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* Still no Costas. The mightiest of Olympic hosts has been brought down by the tiniest of germs. And yet Matt Lauer remains uninfected. No one ever said the Olympics were fair.
* We start at the women's halfpipe qualifying rounds. And before they even got started today, American Ariele Gold crashed during practice. Not a good start for the US.
* Apparently the only two competitors who are important to NBC in the women's halfpipe are Hannah Teter and Australia's Torah Bright, because they're the only snowboarders we see in Heat 2. Selective editing can tell you a lot.
* Matt recaps the highlights from the Canada-US women's hockey game, where the Canucks won with a hiiiiighly controversial goal. You know, everything's gone wrong since Canada came along.
* To speed skating for the men's 1000-meter. With their spandex outfits, hoods, and sunglasses, do you know who speed skaters remind me of? The Flash! I guess that's appropriate since they're in the fastest self-propelled sport.
* American Shani Davis is trying to threepeat in this race. Can he do it? Bleah! He started off okay, but you could tell he was running out of gas about halfway through. There's still one American left in Brian Hansen. He had a silver medal in Vancouver... but not here. Ninth place for Hansen, eighth for Davis. This is turning out to not be the US's night.
* To the mountain and the women's downhill. The US's Julia Mancuso should be the favorite here, having won this segment of the Super Combined. The first racer crashes early in her run, laying herself down on the first big hill rather than hitting the snow fence standing up going full speed. Downhill! Danger! It's sort of like watching NASCAR, isn't it?
* As we come back from a commercial break, a Swiss fan is ringing a large bell... how do I say this politely? ...uh... with his hips... in a way that looks sort of amorous. Oh, the heck with it. It looks like he's humping a bell. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I'm surprised NBC left this in the edit.
* Mancuso has some troubles early and finishes in fourth (for now). Here's a funny thing about watching tape-delayed sports. Mancuso was racer number 12. The next racer NBC showed is number 18. That means we skipped five racers. So #18, Swiss racer Lara Gut, is either going to medal or crash, otherwise NBC wouldn't be showing her. Medal it is. She finishes second.
* Tina Maze from Slovenia is a singer, a model, and a downhill skier, and in her home country, she's a superstar. Well, of course she is. Beautiful, medal-winning singers are superstars everywhere, but especially in places with no other stars. She gets her three minutes of fluff, but can she make it pay off with her actual run? Yes! In dramatic fashion, not only does she get Slovenia's first winter gold medal ever, but she ties the time of Dominique Gisin of Switzerland, so both skiers will win gold. Now Tina Maze will be whatever is bigger than a superstar in Slovenia.
* Over to pairs ice skating. First up, Americans Marissa Castelli and Simon Shnapir, skating to the theme from "Skyfall." I'm not sure if it's a wise decision to skate to a song in Russia that represents the Cold War's greatest hero. I mean really, if you're going to skate to Bond music, how can you pass up "From Russia With Love" here?
* Russia's Maksim Trankov and Tatiana Volosozhar are hoping to bring the gold medal back to Russia. But who cares about that? What do enquiring minds really want to know about their fluff? They're such a cute couple on the ice, are they dating? They waffle on their response, but we all know the real answer: they are if Vladimir Putin says so.
* By the way, who won the Cold War? Well, so far in Russia, we've seen the Americans dancing to James Bond, and the two Russian couples dancing to The Adams Family and Jesus Christ, Superstar. Not a lot of Russian music, is there?
* "Choreographically, they're filling their legs and lungs with oxygen," says Scott Hamilton of Trankov and Volosozhar. You know, Scott, sometimes it's better just to be quiet.
* Back to the mountain for the finals of the women's halfpipe, Kelly Clark gets a minute of fluff. She won gold in Salt Lake, but now she's ollllld. In her 30s! So she has to work out to compete with the young kids. Yeah, that's usually the way it works.
* American Kaitlyn Farrington makes a good run in the finals and analyst Todd Richards calls it a "machine gun of awesomeness." Try using that phrase in figure skating, Scott Hamilton!
* The machine gun wins gold! Kelly Clark finishes third. So although the US didn't start well tonight, they finished strong. Or, at least, that's how NBC edited it all together. Funny how well that works, isn't it?
Editing is all about storytelling, and a good story doesn't end on a down note. Of course, the halfpipe did actually end at night, so it's easily possible that everything that happened on tonight's broadcast happened in the order that NBC presented it. But it's also possible it didn't. Unless you're in Russia, you'll probably never know. See you tomorrow!
