The weekend willpresent much Winter sports watching for Olympics fans. Saturday, Men's Curling heats up with roundrobin nations play. Men's short trackspeed skating will also have several heats of quarterfinals. Freestyle skiing has several men's aerialevents and slopestyle in qualifying rounds. Today will also contest the finals of the men's ski jump large hillcompetition. Alpine Skiing will includesome men's giant slalom competition.
Men's Ice Hockey alsohas several rounds, with Russia facing the USA, and Slovenia facing Slovakia. The USA currently leads their group, withRussia in second place, so today's game should determine group leader. With the exclusion of current NHL players,the Olympics have been a good opportunity to watch the top hockey prospects,certain to be drafted in the NHL, from throughout the world. Thesegames have also given second tier and semi retired players from countries likeCanada to play on the world stage. The KoreanMen's Hockey team has 7 North Americans, all of whom have been naturalizedcitizens of their new country. Currently, Norway leadsthe overall medal count, but is outclassed by Germany, who currently have 9gold medals compared to six for Norway. Norwaycurrently has 17 total medals, six gold, Germany has 15, 9 gold, Canada has 13medals, 4 gold, The Netherlands has 12 total medals, 5 gold and the good oldUSA rounds out the top 5 with 8 total medals 5 gold, currently. Our naked Tongan, PitaTaufatofua, managed to cross the finish line in his 15 km event. Fortunately, this time, he was fully dressed, and completed the course without a fall. The Olympic cross-country skier said tohimself, "not in front of everyone. Don't give me my firstfall." He finished about 26 minutesbehind gold medalist Dario Cologna, but finished before the course was closed,and he wasn't even in last place. To getto the Olympics, he travelled with fellow competitor German Madrazo, of Mexico,to so many qualifying races, and failed at each one, until the last one inIceland, where they both qualified. "Pitaand I spent two months, fighting and fighting every day," Madrazo said."One day we were completely out of money and we had one last chocolatebar. There was nothing left and we split that chocolate bar and said, 'Wellbrother, we live to fight another day.'" He finished after his friend Pita, who greeted him at the finish linewith a hug, and helped to hoist him aloft. Another red lantern comradewas, not surprisingly, Morocco's Samir Azzimani, who competed in downhill skiing in the 2010 Olympics, but who made the difficult transition to cross country. Azzimani, once known as the "couscous rocket," also competed with a lotof heart. -- Posted By Rex to SR at 2/17/2018 12:23:00 AM -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "omnisport" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/omnisport. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
