Drama at the Olympics

I suppose you could say it started in the first few days when weather was not favorable up at Whistler for the downhill skiing. That in itself creates problems when you have a timeline to follow. However, the weather ended up giving injured skiier Lindsey Vonn four more days to rest which led to a gold medal in the downhill. Some say she was faking her injury to create hype around the event and herself. But the drama with Lindsey continued as now there fly rumors about the Austrians trying to "Lindsey-proof" the super-G course. How does she take all these accusations though? She shrugs them off and keeps going, she doesn't seem to worried about what the rest of the world thinks of her, and that's a good athelete.

Drama also surround the Men's Figure skating finals as America's Evan Lysacek's beat out Russia's Yevgeny Plushenko for the gold medal. The first jab at Lysacek came when Plushenko hopped across the gold medal podium to get to the silver medal podium. At the time it didn't seem like much, but later came the retorts. Plushenko believed that since he successfully landed his tricky quadruple toeloop - triple toeloop combination, that that performance should give him the gold. The Russians stood behind Plushenko and blamed the judging system of figure skating. To the rest of the world it came off as whining. Maybe if I were in Russia I would feel cheated to, but as an American, I feel that everybody did their best. It is possible Russia is feeling sore after the pairs figure skating competition also. After all they didn't win any medal in figure skating after almost 46 years of domination in the sport, only once not winning gold but medaling. In Vancouver they didn't make the podium.

Perhaps the most moving and wondered about drama in the Olympics though is that which concerns Canadian figure skater, Joannie Rochette. Joannie's mom died unexpectedly of a heart attack two days before her first Olympic event. With all eyes and a big ovation greeting her as she took the ice last night, I'm sure she knows that the world is behind her at this difficult time. Even though you could tell that thoughts of her mother were heavy on her mind, she skated beautifully, winding up with a third place finish. As she came off the ice and fell into her coaches arms crying, you couldn't help but to cry with her, especially when they showed you her father's face. The coloseum probably was even louder than it was when the Canadians won gold in ice dancing. This support is sure not to die down Thursday night and even if she should fall (though I certainly hope not), Joannie Rochette should know, that in our hearts she has already won gold just for trying.