Less than a week before the Winter Olympics in Vancouver now is the time for my preview. Friday is the opening ceremonies on NBC. The marquee events you will see in primetime on NBC starting on Saturday are Figure Skating, Alpine Skiing, and Snowboarding along with Freestyle Skiing. Lindsey Vonn is the biggest favorite of the games for the USA in the Alpine Skiing’s downhill and super-G. She has won the last two World Cup overall titles and leads this years standing. The other athletes to look out for are Shaun White in Snowboarding Half-Pipe. His event is on Wednesday the 17th. Watch the boy fly. Shani Davis is another one the watch, he has dominated the 1,000 and 1,500 meters in long tack Speed Skating in the past two years and no one has come close to his times. The spotlight event of the games is Ladies Figure Skating, this year for the first time in a long time; the US does not have a favorite for a medal in this competition. It will be a wide-open event. Men Figure Skating has medal hopefuls in Johnny Weir and Evan Lysacek. The pair’s Figure Skating is a battle between the team of Ben Agosto and Tanith Belbin against the team that beat them at the national championship last month Meryl Davis and Charlie White. Should be a good battle. Team USA has a chance to medal in a lot of sports for the first time. Erin Hamlin in Woman’s Luge, Tim Burke in Biathlon, Kikkan Randall in Woman’s Cross-Country Skiing and Todd Lodwick, Johnny Spillane and Bill Demong in Nordic Combined. Steve Holcomb has a good change to end a drought since 1948 with out a gold medal in Four-Man Bobsled. His team is peaking at the right time just winning the world cup title in four-man and the overall. Two-Men is the other bobsled discipline. The Nordic Combined team has a very good chance for gold. At last year’s World Championship the USA won all three individual gold medals contested. Johnny and Bill have won World Cup races this year. By the way Nordic Combined is Ski Jumping and Cross-Country Skiing on the same day. Should be fun. Then you have my favorite winter Olympic sport, Curling. Please check it out. Curling is like shuffle board on ice. It will be on USA network most of the two weeks starting Tuesday February 16th, it will also be on CNBC, I hope to post the TV schedule this week. I will also attempt to post the daily TV schedule for the whole Olympics.
In other news, congratulations to the New Orleans Saints for winning the Super Bowl over the Indianapolis Colts. What a great game, 153.4 million viewers watched to make it the most watched show in U.S. television history according to Nielsen Media Research topping the previous mark of 106 million for the series finale of M*A*S*H in 1983.
Wow, that’s a lot of people watching one event at the same time.
Enjoy the Olympics.
Jamie Lazaroff
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