Beijing Winter Olympics Days 5-8

Another few days of excellent competition at the Olympics! On Day 5 I watched some long track speed skating. The Canadian women's skater in the 3000m seems so tall compared to her teammates. They listed her height as 6'1"/1.87m, and I think 3/4 of that is her legs! She'll be competing in team pursuit and the 5000m as well. Can you believe they can skate 5km in about 7 minutes?!

Men's and women's moguls were also on Days 5 and 6 and DH always enjoys those since it tends to be French Canadians that compete for Canada. I just can't believe how their knees can take it!

 

Next we watched a lot of the snowboard events. It was sad to see Shaun White's last competition. I've watched him snowboard since I was a kid. There were some amazing young competitors looking to turn the sport into something new just like he did though. Hirano Ayumu was robbed of a great score on his second run, but did get a better judgement on the last run. The announcers were irate that he didn't get the score he deserved, it was interesting to listen to. Often the announcers don't say much about the judging or a mild "I was expecting more, etc."

I love watching snowboard cross as well, it's so entertaining, and it helps that there were some great Canadian athletes in the event too. The track was pretty difficult this year, I think they have to keep making it more difficult because the early tracks were pretty simple and short when it was a new sport. There's a men's single competitor event, a women's single competitor event and a mixed team event. In the mixed team, the men go first and whomever wins, their teammate gets that much advantage to start over the other racers. For example, in the qualifying run, the Canadian racer finished way ahead of his competition, so his teammate had almost 4 seconds headstart on her competition. Most of the races were closer than that. 

Did anyone else watch the mixed team's ski jump? That's a new event this year and had some controversy with some athletes being disqualified for their jumpsuits! I don't know all the details, but it included some of the favourites. There are 2 female and 2 male athletes that jump and the judges grade both the distance and the look in the air. It seems a little odd to me as always. Do any of you watch Jimmy Rees/Jimmy Giggle? He did a spoof of some Olympics events on how they were decided and I'll see if I can add that video. This is the link, you do need Facebook. 

Of course I've been keeping up with hockey and Team Canada women did beat Team USA, but on the men's side, Team USA beat Team Canada. It will be interesting to see if they get to the gold medal game for a rematch on the men's side. It seems very likely on the women's side. Both teams have won their quarter final games and their semi final games are coming up shortly. I still don't know if I can stay up to watch the gold medal game, it's on a weekday and I have to work the next day. But someone will inevitably tell me the result... I'll have to see if I can get lots of sleep every other day maybe? Judging sleep in our middle years is so difficult. 

But you're also here for the stitching, so this is where Mini Winter Magic was at the last check-in:

and after about another 1200 stitches, it looks like this:

I'm still moving along trying to fill in right to left and I think you can tell the branch is getting mostly complete now. Plus with changing one thread confetti to one thread filler, a lot of the bottom is getting filled in as well. I seem to have been a bit off on my focus on this shot, so I'll work on improving that for next time. I'm at almost 54% complete. It's been difficult getting a lot of stitching time in, but every little bit helps. I might even be able to start filling in near the top a bit more as I complete the bottom section. 

I hope you're all staying healthy and getting lots of stitching time in!

Happy Stitching,

Tiffstitch