Sochi: What you need to know about the North Country’s athletes
Coach Mark Grimmette greets Erin Hamlin after her bronze-winning luge run. Photo: Nancie Battaglia
The huge North Country story lines at the end of Week 1 in Sochi look something like this. We have two medals so far, a silver and a bronze!
1. Andrew Weibrecht from Lake Placid knows when to go. Early this morning on the Super G course, he nailed a near-perfect run, adding silver to his 2010 bronze Olympic medal. Four years after his bronze medal win in Vancouver, he rediscovered that magic.
NCPR file photo Andrew Weibrecht in Sochi. Nancie Battaglia
2. Erin Hamlin is a star. The Remsen luge racer, who lives much of the year now in Lake Placid, scored a bronze medal in women’s single races. In a year when the US is suffering a medals drought, Hamlin’s break-out win is (deservedly) grabbing a lot of media attention. She’s the big North Country story from Sochi so far.
3. Lowell Bailey gets the come-back award for these games.
Lowell Bailey cracks the top-10 in Sochi. Photo: Nancie Battagliagames.
Two devastatingly tough races, a long day of painful soul-searching, and the Lake Placid biathlon veteran springs back and notches the best-ever finish for an American — 8th place — in the Olympics. That’s mental toughness. He has two more big races ahead and a lot of momentum.
Bill Demong enters week 2 as one of the North Country’s medal hopefuls. Photo: Nancie Battaglia
4. Bill Demong from Vermontville enters week 2 with his powder dry. The Nordic combined gold medalist didn’t contend in his first race, but he sounded incredibly calm and confident that he was positioned well for races still to come. If he can grab a decent jump, and position himself solidly for the x-country race, there’s a real chance for more metal here.
There are a lot of other players from the North Country — Tim Burke, Annelies Cook, Jusin Olsen — who could grab headlines next week as competition continues. But so far, those are the takeaways from Sochi.
There’s a lot more on our Sochi page at ncpr.org or catch up with the latest on our twitter feed #ncprolympics.
Tags: olympics14
Tangent Alert!!!!
NCPR has done a good job of Olympic coverage, which is appropriate for the home radio of so many athletes. National media are pretty slanted and spotty in their coverage. Sure, they covered the Weibrecht silver but Bode gets the headlines. It starts long before the events begin though. Take a look at Alpine events, men get more attention than women if we discount all the Vonn not going stories. If you look at the history of US Alpine skiing you will find that women out-performed men significantly. What are they, chopped liver?
Women won 7 medals in skiing events starting in 1948 before a US man won a medal for the first time in 1964. 4 women own medals before the first man, 3 of them won 2 medals. A total of 15 women have won 25 medals compared with 10 men having won 16 – so far (by my count and it is possible I mis counted by one or two). Julia Mancuso is the winningest US woman skier ever in the Olympics and second only to Bode in total count,but she don’t get no respect from the media.
We got stories about sexism around women’s ski jumping, but it seems the sexism runs deeper than that.