Friday, February 20, 2026

Real medals or participation medals?

If you're not first, you're last, or so certain skiers would have you believe.

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• Men's hockey semi-finals! Canada was losing 2-0 to Finland, but came back and scored the winning goal with 35 seconds remaining. The United States on the other hand destroyed Slovakia, leading 5-0 before some pity goals at the end made it 6-2. So Canada vs. the US on Sunday morning at 7:10 am. Be there or be square!
• Let's start the night with the Men's Aerial final in freestyle skiing. Only the top six make it to the final round, and after round one, no Americans are in the top six. That's not good. Christopher Lillis is going to try to change that on his second jump. He doesn't. He's number seven. How about Derek Krueger? Also no. Eleventh. Connor Curran? Ugh. Bad landing. Twelfth. So you have your choice of two Swiss or four Chinese finalists for the medal round.
• In the medal round, each of the first three skiers is better than the last. The fourth hits his head on the landing. Looks uncomfortable. There's not a very big crowd at this event. I'd say about two or three hundred people watching. Wouldn't you expect more for a medal round? Anyway, jumper number five botches his landing and tumbles head over heels down the hill. The last skier, the leader, Noe Roth of Switzerland, nails it, but he only gets silver. Wang Xindi of China wins gold. And it was only two days after his wife won gold in Women's Aerials. I guess it flies in the family.
• Let's Snoop around Italy! What has he been doing this week? He followed Tina, the mascot. He likes the Italian ice skating coach. He gives a shout-out to the on-ice cameraman for the skating events. While Snoop is an interesting person, but he's only in about half of these clips. This is less like fluff and more like filler.
• It's speed skating time with the Women's 1500M final. First on the ice is Italy's Francesca Lollobrigida. She finishes third, but that probably won't hold up because all the faster skaters are at the end. Canadian Valerie Maltais races fast and moves into first ahead of Femke Kok. And now Ragne Wiklund of Norway gets the lead. The second to last pair has America's Brittany Bowe and the Netherland's Antoinette Rijpma-de Jong. Bowe has never won gold in this event. Can she do it tonight? The drone makes her look fast after the first lap, but she's slowing down a bit. Ugh. She's not going to make it. Rijpma-de Jong moves into first, but Bowe runs out of gas near the end and is in fourth. Miho Takagi of Japan is in the last race. She has ten medals in speed skating. Will this be 11? Dang. She's a third of a second ahead after one lap. The other skater isn't even in the shot with her anymore. She's even faster on lap two. But no! She's too slow on the last lap. She ends up in sixth. It's gold for the Netherlands, again.
• Around the Games! Let's watch some more hockey highlights. Sidney Crosby wasn't playing for Canada today, so maybe that's why they had problems with Finland. In the US-Slovakia game, the biggest problem was telling who was who. Did you like the red, white, and blue American uniforms, or the red, white, and blue Slovakian uniforms? But the US won, and the Team USA players are excited to play Canada.
• It's time again for… THE HOUSE OF SPEED! Leigh Diffey leads us through the first two runs of the Two-Woman Bobsled. The first US sled features Jasmine Jones driven by Kaillie Humphries. She's a really good driver. She almost never hits the sides of the track. She sets a track record and moves into the lead. The next US sled is gold medal Monobobber Elana Meyers Taylor driving Jadin O'Brien down the hill. She doesn't drive as clean a line as Humphries did, so she finishes in fifth.
• How about some bobsled fluff? US pilot Kaysha Love had a special visitor earlier this week. Guess who? It's Snoop! And what is he wearing? If you didn't answer "a jacket with her picture on it" you obviously haven't been paying attention in these Games. He gives her a hug and she loves the jacket. They're going to ride down the hill on plastic sleds. Neither one dies, so that's good.
• Azaria Hill will be riding while Kaysha pilots. They start fast but lose some speed at the top. But she still finishes sixth. Three American teams in the top six after the first run. Not a bad start!
• It's time for the first of three runs in freestyle skiing at the Men's Halfpipe final. Birk Irving is the first American up. But after the first couple of jumps he just pulls out, saving his strength for later. Hunter Hess is next. He was doing great until he crashed. I guess that's what Irving was trying to avoid. Alex Ferreira has a bronze and silver medals in the last two Olympics, but still no gold. He wants it! Don't all the skiers? Anyway, he sort of landed poorly on one of his jumps, but he still finished. Not a good score, though.
• It's time to make yourself hungry watching Stanley Tucci eat. He's at Ristorante Ratana where the chef is making some kind of bean dish. It doesn't look as good as some of the other things that Stanley has been eating this week, but it's still making me hungry.
• Back at the halfpipe, there are a lot of crashes. Have we seen anyone actually make it all the way down? I don't think we have. Maybe Nick Goepper will be the one. Oooooo… no. He crashes on his last jump and loses a ski. Somehow he's still in sixth.
