As I mentioned
yesterday while the UK's Channel 4 (C4) are broadcasting around six hours of
live para-Olympic coverage a day those six hours are between 06:00 and 12:00.
Personally I'm not really awake and in the mood to watch sport until around
11:00. Plus C4's 30 minute (17 minutes + adverts) evening review show is just
useless. C4 are webcasting a lot of the other events on their website but
having seen the chaos I can cause watching livestreams of UNFCCC meetings I
prefer not to use that service. As a result I'm only really getting glimpses of
what is going on rather then the full story.
That said the big
story of the day at the alpine venue has once again been the weather. After the
heat of the past couple of days today we got fog. That is of course what happens
when warm, moist air meets cold ground. So although it is really considered
assumed knowledge I'm sure delegates at the UNFCCC meeting in Bonn could have
found something to inspire a discussion about the differences between surface
temperature and air temperature at various levels of cloud cover. That should
help put people who ranted and raved about the surface temperature anomaly in
the UNFCCC's last big report in their place.
While they probably weren't
too bothered about what caused the fog competitors had no choice other then to
be concerned about the fog because it caused multiple delays and the eventual
postponement of the Super-Combined event. I actually found this quite interesting
because while there are three disciplines of skiing at the games (Sitting,
individual, visually impaired) it is the visually impaired event that has
received the most attention in the UK at least. The reason why we refer to
"visually impaired" rather then "Blind" is because there are
actually three levels of visual impairment. There are "B1's" who are
near enough totally blind. Then there are "B2's" who have a less then
5* field of vision and can only recognise a moving object at less then 1 metre.
Finally there are "B3's" who have between 5* and 30* field of vision
and can recognise a moving object at over 1 metre. Visibility at the alpine
venue today has be hovering between B2 and B3 rather highlighting just how
impressive visually impaired skiing actually is.
Rather proving my
point about the para-Olympics requiring a delicate touch TeamGB seems to have
spent today trying to work out how they managed to win their first ever gold
medal in the visually impaired Super-G event yesterday. Firstly their medal
winner Kelly Gallagher and her guide Charlotte Evans crashed out in the Super-Combined. Then TeamGB's wheelchair Curling team
- the other big prospect - recorded a shock defeat against Finland before
recovering to defeat Norway. In both incidents the question seemed to be;
"Are you letting us win?"
The big event of the
day though was Russia versus TeamUSA in the Ice Sledge Hockey which is
essentially just Ice Hockey for proper psychopaths. Astonishingly C4 were not
planning on even providing a webcast of this game. Fortunately though the fog and the
cancellation of the Super-Combined left them with a gap in their schedule allowing them
to show it. With the men's Ice Hockey at the Olympics turning out to be
something of a damp squib there was a lot of speculation how TeamUSA would
conduct themselves in this match up. Things started well with the US offering
up some trash talk overnight.Essentially this involved an incident at the US
National Hockey League (NHL) match between the Dallas Stars and the Columbus Blue Jackets in which the Star's Rich Peverley collapsed with heart trouble causing the match to be abandoned.
This was a reference
to the death in the UK of Secretary General of the Rail, Maritime and Transport
workers (RMT) Union Bob Crow due to a suspected heart attack at just 52.
Representing workers on the London Underground Crow is known to members of the
Olympic family due to his threats to shut down London Underground during the
2012 Summer Olympics which would have had a crippling effect on the games.
Possibly as punishment for that London's Mayor Boris Johnson is planning to
close all Underground ticket offices making many RMT members redundant. As part
of a dispute that has seen the RMT take strike action newspapers and radio
stations loyal to Johnson have been mounting almost daily personal attacks on
Crow. Along with the fact the Labour Party has just broken off its historical
ties with the trade union movement and the Sochi games highlighting the fact that
Crow's brand of militant socialism is a thing of the past it is fair to say
that Crow has been under a lot of stress recently. Somehow I doubt he enjoyed his recent 'holiday' to Brazil.
The Peverley incident
was supposed to put pressure on Russia ahead of hockey by making clear that the
US already knew about Crow's death whether the Russian's did or not. Also while
I don't think there is anything suspicious about Crow's death it is not unheard
of for trade union leaders who cause governments trouble to be assassinated with the US
and the UK tending to prefer the more discreet hands-off approach that was seen
in the death of Dr David Kelly.
As for the hockey
game itself it struck me a quite a genuine sporting contest although I hesitate
to use the word "clean." There was a penalty call against TeamUSA's
Schaus in the second period that I still need explaining and although Russia's
first goal came during a rarely seen double power play in the first period on
that occasion Schaus knew exactly what he'd done. Russia's second was actually an own goal
but that struck me as a ricochet that the TeamUSA's Roybal knew very
little about and the judges agreed awarding the goal to Shikhov. Things got
exciting at the start of the third period - just as I was making by usual
Tuesday trip to the supermarket - when TeamUSA got a goal back. TeamUSA then
had an equaliser disallowed for highly questionable reasons. This seemed direct
payback for the goal Russia had inexplicably disallowed against TeamUSA during
the men's hockey preliminary match at the Olympics.
With things finishing
2-1 to Russia they topped the group and will now go on to play Norway in the
semi-final. Finishing second TeamUSA will now go on to play Canada. That match
has got me really torn because while every neutral wants to see TeamUSA and
Russia meet up again in the gold medal match I feel I'm under an obligation to
root for Canada.
Although it's not
strictly speaking related to the para-Olympics in the interests of keeping
things tidy I should point out that Rihanna is currently in the UK with Drake
and the pair are likely to remain there until at least the end of the month.
Last night (10/3/14) the pair attended a nightclub in London where Rihanna was
photographed wearing an interesting necklace. This Chanel A/W 2014 orginal
involved an industrial sized chain and an over-sized padlock. I like to think
that Rihanna chose to wear this in protest against her current set of
circumstances. The chain around the neck would be an obvious reference to
slavery whilst the over-sized padlock would represent the dead-weight or "mill-stone" around
Rihanna's neck that this faux relationship with Drake is proving to be. Sadly
though though experience tells me that it was far more likely that Rihanna was
simply aggressively showing off the gift that Chanel had given her without
recognising the significance of said gift.
20:15 on 11/3/14 (UK date).
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