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| 2:26 | 0:57 | 0:07 |
| Events | Ads | Fluff |
* Matt Lauer is out and Meredith Viera is in! Bob is still out of action. I guess they trust her even less than Matt, as we waste no time in shuffling off to the skeleton track. Is that what it takes to get more events? Maybe Costas' eye infection isn't such a bad thing after all!
* Run three and we start with Britain's Lizzy Yarnold and America's Noelle Pikus-Pace. They're still one-two after it's over. Lizzy's got a sizeable lead. Run four just ahead!
* Run four, and Katie Uhlaender takes the lead! Temporarily, anyway. Heeeyyy! The first Russian finishes slower. The second Russian... auuuggh!! She finishes four-hundreths ahead of Katie. Now to Pikus-Pace. She did it! How do I know? Because as soon as she finished her run, she lept over the camera pen to get to her family and scream "we did it" to them. Now, in this case, "it" is a silver medal, not a gold, but if that didn't tug at your emotions just a little bit, then your heart is colder than the skeleton track.
* On the flip side, Katie is heartbroken, finishing in fourth by four-hundreths of a second. It's easy to sympathise. Imagine working hard at something for years only to be one-hundreth of a second too slow on four separate runs. At 80 miles per hour, four-one-hundreths of a second is about four-and-a-half feet. Had Katie been one body length faster in four runs, she would have won bronze. Ouch.
* To the mountain for the downhill portion of the men's super combined. Let's look for some crashes! Did I say that out loud? I guess that's my inner NASCAR speaking out. I meant, let's look for some fast runs! Yeah, that's it.
* No crashes, nothing spectacular. Just run of the mill athletes careening down the hill at 80 miles per hour. Ho hum.
* To the Iceberg for the men's free skate. First up, American Jeremy Abbott. Hey! Maybe he'll crash again like last night! See? The NASCAR instinct doesn't only kick in during skiing. Jeremy finishes mistake free. You know, he's pretty good when he's not breaking his ribs on the ice. He needs better than a 144 to move into first place, and he gets it! A 162! Now, if every other skater falls down, he can win the gold.
* Patrick Chan of Canada gets some fluff. He plays golf to relax, and that's a good thing, because if he had to make a living at it I'd be afraid for him. His silver medal in Vancouver prompted him to work on his quad jump and now he likes it so much that he does it all the time. Yeah? If you love it so much, Patrick, why don't you marry it? Meh. There's really no way to talk smack about figure skating.
* Back to the mountain for the slalom portion of the men's super combined. Whereas the downhill rewards reckless abandon, the slalom rewards OCD-like precision. I can see how Bode Miller qualifies for the first trait, but I don't know if he has the second one in him. Bode makes all the gates, but takes a few of them wide and probably won't medal.
* But how did American Ted Ligety do? In his words, "choke." It's not often you hear an athlete be quite so frank about his performance.
* The favorite now, Croatia's Ivica Kostelic, whose father was the one who set up the course. His sister, four-time gold medalist Janica Kostelic, waits at the bottom. NBC's announcers are saying he should have an advantage because he knows his father's course tendencies. Does that mean if he loses he'll blame his father? That's a double-edged sword there. Oh! He doesn't finish in first! Your fault, dad! Even worse, his more decorated sister is at the bottom of the course laughing at her second-place brother. Man, won't this be an uncomfortable topic around the dinner table.
* Back to ice skating, Joseph Gordon-Levitt... uh... I mean, Jason Brown is excited to be at the Olympics and to take it all in. It's all so awesome! Well, except for the part about this being a minute of fluff.
* Spain's Javier Fernandez is dancing to Spy Hunter... uh... I mean, Peter Gunn. I like him already.
* The next skater, Yuzuru Hanyu, was at practice in Sendai, Japan in 2011 when the earthquake and tsunami hit. Really? How did this not get put into a fluff piece? Tsunami-surviving Olympic ice skater? That's a fluff natural! Unfortunately for Yuzuru, his routine isn't as lucky as he was. He falls twice. I'm guessing it has something to do with all of those jewels lining the left arm his outfit. They probably threw him off balance. Currently, he's still in first place, but his lead is now small enough to be overcome.
* But not by Patrick Chan, who has apparently decided that falling is the way to go. Let's see his scores. Nope. Still behind Hanyu.
* Peter Liebers of Germany will be skating to Who Wants To Live Forever. If you deserved to win just by song choice, I'd pick him. Unfortunately, that's not how it works. You have to stay on your feet, too, and he's not good enough at that. I guess that's only fitting. If he won Olympic gold, he would be immortalized, and who wants to live forever anyway?
* And now, Jason Brown of the US, who can get the bronze if he skates cleanly. Uh-oh. Stumble, stumble, stumble. Scott Hamilton doesn't think he's going to pull this out. Let's find out. Well, Scott was correct. Ninth place.
* Just ten minutes left in the broadcast, what are they going to fill this with? There's not enough time to show another sport, so let's interview some ice skaters! After that, let's have Scott Hamilton talk about the difficulties that ice skaters face, with all their jumps, and quads, and -sniff- it's just so difficult! Geez, couldn't we watch five minutes of biathlon or something?
* Oh wait, it's a one-minute fluff promo for ice dancing. Not better, NBC.
* Back in the Fortress of Solitude, Meredith Viera is talking to Noelle Pikus-Pace about her Lambeau leap into the stands to hug her family. It's a good interview, but it's really just a recap of her fluff piece. The big difference being, of course, that she's a medal winner now. Good for you, Noelle!
A great night at the skeleton, but both the skiing and skating were anticlimactic. The best news was this night had the least fluff yet! I'm loving me some fluff-free Olympics! Keep it up NBC. See you tomorrow!