• The last skier of the first round is Canada's Brendan Mackay. He misses a jump, too, so he's out. Of the top eight, only two completed their run through the halfpipe unscathed. Not very good.
• Round two! Birk Irving is up again, and he's much better this time. First place! Very nice! Now Hunter Hess gets his second chance to actually complete a run. Oh no! It was all going so well, then he clipped the edge of the halfpipe while doing a landing and lost a ski. Alex Ferreira is next. He was the best American after the first run, but that was a low bar to clear. But he, too, is much better this time. Now he moves into first. But both are passed by Henry Sildaru of Estonia.
• Nick Goepper is watching some home movies. He's proud of his legacy, but he still doesn't have a gold medal. Fluff.
• And now for his run. It looked good! I don't think it was top three, but it should be close. I was wrong! Third place! Brendan Mackay is last. His last landing kind of skids out. Although everything else was good, that's probably going to cost him. Yep. Eighth.
• NBC is promoting some Olympic athletes. Elena Meyers Taylor. Yay! Jordan Stolz. Yay! Eileen Gu. Traitor.
• Team USA around the Games! The women were in the 1500M Short Track final. Corinne Stoddard of the US won bronze! Why couldn't we see more of that and less of Eileen Gu?
• Back to the bobsled for Kaysha's second run. It was clean and that puts her on top of the leaderboard. Taylor is next, and she OH NO! She gets sideways and bangs into the wall several times at the top of the run. That costs her a lot of speed. She finishes eighth for now and that will probably get worse. Humphries sled is the last to go on run two. I think she's the best driver for the Americans, but is her team the best pushers? They start slow, but it still looks fast when the drone follows them down the track. She's in third place, two tenths behind Laura Nolte, the German leader. That's still in contention for a medal. Taylor's run put her over a second behind the leader. She's probably done.
• It's Event of the Night fluff, with the US halfpipe team talking about how they're family who want to beat each other. Sounds a little dysfunctional, but okay.
• Anyway, first up for the last run of the halfpipe is Birk Irving. It's his best run, but it only gets him to fourth. No medal for him. Hopefully his teammates do beat him. Hunter Hess is next. Nope. Ninth.
• Alex Ferreira fluff. He has a YouTube alter ego called Hotdog Hans. NBC decides it's time for the two to meet. This is very odd. "Hotdog" is Alex dressed up as an old man. So NBC uses a split screen to have Hotdog on the left interviewing Alex on the right. It's actually pretty funny because Hotdog can ask any insulting question he wants and Alex has to deadpan an answer, and Hotdog is talking a lot of smack. "Any gold medals," Hotdog asks? "Bronze and silver," answers Alex. "So, two participation medals then. Good for you." Honestly, it's the best interview I've seen this Olympics. Afterwards, they show how long it takes the makeup artists to get Alex into character. That's a lot of work for one bit, but I'm here for it.
• Now let's see if Hotdog's alter ego can make good on his desire for gold. Oohhhhh! Maybe! He looked really good, and again, by "really good" I mean he didn't fall. Yes! Currently first! Hotdog would be impressed. Maybe. He seemed kind of crotchety.
• Estonia's Henry Sildaru was in first, and now the pressure is on him. His run is very clean. Is that enough to put him back in first? Nope! He's three-quarters of a point short. Still in second. Nick Goepper follows him. OUCH! Nick tried something never done in competition and lands on the top edge of the halfpipe. Crash-wise, it was spectacular. He lost both his skis and slid down the side of the pipe in a heap. The paramedics had to come down and check on him. But he walks off, so I guess it looked worse than it felt.
• Canada's Brendan Mackay is the last skier. Can he knock Alex off the top? It's going to be close. No! Alex Ferreira wins gold. No more participation medals for him!
• Medal count time: Norway is in first because that's what they do, but the US is second.
• Alex Ferreira is at a bar talking to Mike Tirico via Facetime. Or is he? The other times that NBC has done this segment it was clearly a phone taking the video, but this looks like a real video camera. Whatever. It looks great, and Alex is clearly having the time of his life celebrating with his friends. No sign of Hotdog, though.
• And now it's time for his medal ceremony. Does he sing? YES! Great job, Alex. And we even get a cameo by Hotdog at the end, asking "How's that for Olympic glory?" Perfection.
• And what are we going to see for the last half hour of Olympic coverage? Nothing! Because NBC is going to show us their cheerleading show "Stumble" instead. It's like "The Office" except with a junior college cheerleading team. Is anyone else getting tired of single-camera mockumentaries full of whimsical characters? Just me? Okay.

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Tonight didn't have the most fluff overall, but since the broadcast was a half-hour shorter than every night other than the Super Bowl, it was the most fluff per hour. That's not a good way to approach the end of the Games, even if the Hotdog Hans fluff was unusually high quality. Hopefully this isn't a sign of things to come. See you tomorrow!

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