Olympics Update - Ice Dancing Medals and Plenty Of Spandex

Tonight I caught the finals in Olympic Ice Dancing. This sport has been evolving greatly over the past twenty years, to the point where these days there are a lot more creative costumes and routines and a lot fewer guys in greasy ponytails. I always make sure to watch for the quality of the side-by-side twizzles. The announcer told me to.

Two of the Ice Dance pairs are University of Michigan students. Meryl Davis and Charlie White went into the free dance with a good chance of winning a gold medal. Charlie recently said that about the only thing that could top a Michigan football game would be winning a medal at the Olympics.

The other couple, Emily Samuelson and Evan Bates (Evan is also a native Ann Arborite) never had a realistic shot at a top three finish, but they looked great and turned in a personal best. It kind of makes you wonder if the U of M should consider a establishing Department of Feathers and Sequins.

To make it more interesting, the Canadian team of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir actually live here in Southeastern Michigan and train with Davis and White at the Arctic Edge Ice Arena in Canton. While all this local connection is very cool, that is not really what kept me glued to the screen. And it's not that I am not a particularly big fan of ice dancing; I have never watched so much as a single twizzle that did not get twizzed on Olympic ice.

No, just as long as the five rings are involved I would be willing to sit, transfixed, and cheer at the television through seven-hours of  pairs snow shoveling. And in the end, even if the winners are Plntzk and Smrtz Gmrnzkck of Kzlykyszstan, when they get their gold medals and the Kzlykyszstan national anthem is played, I always get a little bit choked up.

After all, I just watched the Gmrnzkck brothers write a whole new page in the history of competitive driveway slush chucking.

So I find myself following some pretty strange Olympic sports. We have "Freestyle Aerials," in which skiers rocket up a ramp that throws them fifty feet in the air, flip around furiously for about three seconds, then try to land in the snow with as few shattered bones and dislocated joints as possible.

Then there is "Snowboard Cross" and, for the first time in the Winter Olympics, "Ski Cross." These are exciting events which basically add up to racing down the hill while you participate in a high speed fist fight.

I also watch the less extreme sports like Ski Jumping (skinny Europeans in spandex with huge jump skis), Cross-country Skiing (skinny Europeans in spandex with skinny cross-country skis, cruising through the woods and eating granola bars), Curling (Canadians in golf shirts with brooms), and Biathlon (skinny Europeans in spandex with skinny cross-country skis, cruising through the woods with guns).

Then there are the speed skating events (enormous thighs and spandex-o-rama - they even wear spandex hoods!) and "sliding" events like Luge, Skeleton and Bobsled (trust me on this, there are quite a few bobsledders who would be a lot better off wearing almost anything other than spandex).

The payoff at the end of this particular evening of obsessive spectating was that Davis and White wound up with a well-deserved Olympic silver medal. Virtue and Moir, those Canadians from Canton, won the gold.

And I got a little bit choked up when they played "O Canada" for a couple of kids who were having the best night of their young, hard-working lives.

Copyright © 2010, Michael Ball  

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