Blog Archives: February, 2010
Men’s Aerials
Me at the aerials venue at Cypress Mountain Yesterday I attended the finals for men’s aerials freestyle skiing at Cypress Mountain just north of Vancouver. It was the second of my flying events — after ski jumping a few days ago in Whistler — and it was great!
Canadian aerialist in a training jump Twelve athletes had qualified from the earlier rounds — 3 Canadians, 2 Americans, 3 Chinese, 3 Belorussians, and a Swiss athlete. When I arrived two hours before the event started, they were doing their training runs. During training, they start with easy jumps and work up to the harder jumps. In fact, in training they must achieve the same difficulty level as their hardest jump in the competition or they cannot do that jump in the actual event. The attention of the crowd was split during training, however, as the video screens showed the women’s gold medal hockey match while the aerialists trained.
Preparing the jump for training It was interesting to see the ongoing maintenance of the hill during the evening. After every other jump, the Smurf Shovel Brigade (the venue maintenance volunteers in blue jackets) fixed up the landing area, filling in where jumpers landed hard, corrugating the landing area by walking down the hill sideways with their skis, and tossing out pine boughs to give jumpers depth perception.
Aerialists fly up to 60 feet in the air In the finals, each athlete gets two jumps. Canadian Kyle Nissen had a fantastic jump with a really solid landing in the first round, taking the lead by 7 points. Unfortunately, the other two Canadians both had slapbacks, “a poor landing in which the skier hits the snow on his/her skis and back”.
Chinese aerialist in the air With a Canadian in the lead, the crowd was really excited going into the second round of jumps. Because the best athletes go last in the second round, we had to wait until the very end to see whether Nissen would hold on to first. He had a good jump but not as good a landing, and a lower degree of difficulty, which pushed him back in to 5th place. The gold went to Alexei Grishin of Belarus.
Flower ceremony for the men's aerials This was my first event in Vancouver and a bit different from the events in Whistler. Getting to the event took a while, just because getting around Vancouver takes a long time — but I never had to wait longer than 5 minutes. Leaving the event, there were really long lineups for the buses down Cypress Mountain; they had to fit some 9,000 people onto buses back to Vancouver, so that took a while. All in all, though, it was a well-run event, made even better by fantastic weather the whole time.
Take a look at the rest of my pictures from the event.
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Biathlon
Cecilia and I at biathlon Yesterday I attended the women’s 4x6km biathlon relay at the Whistler Olympic Park with the Cotton family.
Canadian skiier practice shooting In the biathlon relay, there are 19 teams, each composed of four people. Each person does a 6km relay leg: 2km skiing, a shooting round lying prone on the ground, 2km skiing, a shooting round standing up, another 2km skiing, and then a transition to the next skier. In the shooting round, they have 5 bullets and have to hit 5 targets. 
The carnage in the transition area They also have an additional 3 bullets in case they miss some of the targets, but they have to reload those bullets manually. Finally, if they still haven’t hit all the targets, they have to do a penalty loop.
Russian fans cheering on their winning team As with the ski jumping event I attended the day before, the Canadians and Americans were the lowest ranked teams heading into the competition. At the top of the field were the Russians, Germans, and French. The German and Russian fans were out in full force, wildly waving their flags. Our team did decently, considering we’re not a northern European powerhouse: the Canadian women improved from their rank, finishing in 15, three spots above their rank, and two spots ahead of the Americans.
Canadian and American skiiers embracing after a tough ski The Russians won the race (and their fans were happy about that, let me tell you!). The French had been in the lead but then had a bad shooting round and had to take two penalty laps. Remarkably, the French fought their way back from ninth place back up to second in an amazing recovery from their penalty laps.
Today I leave Whistler and head down to Vancouver to enjoy a few more events and the closing ceremonies.
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Ski jumping
Me representing Canada at the ski jumping hill This week’s updates are coming from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games. When I had first found out 7 years ago that the games were coming to Vancouver, I intended to attend, but I only won a single ticket in the ticket lottery. I decided that wasn’t enough to merit coming across the Pacific and sold the ticket. But last week as I was watching the Olympics on TV, it looked like a lot of fun; I had the spontaneous thought that “hey, I could just go” to the Olympics, and, a few hours later, I had impulsively booked a flight and bought event tickets.
Me with the Cotton women at the Olympic rings in Whistler I arrived on Sunday and came up to Whistler. Fortunately for me, my friend Cecilia and her family were also coming to Whistler for the games this week and graciously are letting me spend a few days in their condo.
Ski jumping at Whistler Olympic Park Today I attended my first event of the games: men’s team ski jumping. I wanted to see them fly, and I wasn’t disappointed. As with many sports, seeing it live is very different from seeing it on TV. On TV, you have the sensation that ski jumping involves, well, jumping. In the real world, looking up the hill, it’s much more evident that ski jumping is really controlled falling down a hill.
Thomas Morgenstern jumping In team ski jump, there are two rounds. In each round, each of 4 members of the team jumps once, and their scores are added together. The top 8 teams jump again. The Canadian men were ranked 12th going into the event, and came out in 12th, so they didn’t make it to the final. The Austrian team dominated the event and were amazing to watch. 
Austria wins gold! Their final jumper, Gregor Schlierenzauer, had the longest jump of the entire 2010 games, 146.5m. I had a blast and am looking forward to the rest of my events this week.
Take a look at the rest of the pictures from today in Whistler.
Stefan Read, Canadian ski jumper Update 2010/02/23 22:00 PST: I learned after the event that there was a bit of a competition going on between the North American teams. The Canadians and Americans were ranked second last and last respectively, and they had a friendly wager riding on the result: each member of the losing team had to drink a bottle of maple syrup. Those poor Canadian guys…
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Turn Airport Off
Turn Airport Off This always amuses me whenever I’m travelling and using my computer in an airport. (For non-Apple users, “AirPort” is what Apple calls wireless networking.)
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Celebrating gold!
Celebrating Canada's first Olympic gold medal on home soil!
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Kayaking in Milford Sound
Fog-covered mountains on the way to Milford Sound The day after taking a cruise on Doubtful Sound in New Zealand with my parents, I went on a guided kayaking tour on Milford Sound, another fjord in New Zealand’s Fiordland National Park.
Kayaks on the island where we stopped for lunch Besides seeing it differently because I was kayaking, Milford is quite different from Doubtful. If you take a look back at my pictures from Doubtful Sound, it’s wide open with fairly gently sloping mountains. Milford, on the other hand, is much more closed in, narrower, with steeper mountains that dive straight into the water.
Sunlit mountains lining Milford Sound I think what amazed me most about both Doubtful Sound and Milford Sound — indeed, of all that I saw in Fjordland — was mountains with water all around. 
Clouds hiding Milford Sound It was quite a departure the mountains that I’m used to as a Canadian (and that I’m seeing on the television a lot right now).
