Things will be chopped up a bit today, due to the Superb Owl butting in.
Last night’s prime time jumps right in with “encores”. Lollabrigida winning the gold--we even get the Italian feed. Maria Taylor has stepped in to host, reporting remotely from the California. We get a rerun of Team Figure Skating, brought to you with “limited commercial interruptions” and a dash of Snoop.
Matt Damon narrates an inspirational montage about the QISE journey (”you know, like the Odyssey film I star in, coming to theaters soon”). Off to the slopes for the men's downhill. One of the competitor’s wives has that darn heart monitor on. There's drones, a Google map-like display showing their progress down the course, and what looks like a modern car speedometer showing their speed. The drone shots are particularly impressive, with the screen tilting wildly as they chase the skier.
Torico pops in, and we get what I believe is our first “up close and personal" about an Italian skier who lost his best friend to a crash. He takes the silver.
Stanley Tucci checks back in to enjoy an aperitif. Taylor takes us around the Games, and back to skating. The “Event of the Night” is Chock and Bates, who’s moms get their own segment--they talk about their kid’s romance and marriage. After that, it’s the Big Air final--again.
Late Night coverage included a glitch with color bars--oops. It’s played up like an SNL episode--with your host Ahmed Fareeeed! We learned Big Air’s Ollie Martin competed with a broken arm. There’s Men’s Slopestyle qualifying (with prerequisite random trick names), then (another) repeat of the Quad God. Steve Kornacki and his big screen go thru US-centric stats, and back to a Speed Skating rerun. We get the quadrennial story about the source of Curling stones, and more highlights.
Onto Daytime--Lowe’s back, now in the Town Square set. Unfortunately, events kick off with Lindsey Vonn having a hard crash. She was skiing without one of her ACLs, so the fact that she got this far was a miracle. Over to Men’s Skiathlon in progress. They keep talking about “Dropping Klaebo” (one of the skiiers), and if you’ve ever dropped Klaebo, you know how painful that can be.
More Snowboarding, this time in Parallel and Slaloms, an event won in microseconds. We learn that Vonn’s US teammate Breezy Johnson (a Damon Runyan name if I ever heard one) won the Women’s Downhill in a quick insert. Seems NBC isn’t interested in that event anymore--some intern is currently scrubbing Vonn from all the promos.
Biathlon Mixed Relay aka Spy Training--skiing and shooting. The play-by-play guy seemed to be lost at the start. (”No, that’s not right--wait a minute…”) France wins it easily.
Lowe announces a return to the Women’s Downhill “when we come back” directly AFTER they just had a commercial break. Really?? We get multiple skiers, with a new feature--we listen in on the coaches’ radio messages just before they hit the slopes. And then Vonn’s crash, which looked horrific. We learned later that Lindsey had surgery for a broken leg. We saw Breezy’s medal ceremony--and I read said medal almost immediately broke.
Over to 5000m Speed Skating. It’s rather monotonous until the very end--you’re really looking for a crash, like NASCAR. At one point, they cut to parents in the stands with a bad internet connection--although it must be good enough to track their heart rate.
I guess six hours of pre-game for the Superb Owl just isn’t enough--they needed to waste a whole QISE segment for it. We then get an up close and personal on the “Two Coreys” of Curling--Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin--a mixed doubles team. More Speedskating. I think I prefer short track.
OK--I’ll let the Superb Owl play through, and will return tomorrow. Enjoy your sportsball.
#It’s_a_me_QISE