Vonn's skis got all burned to heck during her DH medal run and she still took third...thought I do have to say that she really threw her tuner under the bus by showing the ruined skis off on TV. She is definitely a bit of a [censored] person and always knows where the cameras are, but you can't argue with her greatness (which is not all in the past, BTW). You want to really jump on a skier for the Olympics, look at the reigning SG queen from Switzerland who got knocked off the podium by a snowboarder...I will say that SG gold medal winner skied like a maniac who didn't seem to care too much about staying alive, guess she didn't really have anything to lose and just went all out on the edge of staying in control. Crazy stuff like that makes the Olympics fun, remember Wild Bill Johnson nearly biting it on his jumps in Sarajevo and hanging on for gold in the DH?
The NHL refused to take a break for the Olympics this year, which definitely ruined the chances of the US and Canadian teams. You look at how many of the Winter Olympic medals are for sports that are totally marginal in the US like XC skiing, bobsled, skeleton, luge, ski jumping, biathlon, etc. and it makes complete sense that we get stomped by Norway and Germany in the medal count. The US does extremely well in "trick" skiing and boarding because those sports are wildly popular here...the ones that shock me are ski racing (hundreds of active programs in the US) and figure skating (also very popular in many parts of the country), and it's totally amazing to me that we don't have seem to have a man who is really a force in WC skiing other than the aging GS specialist Ted Ligety.
