lot less likely. They're just not as good.

Super G and downhill are basically the only events where you will ever see this sort of thing happen, and it's still actually quite rare, especially for the win. In tech it's almost impossible because it's a two-run race and everything that comes with (getting into your own head, ruts, it just being more technical, that sort of thing). Dustin Cook for Canada came 2nd at World Champs in 2015 from bib 28, Lara Gut came second in a downhill in 2008 from a bib number in the 30s in one of her first world cup (and would have won if she didn't eat it just before the finish line), but I'm actually really hard pressed to remember any other times when it's happened in recent memory. I think Sofia Goggia came from a high bib number to get 4th at World Champs in 2013. But it seriously is so super rare.


Also, in the Olympics especially, the late bib numbers are really not that good. On World Cup, if you're ranked 30th, you're 30th in the world. In the Olympics, if you're ranked 30th, you're probably more like 40th in the world because the Austrians used up their four quota spots but there's another six of them that are better than you but didn't get to come to the Olympics, and same with athletes from a few other countries. Ledecka is actually ranked 43rd in the World Cup rankings in Super G. She would have never had that good a bib number in a world cup race. That makes it even more insane. This is hands down the biggest upset of the Olympics.

HookShot fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Feb 17, 2018

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