Friday, February 13, 2026

There's no such thing as inevitable.

And no nickname can save you at the Olympics.   

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• Women's hockey kicks off the night with the Team USA beating Italy 6-0. Go for the gold, ladies!
• But for the night's first "live" event, it's the Women's Snowboard Cross. The first heat has American Faye Thelen, a mere 33 years old. You heard 44-year-old Nick Baumgartner, yesterday, Faye. THIRTY-THREE! LET'S GOOOOO! Oooo… nope. Much like Baumgartner, she finished third. I love this sport, and it is built for drone videography. The camera following the boarders down the mountain is spectacular. In the booth, former Snowboard Cross medalist Lindsey Jacobellis is both the analyst and, because her husband is a coach of Australian Josie Baff, she's also a fan. After the race, NBC has some b-roll of Lindsey getting excited in the booth while watching Baff win the gold. That was fun.
• But now it's time for figure skating and the Men's Free Skate. First up is Maxim Naumov of the US. If you missed it before, his parents were killed in the Washington, DC plane crash earlier this year, and he's been dedicating his performances to them. Unfortunately, he's a little shaky tonight. But it is nice seeing him hold up the photo of him with his parents as he gets his score.   
• Andrew Torgashev, eighth after the short program, is the next American to skate. He stumbles once early, but other than that I thought he did really well. Of course, I don't know anything about scoring figure skating, so don't take that prediction to your favorite sports gambling site. He's temporarily in fifth place.
• Boundary Pushers! We're titling our fluff now? Olympian-turned-commentator Shaun White redefined his sport and now he's going to talk about his successors. Sort of. He's also talking about figure skater Ilia Malinin. This whole thing is sort of vague. Why would you have the GOAT of the halfpipe talk vaguely about sports other than snowboarding? That seems like a waste.
• Speaking of snowboarding halfpipe, let's watch some! American Jake Pates has a good run. But he's only one man. Apparently the whole snowboarding population of Japan is here. The Japanese boarders are in first, second, and third after the first round.
• Snoop is going to snowboard. Shaun White is showing him the ropes. Who better? Shaun encourages him to do a tiny jump and twist a little. Doesn't that sound like a snowboard move? Snoop jump twist 420!
• Now Japan has the top FOUR spots and in round two, they're all trying to extend their lead. Yuto Totsuka moves up from second to first.
• Scotty James is watching home movies of his first Olympics on the NBC video wall. He's proud of his younger self! That's a minute of fluff. He then skis down the halfpipe. A minute of excellence. He's in second place, now.
• After two rounds, the top five is Scotty James and the four Japanese teammates.
• Stanley Tucci is in Cortina to get some spaghetti. It's fancy spaghetti, and as he eats with the chef, Tucci says this is the best job he's ever had. Touring Italy and eating, all on someone else's dime? Yeah, that would be hard to beat.
• Around the Games! In Men's Hockey, NHL-player-heavy Canada beats Switzerland 5-1. Women's Curling, US vs Canada, the US wins this round. Men's Speed Skating, 10,000M race. That's long.
• Who's here to watch the Quad God? Dorothy Hamill, Simone Biles, and Brian Boitano! What would he do?
• Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan moves into first place by skating to The Diva Dance from The Fifth Element. So, the skating elements are skating skills, transitions, performance, and composition. The fifth element… is love.
• Now the top two. Yuma Kagiyama of Japan and Ilia Malinin. Yuma is going first. He stumbles but doesn't fall on his first jump. Oooo… but he falls on his second. Not a good start. A little bobble on his third jump, too. Is the pressure getting to him? Another misstep. I don't know how big his lead was over Shaidorov, but if he doesn't pull it together he might not even beat him. He finishes okay, but I think the damage is done. Yep. Kagiyama is in second behind Shaidorov. The path is wide open for Ilia.
• The Quad God is up! Ilia Malinin takes the ice with high expectations and no competition, five minutes from gold. He pulls out of one of his quads, but he lands it okay. Pulls out of another one. But again, he lands it, so that's probably okay. Eek! He falls on the next one, but the one after that he makes. Johnny says, "We said he could win it with mistakes, but how many mistakes." That's not a good sign when Johnny Weir is saying you're in trouble. He had a big lead, but was it big enough? "There's no such thing as inevitable," says Terry Gannon. Ilia looks nervous and upset as he comes off the ice. Tara is now saying that he might fall off the podium completely. That's almost inconceivable, but I have said the only thing I know about skating is that falls are bad and he had a lot of them. Ugh. Eighth place. EIGHTH. I think it's safe to say no one expected that. So that means Mikhail Shaidorov finishes in first place. I guess the fifth element is gold.
• In his post-skate interview, Ilia is still shocked. As we all are.
• Let's all catch our breath and watch some Men's Cross-Country Skiing. Maybe "catching our breath" isn't the right phrase to use when you're talking about cross-country skiing. Regardless, Norway's Johannes Klaebo wins the men's 10K. He now has his eighth career Olympic gold medal.
• How about a medal count? Well, there's one fewer gold for the US than we thought there would be, but the US is still in third.
• Mike talks with Johnny and Tara in the studio about Ilia's performance. They don't think it was anything more than nerves. Tara makes an interesting point that it's hard for someone to live up to being called "The Quad God." It's interesting watching Johnny because his outward appearance is outlandish, but when he gives detailed explanations of the sport of skating, he sounds like the most conservative person in the world. I guess it's true that you're most conservative about the things you know most about. But he gives lots of examples of how when he was skating that the competition always seemed fast compared to the hours and hours of training any skater puts in. And the Olympics seem even faster than other competitions. Both he and Tara are very empathetic, and it's clear that they are just as shocked as we are.

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I don't think Terry planned his line, but it's hard to think of a more perfect slogan for the Olympics. Yes, favorites win most of the time, but it's never a given. Think back to years past and some of your favorite Olympic stories are about athletes who have overcome tremendous odds and beat heavy favorites, like Rulon Gardner or the Miracle on Ice. Well, we just saw the flip side of that. The heavy favorite you wanted to win... losing. It stinks, but it makes you appreciate the people who do win that much more.

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