Saturday, February 8, 2014

Warmth, Death & the First Sochi Gold Medal

What a difference a day makes!  I'm sitting at my desk wearing a pair of slacks and a T-shirt!  Boulder hit the upper 30s yesterday, and might reach 50 today... The sun is shining, and I'm about to go out and clear my patio.  As I have a metal snow shovel, I'm trying to wait until a decent hour before making the grating sounds that will ricochet back from the fence and disturb most folks.  I have ice dancing on the television - NBC Sports network is showing the Olympics this morning.
  I was upset to read this morning that Chriselliam, the winner of the Breeder's Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf race, and champion 2-year-old filly in Europe, is dead.  Not quite yet (in actual time) a three-year-old, the filly was put down at Newmarket yesterday.  She had an infection in the frog of her right hind hoof in January; two weeks ago, the infection was announced to be "under control."  But the infection spread into her pedal bone, and she could not support any weight on that leg.  She is a loss to racing and breeding.
  While the US Team did not qualify for the new Slopestyle Snowboarding contest at Sochi, individuals did.  And the USA won the first gold medal awarded at Sochi - Sage Kotsenburg, 20, of Couer d'Alene, Idaho won the gold with a score of 93.7; Norway won the Silver and Canada, the Bronze.  ....  Alpine downhill skier Bode Miller, 36, had the fastest time in practice runs yesterday, but also said that this course "is a killer" and that if any skier loses his or her concentration for a second, they probably won't finish the course.  Ten of 55 starters didn't finish the training run yesterday, including an athlete from Slovakia, who landed on his face and seemed to have broken his nose.

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