sochi-olympics Page 10 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Men's Halfpipe Final Ends In Disaster Of Gnarly Wrecks
Shaun White was unable to defend his back-to-back gold medals in men's halfpipe today, and in fact the American extreme sport superstar finished out of the medals entirely despite having the top score coming out of the prelims. He wasn't the only snowboarder to falter, though; the piece-of-shit Soch...


Where Olympic NHLers Are Coming From
16 Wins has put together this animated infographic showing each NHL team's contributions to Olympic rosters. I'd prefer an interactive version that lets me actually stop and look at each nation, but I get the idea....

Japan Ties Russia With Knuckle Puck, Celebrates With Bow
The Japanese women almost had an upset brewing when they tied Russia early in the third period on this fluttering puck from the right point. Ayaka Toko floated the puck over four people, three of them Russian, before it dove down between goaltender Anna Prugova's glove and pads. It's basically an ...

Great Britain Demolished The U.S. With An Olympic Curling Record
You only get eight stones in each end of curling. So how often does a team score seven points in an end, as Great Britain did against the U.S. in Sochi? It's rare at the lowest levels of competition, and until today, when it went down in the fourth end of a 12-3 Team GB win, had never happened at t...

Why It Took 90 Years For Women's Ski Jumping To Make The Olympics
The first measured ski jump was explicitly a show of manhood. In 1809, the story goes, a lieutenant in the Norwegian military launched himself 9.5 meters through the air "to show his soldiers what a courageous fellow he was." The sport that grew out of that jump was likewise a test of manliness—far ...

Canadian Coach Comes To Rescue Of Russian With Broken Ski
A nice display of sportsmanship in today's cross-country skiing men's sprint semifinal, after Russian Anton Gafarov crashed early in the race and broke one ski. He awkwardly soldiered on, falling repeatedly, and it appeared as if he wouldn't be able to make it to the finish line in front of the home...

Al Michaels Makes Up Curling Betting Line, Places Wager On Air
If there's one thing we know about Al Michaels, it's that he's not afraid to talk about sports gambling on the air. During a segment on NBCSN this morning, Michaels got to chatting about curling with Rebecca Lowe, and he couldn't resist the urge to put a little money on the Great Britain-USA matchu...

Let's Relive Mary Carillo's Great American Badminton Rant
If you've watched any of NBC's Olympic coverage, you've probably found yourself enjoying the work of Mary Carillo, whose woman-on-the-scene reports are one of the more enjoyable parts of the network's coverage of the games. But Carillo's never been better than she was at the 2004 summer games, when...

American Lugers Not Happy With Gay Rights Group's Viral Luge Video
Above is a spot by the Canadian Institute of Diversity and Inclusion, taking advantage of the close man-on-man contact in doubles luge to make a statement about Russia's record on gay rights. The Internet loves it! Actual Olympic lugers, not so much....

Russians Have Horrible Time In Men's Free Sprint Final
In the men's cross country sprint finals, Russian skier Anton Gafarov broke his ski and gave us one of the sadder images we've seen so far as he hobbled across the course with his ski flapping around. It later caused him to completely wipe out. Then, at the end of the race, Russia's Sergey Ustiugov...

Leave Bob Costas Alone!
I have had my share of fun goofing on Bob Costas over the years. He is NBC's resident nostalgia elf, and every Sunday night during football season he climbs up on his big-boy chair and arranges himself in that self-satisfied, half-canted way of his and delivers unto you, the common folk, a halftime...

Russian Olympian Who Tweeted Racist Photo Of Obama Says She Was Hacked
Irina Rodnina, decorated figure skater and member of the Russia's State Duma (lower house), was one of two people chosen to light the Olympic cauldron at the opening ceremony. She immediately came under fire for a doctored photo she had tweeted in September. Now she's apologized, but not for what yo...

Russian Skater Gets Away With False Start Thanks To Broken Starter Pistol
Ekaterina Lobysheva is a veteran Russian speed skater, but everything about her run during today's 500m prelims in Sochi today was amateur hour—from the broken starter pistol that let her get away with a second, disqualifying false start, to the broken ice that made her wipe out at the end....

Let's Watch Mary Carillo And Bob Costas Drink Vodka Together
We've been systematically ignoring NBC's "Olympic Late Night" coverage, mostly because by the time it airs the events it covers are a day old and, at the same time, there is actual live Olympics competition happening. Maybe we should be watching it more closely....


Fake Luger Profile Is A Perfect Parody Of The Olympic Hype Machine
With the Olympics comes the endless torrent of misty-eyed, soft-focus TV profiles of the various athletes competing in the games. If you're someone who's ever been annoyed at how hard those profiles have to work to find a compelling angle, this video is for you....

Speed Skaters Have Gotten A Lot Faster Since 1924
Similar to what The New York Times did for the 100m dash in 2012, The Wall Street Journal has developed a great graphic to show just how much faster the top speed skaters have gotten over the years. The still above is part of an animation pitting every male 500m gold medalist against each other; the...