ight be optimistic. Our show doesn’t air until 12 midnight NY time and we’ve been told that if you give a producer an 8 hour deadline he’ll take 8:01. I'm betting on 6am. (Post script- it was 5:45am)The day started with a 30 minute wait at security- they have three doorways but only one x-ray machine- a bottleneck. The Nordic combined event came off smoothly in the morning with no real surprises. The big Finn, Manninen, left the jump in 9th place, within easy striking distance of the leaders (given his XC strength). Strangely, the wheels came off for him somewhere over the 15 kms and he finished a an extremely disappointing 9th. The
overwhelming powerhouse in the sport is still without an individual Olympic medal. German Georg Hettich, who has never even won a world cup event, held on the lead he established on the jumping hill to win the gold medal. USA hope Todd Lodwick dug himself just deep enough in the jumping to miss the medals, as well. He finished a very respectable 8th place despite a throw-up bug a couple of days ago. He’s still got the sprint event (1 jump on the large hill, then 7.5 km XC) ahead. The TV coverage for the Nordic combined event came off pretty smoothly (we handle the jumping, Paul Robbins and Al Trauwig take care of the XC portion. Paul and Todd's personal coach, Tom Steitz watched the jumping in the am). There wasn’t much time to play around with things as our event was first on the air this afternoon and we still had the special jumping qualifying event to do in the evening. Which is what we wait for now. We’ve shot the “on-camera” where Matt and I introduce the event. Matt’s a great TV talent… I am not. We’d still be shooting if it weren’t for the miracl
es of modern editing. Aside from this, things are looking good- an interesting story of an old jumper’s comeback- 37 year old “Happy” Harada from Japan who hadn’t skied at the world cup level in 4 years but found himself back in the hunt as he skied very well in training. Long story short- he’s now DQ’ed for tomorrow because he’s too skinny. There’s a minimum standard set to prevent jumpers
from starving themselves to unhealthy levels in efforts to fly farther (fat don’t fly)… Harada found himself below that standard at weigh-in tonight. Another story is Amman, the Swiss Harry Potter look alike who won both individual events in 2002. He had not won anything before and hasn’t since. Everyone waited to see if magic would return. It didn’t. I'm rooting for Andi Keuttel- great personality from Switzerland but think Ahonen, a Finn, will be tough to beat.Caitlyn and Leah arrived from Rome last night; Pragelato their ba
se camp for an assault on Sauze d’Oulx to watch their friend Hannah Kearney compete in the women’s mogul event tonight. Hannah is the current world champion in the event and expectations were high. I haven’t seen the footage to know what happened, but saw the results. The good news is she had two friends that had literally traveled half way around the world to be at her side regardless of the outcome.Looking at the downhill training results from today. Four Americans in the top 12. Tomorrow they go for real.
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