Cleaning out the DVR

Tonight Whitney and I were cleaning out the DVR and watched a couple of things worth discussing.

Paralympic Snowboard Cross
This was rather interesting. It's run totally different than "regular" snowboard cross. First off, the athletes all had lower leg impairments. Some had other impairments but they had to have a lower limb impairment to compete. Of the women only one, Amy Purdy, an American was a double amputee. The race was run more like a time trial, rather than the crazy race that was in the Olympics. Each competitor went down the course by themselves and was timed. They went down three times, their best two times were combined and the fastest was the winner. Amy Purdy won the bronze medal in the women's boarder cross.

This was the first year that boarder cross was competed in the Paralympics and it was pretty obvious. Some of the competitors were quite accomplished, really knew what they were doing, and were very fast down the course. There were others that had not been snowboarding for very long and were much slower, more hesitant. I think this is one of the main reasons for the races being run they way they were. They did say it was a matter of safety for the racers. The course was a bit more narrow than the Olympic course, perfect for one person at a time; it also had fewer (no) jumps. There's a lot more to Paralympic boarder cross, but mainly it's a different race than the Olympics.

Last World Cup Ski Cross
I just happened upon the last World Cup ski cross this afternoon. I've always though ski cross was just a bit more crazy than snowboard cross. With snowboarders, you just have a person and a board. Yes, crashes happen and they can be pretty spectacular, but they're nothing compared to ski cross and their "gnarly yard sale" crashes. With the skiers, you've got a person, two skis, and two poles and lots of opportunity. I recorded this afternoon's show so Whitney could watch it with me since they had some pretty amazing crashes. I don't think anyone got hurt too seriously, but in one semi-final race one guy went into the air and took down two other racers as he came down. Skis, poles, goggles went flying (thus the "yard sale" comment).

There was one race that was the perfect example of why, when you fall or ski out of the course, you get up, backtrack if you need to and keep on going to the finish line. One racer made it through to the end clean. A Canadian fell towards the top; a bit further down the other two competitors crashed. Meanwhile, up top, the Canadian got up, pulled himself together and got his missing ski back on, back tracked up to go inside the gate he missed, and got back into the race. Because he got up and went down instead of giving up, he finished in second. The other two skiers eventually made it down as well so all finished the race. Even in the race where three of the skiers wiped out, two of them managed to get up and make it across the finish line.