come home with a silver in normal hill event. Quite stunning that he did it. In the final training session conditions were crap and very few people took their last jump. Johnny was struggling, still looking for something to turn things around. He'd just broken his skis a couple days before and was on new ones that he felt were slow. His last training jump was not good. It was painful to watch him experimenting with in-run positions before he took off his skis to call it a day. Learning to walk all over... like he was starting from scratch. There seemed no chance he could turn it around on one
night's sleep. But he did. There was some funky air moving around for the last guys in the jump portion of the event. Not sure how much it affected things.. certainly played with heads if not skis. Lodwick jumping to second was huge for him as he, too, had been struggling but gone back to old boots and had turned things around a bit in training. He also had a great trial jump the morning of the comp so was on an upswing. Bill Demong had been jumping very well in training all week but was among the group that seemed affected by conditions. His 24th in the jump 
sealed his fate for this competition. Interesting to me that he didn't take it easy and rest himself for the team comp and LH comp, both of which are medal shots for him. He doesn't seem to have low gears and it was amazing to watch him come through the stadium 3 times, each in a much better position than before and finally winding up in 6th. No one expected Ryyneanen to hold on the his lead and he fell (literally and figuratively) early. Todd led a good portion of the race and may have done too much work in the role. Spillane broke from that pack of 7 leaders late and came in to the stadium with what seemed like an insurmountable lead. Lamy Chappuis from France held the lead for only 10 feet of the 10K course... just happened that it was the last ten feet.TV stuff on NC was live and at times sloppy. Issues with the wind made things very funky and there was a tight window that NBC had to hit with the programming. In the end we were on commercial break when the FIN Ryynaenen came down with by far the longest jump of the day. He'd been mediocre at best in training so no one saw it coming. By the time we came out of commercial things were so hot and heavy with big names coming that we never got a chance to show his jump. At least I don't think we did. As I said, a blur.
Amazing that Kath, T, Sam show up at 3 am thanks to shady (handsomely paid) van driver who stopped at McD's @ 2:30am to comb hair and put on more deodorant to impress estranged wife who he planned to visit unannounced after dropping off K, T, S (loved to have been a fly on that wall!)) and get on the bus to Nordic combined event at 7:30am. Security here lax enough and Canadians friendly enough that in his 3rd time at the Olympics Sam finally got to see what an announce booth looks like- a closet (from which I can not see the NH take off without standing up.)
I was interested to watch some of today's NBC xc coverage with Al and Chad. Obviously NBC was desperate for programming 'cause Al Michaels kept throwing it out to them even when it was just equatorial skiers finishing. Skiers with last names stacked with unthinkable combinations of vowels and consonants no one should have to try to pronounce without Rosetta Stone. Clearly, too, things were live and whoever was producing the world feed (that the Nordic venue is forced to take) had assumed no one could possibly still be watching. The shot moved to a random pine bough and just hung there focusing in and out, first on the bough and then mountains behind, while Al and Chad gamely managed to make some kind of conversation that frankly didn't seem too out of place.
Path-crossing gods continue to shine: Jeff and Megan decided they needed another night in
Whistler to complete the experience and Gunnar Shaw and friend Rob Cone put aside shopping at Roots, Lulu Lemon, and Olympic Boutique long enough to join for dinner.
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