Olympics Previews

With the football season now over, we have decided to turn our attention to the next big upcoming event in sports: the Winter Olympics. The first Winter Games that really stick out to us in our memory are the 1994 games in Lillehammer. For those whose Olympic memory doesn’t stretch back that far, that was the year of the Tanya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan scandal. It was almost a script that could have been written by Vince McMahon. Before the Olympics, Hardings boyfriend clubbed Kerrigan with a lead pipe (the same one that may or may not have killed Mr. Body). Many thought Kerrigan wouldn’t be able to skate at the Olympics, but she came out and won Silver while Harding choked to an 8th place finish and was later banned from competitive figure skating. Dan Jansen also avenged his previous disappointment in speed skating by finally bringing home a gold medal. After the games in ’94, IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch proclaimed them, “the greatest winter games ever.”

Could this year’s games be even better? It’s hard to beat a WWE-like script headlined by two American figure skaters, but this year’s slew of athletes, both American and with ties to Pittsburgh (such as Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Marc-Andre Fleury) will make for some thrilling events. Americans have opportunities this year in some events, like Nordic Combined, where they have never fared well thanks to some rising stars on the international stage. Downhill skier Lindsey Vonn could become a household name. She has been called, “the next Michael Phelps.”

With the opening ceremonies set for Friday night, we’re teaming up with Cory from the Three Rivers Burgh Blog to preview all of the events before the games begin. As we’ve started to write these previews, we realized that we really didn’t know as much as we thought about some of these events (like Curling), so we’re going to try to provide both a fun and educational previews. As always, we’ll throw in some predictions, but since we don’t know a whole lot about some of the sports, don’t take our advice to your bookies. We’ll be posting both here and over at the Three Rivers Burgh Blog, so stay tuned to both of us as we get closer to the games!

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Olympics Previews

Alan Draper

Alan Draper

Alan Draper