<p>Did not watch, heard a luge dude died though. :(</p>
<p>The IOC blames the death of the luge competitor on him alone.</p>
<p>Total minutes of winter olympics watched: 0</p>
<p>What events have occurred so far?</p>
<p>USA wins gold and bronze in women’s mogul!</p>
<p>Necessary bump because the finals from the Short Track events that started on Wednesday are in 30 minutes. I’m really psyched for the relay - so intense. 45 laps of non-stop excitement.</p>
<p>EDIT: I take that back, it’s just the Men’s 1000m and Women’s 1500m. Still should be very exciting!</p>
<p>Petra Majdic is amazing. She fell into a ravine and broke four ribs, then came back to win a bronze medal in cross-country skiing. With four broken ribs. Yeah.</p>
<p>Simon Ammann is also pretty amazing. He’s basically the Shaun White of ski jumping because he’s just so incredibly far above everyone else.</p>
<p>Chinese aerial skiers are absolutely amazing. Must be that gymnastics background. 
I also admire Andy Kapp of the German curling team.</p>
<p>I don’t admire John Shuster, though he performed well today (Jason Smith was amazing in their win vs. Sweden). And Apolo Ohno - Wow! Was that semi-final today close or what? I feel like JR Celski got kind of robbed considering the Canadian guy grabbed onto him as he fell. He should have gotten advanced via the Canadian’s DQ. W/e, bobsledding on now.</p>
<p>Is there video of the woman falling into the ravine? I didn’t hear about that.</p>
<p>And yeah, Simon Ammann is amazing. His first jump today was MONSTROUS.</p>
<p>THis thread got me thinking. Is it too late (if I’m 17) to start a sport and become an Olympian? LOL ive always wished I started a sport early and stuck with it…</p>
<p>For certain sports, you basically have to start at a very young age. Others, like curling and volleyball, you could probably start even into middle age and possibly become good enough to go to the Olympics, given enough dedication.</p>
<p>volleyball? I would think that, for the most part, requires a somewhat youngish age. </p>
<p>it seems like alot more winter olympic athletes are older than the summer olympic athletes. This is probably due to the nature of the sports. It’ll be interesting to see where snowboarding goes, considering it’s hasn’t really been around for too long. I wonder how old the athletes will be when they decide to retire…</p>
<p>I did think it was interesting that Plushenko retired, and then came back to skating, and still performed great.</p>
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<p>The idea that you could start playing volleyball at middle age and make the Olympics is, with all due respect, ridiculous. In fact, no matter when you start it’s not really possible to continue into middle age.</p>
<p>That being said, you could probably start mid to late teens simply because it’s so much more dependent on athleticism than most other sports. Kind of like basketball, unless you’re freakishly gifted it doesn’t matter how much skill you have.</p>
<p>You guys theres no point in padding them. At those speeds you are dead no matter what. They ended up padding them but it was mainly a PR stunt because of the public backlash if they did “nothing” even though it doesnt improve the athlete’s safety in the slightest. And just on a sidenote, Im actually at the Winter Olympics right now and am gonna see men’s bobsledding tomorrow. Hoping for a German Gold and Silver. Deutchland uber alles!</p>
<p>Yeah, the pads wouldn’t have much effect on the deceleration time, which is the only thing that matters.</p>
<p>I don’t think 17 is too late to become an olympic athlete (at least winter). There are many athletes in it now who picked up their sport at our age (We have a bobsledder in my state from Farmington, CT who picked it up around 17 and is one of the top in the world). You could probably do bobsled or curling. And if you are really desperate, practice hockey for a couple years, then get citizenship in a country like Bulgaria, assuming you are a woman, and join their national team. There’s only like 30 women who play hockey in the whole country, and all of them make the team. In qualifiers for the Olympics in 2008, they lost 41-0 to Italy (in front of 45 in an arena in Latvia), 30-1 to Croatia (again in front of 45), then 82-0 to Slovakia (in front of 37 people). There’s video from it on YouTube - the Bulgarian team can barely skate.</p>
<p>LOL^^. so there is still hope :-P. although im not a woman so bulgaria is a no go :-(…haha. bobsled looks really fun…but i did see a bunch of crashes on tv last night lol.</p>
<p>I love curling. I don’t really get it, but I think it’s awesome. Jason Smith was awesome yesterday.</p>
<p><3333 Ryan Miller (+ Brian Rafalski!)</p>
<p>Also - <a href=“http://www.lamebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/olmpic3.png[/url]”>http://www.lamebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/olmpic3.png</a></p>
![http://www.lamebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/olmpic3.png[/url]](http://www.lamebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/olmpic3.png%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
<p>See the rest of you in hell who laughed at Andrew’s comment :)</p>
<p>I didn’t even know that ice dancing was a sport.</p>
<p>Shouldn’t be in the Olympics (no figure skating should be), but I’d like to take the time to just say that Tanith Belbin is pretty hot.</p>
<p>I’m fond of figure skating, I just don’t find ice dancing to be as preferable to watch.</p>