Day 4
A new day and another 5:00a start time and 6:00a breakfast.  Then it's off to Pinerolo once again.

Today's events are Women's Curling and Men's Figure Skating Short Program.

This was our second day attending Curling, but on this day we saw the women competitors.  There were more spectators today than there were at the Men's competition.  The arena was over half full, most of which were Italian school kids on a field trip to the Olympics.  It was so much fun being there and seeing the enjoyment the kids were getting by being able to attend.  They were in groups and each group has chosen a country to cheer for.  The US had a large group cheering for them.  The more the athletes acknowledged them, the louder and more excited they became.  Unfortunately, it wasn't quite enough to help the US women win their match
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The US women were expected to come into this competition and do well.  As a matter of fact they were expected to take home a medal.  They however did not get off to a good start having already lost their first match on the previous day.  This was there second match of the Olympics and the results were any different.  Well today would not be any better.  They would eventually concede after the 8th end after being behind 11-5.  But that's ok.  It's the spirit of competition that matters.

More Women's Curling pics.  Pictured from left to right is the US Coach, members of the Russian Team, members of the Japanese Team, and members of the US Team.

This would complete our Curling events for this Olympics.  It's on to Torino for the evening event of Figure Skating.

As with the previous days, traffic was no problem going into Torino.  We arrived back in Torino around 12:30p and had time to go out and see some of the city since the Figure Skating event did not start until 7:00p.  This was the first and only opportunity we had to see any of the city.  From what we saw, Torino is a very nice.  It is the largest city ever to host the Winter Olympics.
 

We arrived at our daily parking site and there we met this group of around 12 people from the US, all dress in red shirts who were also seeing the Figure Skating competition later that evening.  They, like all the others we had met, were a friendly bunch and excited about going to the Figure Skating event.  They had planned to spend time downtown before the evening competition began and asked us if we know where the Via Roma was.  We weren't sure, but as it turns out Via Roma was where the Today Show was being televised.  We walked over to the streetcar stop to wait on the one that would take us downtown and they headed off in a different direction.  A few minutes later they came back our way and passed us going into the opposite direction.  It was obvious at that point that they were not at all sure where they were going.  We looked up the Via Roma on the map and told them on their next fly by that they could go with us and we would get them to there destination.  We just happen to be going on the same streetcar they needed to be on.  It was about a 25 minute ride to our destination and we spent the time talking with them about many things.  We arrived at our stop, pointed them in the direction they needed to go and wished them well.  Oh by the way, did we mention that all these people in red were family members and friends of Evan Lysacek, the highest finishing US Men's Figure Skater?  We talked to them some more at the arena and it turns out they had a difficult time getting back to the arena.  It took them two hours to find their way back, and the only reason it didn't take longer was because of a generous Italian young lady that personally rode the public trans with them to show them the way back.  When they were ready to return to the arena they had asked for directions from a person at an information booth and she had told them the wrong bus to take.  They ended up on the wrong side of town.  They asked for good directions from us during one of the intermissions on how to get back to the parking area where we had parked.  We told them how to get back.  After the event was over we headed back.  We were still in the parking lot when they showed up and said the direction were perfect.  They were grateful.

Oh and as far as Evan, he did not do quite as well as he would have liked in the short program.  He was in 10th place with the Free Skate (long program) to come in two days.  In the Free Skate his performance was amazing and he finished like a champ.  He finished 3rd in the Free Skate moving him from 10th to finish 4th overall in Olympic Men's Figure Skating.

Some more pictures from the Ice.  You will see a picture of Yevgeny Plushenko (from the back) the Gold Medal winner, and the kids that did the retrieval of anything thrown on the ice.

Well another late night and back to the room for a couple of hours sleep.  We arrived back at the room around 1:00a and was scheduled to get up at 5:00a...yet again.

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