Olympic Film Festival: Yuna Kim At Vancouver, 2010

Press Clippings: With Women’s Figure Skating now moving to center stage as the Sochi Olympics wind down, it’s a perfect time to look at Yuna Kim’s Gold Medal Winning performance from Vancouver in 2010. There has been so much attention focused on the American women (Ashley Wagner and Gracie Gold) and Russia’s Julia Lipnitskaia,  that perhaps the experts are overlooking Yuna’s chances at Sochi. Not a good idea, as this video will show.

Olympic Briefing: Late Night Headlines

Press Clippings from the Olympic News Wire:  18 February 2014.  The news you need before tomorrow’s competitions.
Russian Beats Norway, 4-0. 
Battle of the Dutch Speed Skaters: Bergsma Beats favored Kramer in 10,000 Meters .
Tina Maze of Slovenia rocks the Giant Slalom Course for her Second Sochi Gold Medal. Mikaela takes 5th in Olympic Debut.
American David Wise Takes the Skiing Half-Pipe Gold in Miserable Conditions. 
 

Olympic Film Festival: Lindsey Vonn Downhill at Vancouver

Press Clippings:  The U.S. is missing Lindsey Vonn, one of our very best women skiers, at the Sochi Olympics. Vonn suffered a pair of back to back knee injuries in training that took her out of the 2014 games, but even though she’s not at Sochi, it’s always good to remember just how great and fierce a competitor Lindsey Vonn can be. Here’s her downhill run at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and it’s a thing of aggression and beauty. Enjoy.

Olympic Briefing: Ski Cross

Press Clippings: Ski Cross is considered a “freestyle skiing” discipline (i.e. like slope style, aerials) even though it also requires the skills typically associated with Alpine Skiing (expert navigation down a course and timed competition against other skiers). A ski cross course includes natural downhill runs combined with jumps and other man-made obstacles.  On television, it’s most famous for the runs pitting four skiers against one another down the course; this part of the sport has a tendency to very closely resemble a roller derby on snow, although the rules forbid intentionally jostling or hitting other competitors, theoretically. The sport looks wild and dangerous and it is; already at Sochi, a Russian athlete has suffered a very severe back injury. It  Read up on ski cross at this wiki     and then take a look at these two videos, one terrific POV (we love POV) video  shot in Utah and another of the Nissan ski cross tour.

Olympic Briefing: Schedule 17 February 2014

Press Clippings: A schedule of events for Monday’s day of competition at the Sochi Olympics, from the BBC. Times are GMT; adjust times for your own location. Check back here for updates and videos. Special Thanks to the BBC for developing this very comprehensive listing. Also-Please note that this schedule does not necessarily reflect the postponements of the Alpine events at Rosa Khutor due to fog.

The Olympic Film Festival

 

 

The Olympics are in full swing and we’re at the mid-point of the games. We’ve all seen enough know to know the big stories and big players. Through the Olympic Briefing series of Posts, we’ve been able to highlight the key elements of each of the big competition groups in the games, the concept being the more you know about each sport, the more you will enjoy watching it.
In the process of producing the Olympic Briefings, we’ve discovered a lot of really great videos on Winter Olympic sports, Alpine sports, snowboarding, bobsledding, and other elements that make up or contribute to the Winter Games. Early on, one of the concepts that was developed was to produce an online Olympic Film Festival. We just kept turning up film after film, video after video, of great material that should be shared. If you’ve followed this blog, you’ve already seen one of the greats: the 125th Anniversary video of the Cresta Run. But there are more, lots more and so we’ve gathered them up, in no particular order, and either put them up or put links to them up, so that you enjoy–in one place–the very best in video and film on the games, athletes, sports, and drama of the Winter Olympics.
Also, please note, that some of these videos are one-click to play and others link back to the mother ship that hosts them (mostly YouTube, although Vimeo is another great go-to source). The programming list is long, and so the Festival Entries will be spread out over several days. A  couple of suggestions: play this material full screen and, if all possible, run it through your flat screen and hi-fi system. Some of this material–especially the POV (point of view) sequences are very involving and total immersion is highly recommended. And binge watch because we’ll binge post for you. If you like what you see, drop us a note. All emails are answered. Click in, sit back, and enjoy.

 

Olympic Briefing: Curling

Press Clippings:  Curling is–surprise–one of the most popular Olympic sports,  even though it may not be one of the most widely or instantly understood. The best analogy for curling is shuffleboard. The idea is simple: slide a highly polished stone  (known as a “rock”) across a sheet of ice and into a target area. But like most things that appear simple, it can be complicated, primarily because of the strategies that are involved in posting a winning game (Curling has been called chess on ice). One of the most unique aspects of curling is the use of brooms to sweep the path ahead of the stone as it’s moving, to both ease the path and slightly influence it (it’s possible to curve the rock as it slides toward the target).  One aspect of curling makes it an ideal winter sport for our greenhouse world: you don’t need snow for the sport. You don’t even need cold weather. You don’t even need to be outside. The game is played inside on a sheet of ice and so any country could develop a curling team–even one located right along the equator (we’re a little surprised that snow-deprived countries haven’t picked up on this and trained themselves into contention).  Background info on Curling is available from our friends at Wikipedia  and, of course, we have sorted out some great videos to get you up to speed and fully informed on the sport. Here’s a great piece on learning curling from the Official Olympic Series of videos and, with that background in hand, you can then appreciate the video on the “Top Ten Curling Shots”  ,  Finally, if you really, really, really,  want deep background, a piece from the Canadian Curling Association on the making of a sheet of curling ice (tip: it’s a long one at 22 minutes) should fill your need for information on how to make your own curling venue.   One other point worth noting: curling has a rep as a highly social sport so party animals have yet another reason to take it up.