I wouldn’t normally be watching people in weird costumes dancing around an ice rink to over dramatic music, but it is the Winter Olympics. I’ve been watching all kinds of sports I’d never normally take an interest in and lunch time topics at work have tended to revolve around techniques for winning at Skeleton Bob. It’s like when Big Brother or the World Cup of even Wimbledon is on, it just gives everyone some kind of shared context to talk about.

It doesn’t even seem to matter too much that we (as in the British team) are rubbish. If there is someone getting disqualified for the wrong sized skis, or crashing their bobsleigh, it’ll be us. That just seems to add to the entertainment somehow. Our man in the Skeleton event (Dr Ice I believe they call him) even made his own sledge, where as the Germans have some finely engineered BMW device.

We are lucky to have the BBC covering the events here though. The one thing they can do really well are big events like this, even if they do use the same old commentators they’ve had for the last 100 years. It’s great to have continuous coverage without a single advert anywhere to be seen. I can’t wait till the Summer, the World Cup is going to be even better and we have a chance to do well.

• I haven’t really been too into the Olympics lately. I remember when I used to look forward to the opening ceremony and even sitting through all the countries’ athletes marching into the stadium. I guess I’ve sort of outgrown it? I felt bad not looking forward to these winter games, and I even felt myself scoffing at Michelle Kwan for even trying to compete with an injury because it meant some little kid had to stay home (but I guess now that little kid gets to live her dream, so karma works out in the end).

  I do rather fancy that biathlon thing though. There’s just something about cross-country skiing up a hill and then having to shoot at targets. I actually screamed at the TV during yesterday’s 12.5k event.

  Comment by Curling rocks! — February 21, 2006 @ 5:27 am