The World Competes

With the Vancouver Olympics only two days away, there’s some good news… for skiers, snowboarders, and Australian bobsledders.

A storm front is on the horizon for Vancouver, and this is causing the men’s alpine to train earlier than they had originally intended. Snow may cause difficult visibility conditions over the next couple of days, when snow is expected. Hopefully they’ll get some snow on Cypress Mountain as well.

One result from the recent IOC meeting is that the Australian women bobsledders were approved to compete at Vancouver. They were the top female bobsledders in the Oceania region, but they did not meet the minimal standards for competition. Rather than take the Irish team out of competition to make room for the Aussies, there will be 21 teams competing. Being this close to the Olympics, that’s probably a good decision.

Yahoo’s Fourth Place Medal blog released a story about three American siblings that will compete in ice dancing… but not for the US. The United States has an excellent team; in order to compete in the Olympics, two of the siblings used their dual citizenship to compete for Japan instead. The third sibling will compete for Georgia, but the article doesn’t say how she managed that. It’s an interesting story worth checking out.