Posted on 02/24/2018 2:33:02 PM PST by ak267
What? You mean there are no enormous drainage culverts in the alps? Thought that was where that weird “pipe” thing got started.
We live in a different age.
It’s only boring if all you’re looking for is action. Curling requires talent to make the rock go where you want, but also there’s an intellectual aspect to it. It’s almost more strategic than physical.
In 1980 it was a bunch of TRUE amateur college players from the USA playing against PROFESSIONAL layers from the USSR.
There is no such disparity today.
Thanks for the link. It was a hoot watching that
The Curling team is a bit older, a bit less full of themselves than the younger athletes, and more Americans could identify with them. Americans pretty much had it with the NBC announcers, Lindsay Vonn, the two gay skaters, and miscellaneous tantrum throwing divas. Not to mention the adulation for MsRocket Woman, known to torture/kill her political opponents .. and then DARE to compare her to Ivanka Trump. So this year, the Curling team was the American sweetheart team.
i watched it live last night.....i thought it was very cool...it had to be a thrill for those 4 guys, they really sang the anthem with gusto.
same thing happened to me with golf...once i played, i was hooked...loved it ever since. I just regret not playing when i was in my 20’s...
“Will SI make it a cover story?”
Oh, I suppose it’s possible the U.S. Women’s Hockey team might get a cover - if SI doesn’t give it to the gay skater (Rippon?) for his “brave” resistance to the evil Mike Pence and his brutal Christianity.
For several years after 1980 I could recite the names of all of the players from that U.S. team: Jim Craig, Mike Eruzione, Dave Christian, and Mark Pavelich, Buzz Schneider, Phil Verchota and Rob McClanahan - heck, I even knew how to spell Steve Janaszak’s name (and he never played a single minute if I recall correctly). There is zero chance - except perhaps for a very small number of hockey playing young girls - that kids today are taking the time to learn the names of the Gold Medal winning U.S. Women’s Hockey Team. That’s for several reasons:
- Times have changed.
- Their win over Canada was not a decisive victory in regular time (a shoot out?!).
- The Canadian women are not nearly as dominant as the Soviets were back then. The Soviets had not lost a single game in 12 years (1968-1980!).
- Almost no one is watching this Olympics. Many people have NBC’s coverage and now so many people have 150 channels to choose from.
- This wasn’t as unexpected as the 1980 win.
- It didn’t happen on U.S. soil where people could watch it all unfold in real time.
Mr. T became a big curling fan. He coined probably the best Twitter hashtag ever #curlingiscoolfool.
It’s an oddly relaxing and invigorating sport to watch. I grew up near Detroit and watched it often on Canadian TV.
Caught about half of the Gold medal game today.
You have to see it from Kirstie’s point of view: it has nothing to do with food, so of course it’s boring.
Did you see the movie, “Miracle”? What a great, patriotic movie about the 1980 US Olympic hockey team!
“On a similar note, do you think the women’s hockey team winning the gold medal will garner equal coverage as the men’s did in 1980?”
It can’t.
The 1980 Lake Placid Olympics came at the depths of the Carter Despair when absolutely everything was going wrong for the United States.
Gas lines, inflation, Watergate, the collapse of Vietnam, Soviet Adventurism unopposed all over the globe and Iran hostages.
And then suddenly out of nowhere a bunch of college kids beat the invincible Soviet Union hockey team.
Even the Soviet players stood in shocked admiration, you can see it in the film clips. Winning the Gold two days later by beating Finland was almost an anticlimax.
I’ve always had the sneaking feeling that this played a role in Reagan winning the Presidency eight months later.
“On a similar note, do you think the women’s hockey team winning the gold medal will garner equal coverage as the men’s did in 1980?”
It can’t.
The 1980 Lake Placid Olympics came at the depths of the Carter Despair when absolutely everything was going wrong for the United States.
Gas lines, inflation, Watergate, the collapse of Vietnam, Soviet Adventurism unopposed all over the globe and Iran hostages.
And then suddenly out of nowhere a bunch of college kids beat the invincible Soviet Union hockey team.
Even the Soviet players stood in shocked admiration, you can see it in the film clips. Winning the Gold two days later by beating Finland was almost an anticlimax.
I’ve always had the sneaking feeling that this played a role in Reagan winning the Presidency eight months later.
I curled in high school in Madison, WI. I enjoyed the sport. Kirstie can bite me!
I hate to break it to you, but politics doesn’t have to be infused into everything.
Gold in curling. Another one checked on the lifetime bucket list ....
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