Day 2
The day started at 5:00a with breakfast at 6:00a. Actually it started at
4:00a. We realized just how far out in the country we were when the
coolest thing happened, we were awaken by a rooster's crow. Once breakfast
was over it was on to the town of Bardonecchia in the mountains where the
snowboarding event would take place.
Scheduled events for the
day were the Men's Half Pipe Qualifications & Finals, Men's Short Track 500m
Qualifications & Finals, Women's Short Track 500m Preliminaries, and the Women's
Short Track 3000m Relay Semifinals.
At
breakfast we met this really nice couple. Mark who is Canadian (we won't
hold that against him :-) and Kristen who is an American. This was
already their third day at the Olympics. They had attended the Opening
Ceremonies and the first day of events. It just so happened that their
first event that morning was the same event we were attending, so we offered to
give them a ride. This would save them the trouble of trying to take two
trains and a bus to get to the venue. The drive to the venue took about
1hr and 25mins. We expected the traffic to be really bad heading out, but
to our surprise there was none. Parking was not a problem since we
had reserved parking, at all the locations we would be visiting, long before the start
of the Olympics.
Snowboarding was on the agenda first...Our First Olympic Event Ever!!
We arrived at the venue with plenty of time to spare. Good thing, because
there was a bit of a line to get in, but nothing like the line to get out.
It took us about 25 minutes to get in and about 1hr & 15mins
to get out...what's wrong with that picture?? We saw some
snowboarders warming up once we got in, the competition was expected to start
soon. Other snowboarders were beginning to make there was to the start.
The
Pipe was in place and everything was ready to go
.
And as you can see, it was a beautiful day for snowboarding.
The polizia (police) was also on the job making sure everything
was secure and safe. Check out their cool vehicles.
The
competition got under way and snowboarders were flying in and out of the pipe.
The Americans started in pretty good shape and finished the
qualification round with all four Americans making it to the finals. Shaun
White was a little shaky in the qualification round and his dad may have been just a
little nervous about the competition, but Shaun came back to soar high above the
clouds to claim the Gold Medal for the United states.
Danny Kass finished in second to claim the Silver Medal and the other two US
snowboarders
finished in 4th and 6th. Not a bad start at all for the US in these
Olympics.
Once snowboarding was over it was back to Torino for the Short
Track Speed Skating competitions. The drive back was again without any
major traffic and no issues with parking since it was reserved.
The
Short Track events took place in the Palavela arena. This is also the
arena where the Figure Skating would later take place. Getting to the
arena was not problem. Once we had parked, we walked to the streetcar stop
which was located just outside of the parking area. We caught the
number 18 streetcar which would make a stop about 1 block over from the arena.
The Americans did not fair to well in the competition on this day. Apolo
Ohno from the US was expected to finish strong, but ran into trouble on the ice
and failed to make it to the finals. But that's ok, we still enjoyed
ourselves and we did our part to support the US team.
One
event in the Short Track we found to be very interesting was the relay.
This event has 16 skaters on the ice at the same time, 4 teams with 4 members
each. However, at any give time there are 4 on the track and 12 skating
circles in the middle. Every 1.5 laps a different skater from the team
would move out onto the track and receive the "handoff" by being pushed by the
team mate that just completed the 1.5 laps. Confusing to explain,
confusing to try to track, but
interesting to watch.
A few more pics from Short Track:
With the first day completed we headed back to our B&B and got
in around 12:15. Off to bed with another 5:00a start.
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Next Day 4
Day 5 Going
Home
At
breakfast we met this really nice couple. Mark who is Canadian (we won't
hold that against him :-) and Kristen who is an American. This was
already their third day at the Olympics. They had attended the Opening
Ceremonies and the first day of events. It just so happened that their
first event that morning was the same event we were attending, so we offered to
give them a ride. This would save them the trouble of trying to take two
trains and a bus to get to the venue. The drive to the venue took about
1hr and 25mins. We expected the traffic to be really bad heading out, but
to our surprise there was none. Parking was not a problem since we
had reserved parking, at all the locations we would be visiting, long before the start
of the Olympics.
