2/12/2006: Day 1 highlights
Chad Hedrick lived up to his hype and then some on the first day of competition, coming in first in the 5,000 meter speed skate. This is a guy who only started speed skating four years ago after watching the Salt Lake City Olympics from a blackjack table in Vegas. He switched over from rollerblading and now he's got a gold medal. He's got four more events coming up and could potentially tie Eric Heiden's five golds, but he's humble about it. He says it's an honor just hearing his name in the same sentence as Heiden's, and he sounds genuine when he says it. He was nervous before the event - crying, trembling, and he warmed up twice - but in the end he was thrilled to win on the anniversary of his grandma's death.
Speed skating is a strange sport to watch. They look so relaxed, so leisurely.. but you know they're flying and working their guts out. And their suits have an odd ventilation patch or something on one inner thigh that looks like a big hole. 
Meanwhile in the girl-throwing event, Rena Inoue & John Baldwin landed the first throw triple axel in Olympic history and had a fabulous short program, but they didn't even place in the top three - the field is that good. Chinese skaters Zhao Hongbo and Shen Xue did remarkably well considering Zhao tore his Achilles tendon in August and has only been back to skating since November, and only jumping for a few weeks. He did great - ironically it was his partner who wobbled one jump landing.
Girls in the pairs comp get to wear pants now and several did. A few also got edgy with their music - one Chinese pair skated to an orchestral version of Led Zep's "Kashmir" and it worked brilliantly. But NBC's coverage was lousy for the most part: they talked a lot about the new judging system but never stopped to explain it, and they never ran through the list of required elements of this year's short program. 
The only bright spot was Dick Button who kept complaining that nobody knows how to do a sit spin anymore and that most of the girls stick their butts out when going into a death spiral.. but he also praised creativity and style when earned, like he does, and he was as thrilled by the Inoue/Baldwin triple axel as they were.
Elsewhere women's moguls were impressive but just watching made my knees hurt.. men's luge (at 85 mph) and men's cross country were amazing and exhausting to watch.. the flyboys on the jump were majestic as always. Michelle Kwan topped off a great day by quitting, citing a mysterious (i.e. bogus) new injury and getting press acclaim as if she'd died. The press asked her easy and obvious questions like "Is this the end of your career?" No, that was a few years ago.
