Libertarian Librarian

Watched a bit of the Olympics last night, and I was impressed with the women's half-pipe snowboarding thing. Fun to watch, and good for Hannah Teter (Gold), Gretchen Bleiler (Silver) and Kelly Clark (4th after just missing the landing on a monster jump that likely would've garnered her the gold).

But after that came the pairs figure skating coverage, an event I normally have little to no interest in, and I started channel surfing. Not much on, so I wind up back on figure skating and right after I start watching, Zhang Dan (she's the female half of China's Zhang Dan/Zhang Hao pair) took one of the worst falls I've ever seen-- in any sport. She dropped from a good four feet in the air-- after being tossed sideways by her partner a good eight feet-- and landed on ice (not a forgiving surface) with one leg going one way while the other was kinda tucked behind her going the other way. You can watch the whole thing here. Click on "Zhang's brutal fall" over on the right and then sit through the stupid commercial. The fall is about 30 seconds into the video.
My first thought was, "Oh man, I wonder how many ligaments she just tore?" I was impressed that she was able to skate over to her coach and trainers on the side of the rink, although she did have to keep her left leg off the ice the whole way (they edited that part out of the video). One of the announcers asks the expert commentator what would happen if they wanted to try to complete the routine. I thought, "What an idiot-- there is no way somebody takes that bad of a fall and then goes back to skate around the rink, much less complete an Olympic caliber performance."

A minute or two later, Zhang Dan did precisely that. Not only did the pair pick up where they left off, but Zhang landed the triple throw she had fallen on, as well as two other throws. I had chills just watching her deliver an olympic caliber performance after suffering a fall that would have sent a lesser athlete to the hospital and probably have crippled a normal person.

I kept thinking, "She can't keep this up-- there's no way." But after a little while, it started to become clear that maybe she could-- though one triple became a double-- and I started to wonder how the judges were going to grade this. How much do you take off for the fall and a few other technical bits that she couldn't do? How much do you put back on for the sheer guts displayed and for the fact that every single person in the arena, and watching on tv, was rooting for them to finish the routine?

The fall and other missteps seemed to preclude medaling, given the requisite reductions in technical merit they entailed,... but the "presentation" portion of the routine could hardly have been more dramatic or impressive.

They wound up second, which is where they were before they took the ice yesterday, and I think that was probably appropriate. But for sheer determination, you'd have to give the gold to Zhang Dan.

Labels: Sports