When Americans turned on their televisions to see NBC's primetime coverage last night, they were greeted not by the visage of Bob Costas(who is still out with an eye infection), and not by the visage of Matt Lauer, but instead by the warm face of Meredith Vieira, who was pulled from the ranks of the Today Show. While that certainly makes the hosting gig seem like a revolving door, this is important for another reason. Meredith Vieira is actually the first woman to ever be the lead anchor of a network's Olympic coverage.
So with that bit of history, lets get to the Olympics, shall we? Before we talk about the actual competitions, I just wanted to mention something that happened today in the Skiathlon heats. The Men's 15 km race was won by Dario Cologna from Switzerland. After he won his competition, he stuck around to congratulate the other competitors. And not just the other guys who finished behind him. No, Cologna waited until the VERY LAST skier crossed the line, and then congratulated him. That skier was Roberto Carcelen, one of only 3 athletes in Sochi from Peru. If there is any better way to exhibit the Olympic Spirit, I haven't seen it.
And now, back to Rosa Khutor. This was the time for Men's Supercombined, a sport where two Americans(Bode Miller and Ted Ligety) were poised to do great things. However, as has been the trend this Games with Americans seemingly on the edge of greatness(Shaun White, Shani Davis, etc...) it was not to be. Miller wound up finishing 6th, and Ligety slid into 12th Place.
Moving over to the Iceberg for what wound up being a much less dramatic day than yesterday, the skaters competed in the Men's Free Skate. Since Evgeni Plushenko had retired the day before, there was no Russian representative in the Finals. After his fall yesterday, Jeremy Abbott was all but out of medal contention, but qualified for the Free Skate, and so he skated the program anyway. With the announcement that he was retiring after the current season, this amounted to Abbott's farewell tour. After all of that, we were left with Yuzuru Hanyu, putting the icing on the cake from his Short Program. Hanyu went into the Free Skate, and actually fell down, but got right back up, and in fact did well enough to secure himself the Gold Medal, which is the first one ever awarded to Japan in the Men's Figure Skating category.
But the truly momentous story comes to us from the Sanki Sliding Center, in the finals of the Women's Skeleton. Yesterday we talked a little bit about Noelle Pikus-Pace and her long wait for her Olympic Moment. After training for the 2006 Games, she was forced out by a freak injury. After coming back for Vancouver, she finished in 4th Place, after which she retired. She eventually got back into Skeleton at the urging of her husband, so that she could finally realize her dream. She made it to Sochi, and then last night took Silver in the Skeleton Finals, finally realizing her dreams of winning an Olympic Medal, showing that even a dream deferred for 8 years can still be realized.
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