Skiing and Sliding, Women's Skipipe, and the Ladies Final: Sochi Day 15

     We may be rounding the final stretches at Sochi, but there's still plenty of thrills and spills left to be had.  To start them off, we're heading to Rosa Khutor and the Men's Ski Cross heat.  Much like the Snowboard Cross we've seen the past few days except with skis, this event is just as unpredictable and provides just as much heart-stopping drama as its board-bound cousin.  The heat starts off with some preliminary runs to seed for the finals, and that is where we run into the first character of the heat, Slovenia's Flip Flisar.  He comes up to the line sporting a respectable handlebar mustache, which earns him the title of "most interesting 'stache in Sochi"  Flisar makes it through the first couple of rounds, before ultimately getting eliminated in the semifinals.  One of the other heats had two competitors fall down at the very last second and slide across the finish line, with the first one across taking the qualifying spot in a photo finish.  The medal round came down to 3 Frenchmen and a Canadian.  After a fall in the home stretch scrubbed the Canadian, the French came away with the second medal sweep in freestyle skiing at Sochi(after the Americans swept the podium in Ski Slopestyle).

     Afterwards, we took a trip over to the halfpipe for one final time in these Games to contest the Women's Halfpipe ski contest.  The event is one of several added to the Olympics new this year, due in no small part to Canadian skier Sarah Burke, whose ardent campaigning led the IOC to add this event to the Winter Games in April of 2011. The newness of this event bodes well for the Americans, owing to our demonstrated prowess in new events.  One of the highlights of the heat was seeing Canadian skier Rosalind Groenewoud, and her red lipstick, which is a personal calling card of hers.  After several heats, the winner was finally announced to be Maddie Bowman, the 20-year old American with a Grandma who you don't want to mess with.

     And then it was off to the Iceberg again, this time to wrap up the competitions in Figure Skating with the Ladies Free Skate.  After Wednesday's short program, the leader was South Korea's Yuna Kim.  This time, there weren't as many spills on the ice, with most everybody skating a clean program.  And then, we started seeing performance after performance, and they were all fantastic.  However, the Gold Medal was ultimately awarded to Russia's Adelina Sotnikova, giving the world the first Gold winner out of the former USSR since Oksana Baiul in 1994(the year we all learned what the price of gold really was).  All told, the Figure Skating competitions at these Games were filled with suspense and wonder, and they won't be soon forgotten.