Day 4 Update

We’ve had a few days of action, so here is your first email update to the 2010 Olympic Challenge.  We had a couple last-minute entries to push the total to 38. Pushing the winnings to $125, $60, 0, 0, 0, … , $5. See the attached updated standings.

Rookies are making a strong impression in the challenge: new player Tiber sits in second, with Bruno and Papa Hurts 2 Bees also cruising in the top 5.  The old guard is represented by Halfpoint and Flippy Flyer who… what!?!? Not these guys again!!! Come on! What is this, Beijing?  Where’s my smog, concrete superstructures, and oppressive socialism?  Enough of these Olympic sabremetricians who prepped for this challenge like it was the MCATs.  I for one am rooting for Tiber to stick it to them.  He goes with his gut, not his supercomputer.

As expected, USA/Canada is a good A-B punch with smart money on South Korea or Switzerland for group C. A few gold guarantees are already trickling in: we are 5-1 in aggregate so far.

Zigzag Sweater 2 is doing strong work at the bottom of the table. But it’s very early. Plenty of time for Killapascal to drop.  Could we have the first father/son first place/last place finish in poolmaster pool history?  Find out when we come back after this encore 60 minute viewing of men’s moguls in its entirety…

As for the games themselves, we’ve had a nice mix of favs and upsets. Chinese pairs figure skating, German luge, the flying Harry Potter guy, and most of the speed skating has gone chalk.  But moguls were a bumpy ride (see what I did there?) for the favs, which gave room for Canadian broadcasters to fall over each other in their drooling admiration for Alexandre Bilodeau, who claimed the first Canadian gold on home soil ever.  Way to go Canada, 5^th decade’s the charm!

I’m still just trying to figure out a sport where your time at the finish only counts for 25% and the rest is form.  Don’t try to sell that one to the Austrians in the 3000 steeplechase:

Also, some Estonian woman benefitted from not being Norweigan and grabbed an unexpected silver in cross country. Booyah!

On to day 5.  More biathlon and awesome snowboard cross.  Also our first prestige event, the women’s 500 long track speed skating.  German Jenny Wolf holds the world record in this event, and is ready to hand 7.5 points to the beleaguered 7 players who picked Germany.

Updates during the week on the blog.

 

Good Luck!

Poolmaster