TEAMUSATRACKER: February 7, 2022
Day 4 Preview: Redemption for Chen, Is China Cheating in Short Track? & INJURED GOING FOR GOLD
DAY 4. 49 Members of Team USA compete in 10 events tonight.
Team USA will compete in 8 or 9 medal events depending on results in Parallel Giant Slalom Snowboard Qualification and this will be the only day Cody Winters and Robby Burns compete in Beijing (based on rankings Winters & Burns are not expected to qualify) .
Jessie Diggins and Rosie Brennan do have a chance for a historic medal in Women’s Cross County Skiing. Start off Darian Stevens at 9 PMET on NBC in the first ever Women’s Freeski Big Air Final
Latest Live Schedule always in the @TeamUSATracker Google Doc
🙈🙈🙈🙈🙈DAY 3 to DAY 4 BEGINS #TEAMUSA REDEMPTION
Day 3 was filled with 🙈🙈🙈🙈 -(don’t look moments) for #TeamUSA but as we move forward to Day 4 and Day 5 should be about Redemption.
Redemption at the Olympics is always something Team USA does
My favorite redemption story when I was a young was Dan Jansen so I Googled some of the press after Dan Jansen’s 500M in Lillehammer.
This article from the Washington Post Feb. 15, 1994 from Tony Kornheiser was my favorite. 3 days later Dan Jansen won Gold
“Dan Jansen is becoming a train wreck of a story. It's harder to watch time after time. In Calgary it's grief, in Albertville it's soft ice, in Hamar he mentions "the ice was hard." It's always something. It's never him.”
If Dan Jansen was around during the Age of Twitter there would be a lot of tweets that would have not aged well.
As we wake up to stories about Mikaela Shiffrin's first DNF in 4 years in GS or Emily Sweeney Crashing in Her Comeback from a Horrific Crash or Nina O’Brien’s Horrific Crash or Vincent Zhou COVID Positive Test we hope these athletes recover physically and mentally and look for their redemption moment with Team USA that is why we root for them.
And that brings tonight’s redemption
📺MUST SEE TV: NATHAN CHEN
We all what happened 4 years ago with Nathan Chen and tonight Chen has a redemption in the short program
Men’s Figure Skating starts at 8:30 PMET (and most of it will be shown on USA Network) but the two Americans (Chen & Jason Brown) will both go after Midnight on NBC. Chen is slated to skate at 12:11 AMET.
Vincent Zhou will not be able to compete due to a positive COVID Positive Test .
An alternate will not be able to take Zhou’s place in the men’s singles event because he had already competed on Olympic ice per US Figure Skating. Next up would have been 17 year old Ilia Malinin who finished 2nd at US Championships.
⛸TWEET OF THE DAY: IS CHINA CHEATING IN SHORT TRACK?
Ted Robinson is one of the best announcers in TV and for over 20 years he has called baseball, diving, and short track Speed Skating for NBC. But on Monday morning on USA Network he realized he stopped calling an Olympic event and realized he was calling a rigged Olympic event. The tweets about Short Track Speed have been the most popular story of the day and show that on Day 3 of the Winter Olympians a lot of Team USA fans have great concerns with the results coming out of China on the Short Track.
🔎INDEPTH: CAN WE TRUST COVID TESTING?
I like to break something in-depth about sports and numbers but this story is about numbers that just don’t add up.
Vincent Zhou’s instagram post it is heartbreaking.
On emotional level every Team USA fan is very upset for Vincent Zhou. He is the 2nd US athlete to miss an event to due to COVID (Casey Dawson) . It is heartbreaking when you watch Vincent Zhou’s video and Team USA fans see an athlete losing something he worked for 4 years due to a positive COVID test.
Numerous reports have come out about the mistreatment of athletes and the awful conditions of isolation hotels and because of the lack of transparency we don’t know every athlete that tested positive. What we are starting deduce ZERO athletes from CHINA (Zero Medal Contenders for sure) have tested POSITIVE for COVID which mathematically seems impossible especially when renowned doctors & epidemiologists. Dr. Zeke Emanuel & Dr. Osterholm
and Dr. Larry Brilliant (helped eradicated smallpox) both took out op-eds in NYTimes and Wall Street Journal flagging that the China’s vaccine is less effective against the Omnicron variant.
The IOC has put their athletes in a lose-lose situation which is not the goal of the Olympic Games and for everyone in China -let’s hope TeamUSA stays positive and test negative.
🥇INJURED GOING FOR GOLD
I sent this tweet out early in the AM. I thought it was powerful to remember the 4 athletes from TeamUSA who have been seriously injured from TeamUSA when trying to push it to the edge only to see their Olympics dreams end. Feel free to retweet