Today was a quiet day for competition. The big event for the day was the ice dancing finals. The cross-country team sprints for men and women took place, as well as freestyle skiing aerials qualifications, ice hockey semifinals, and the ski jumping team large hill.

Ice dancing was great this evening. Meryl Davis and Charlie White skated an awesome performance to Phantom of the Opera. It was enough to win the silver medal. Canada’s Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir came in first, although I personally did not find it as engaging as the second place performance. Russia came in third, while USA’s Belbin and Agosto finished in fourth (but they skated great).  This placement marks the first time anybody from North America has won an ice dancing gold medal.  Sinead and John Kerr, British siblings, performed an interesting move where Sinead picked up her brother! Another performance that I enjoyed was Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder of France skating to “The Impossible Dream”.

In the cross country team sprint, Norway won gold for the men, while the Germans won for the ladies. German men took silver for the men, while Sweden won silver for the ladies. The Russian men and women both won bronze.

It was a good day for Germany and Norway in ski jumping as well. They took silver and bronze, respectively. Austria took the gold with a runaway win. The US team did not qualify for the finals, and Simon Amman did not compete today, as Switzerland did not have a team in the competition.

The aerials qualifiers were held in freestyle skiing today. The United States qualified two men, Ryan St. Onge and Jeret “Speedy” Peterson. Scotty Bahrke, Shannon Bahrke’s younger brother, did not qualify, along with Matt DePeters. It was an exciting event to watch.

The women’s ice hockey semifinals took place today.  The United States beat Sweden, while Canada beat Finland, to make it to the gold medal round, which will take place on Thursday.

Ladies figure skating begins tomorrow, as does men’s giant slalom and the debut of women’s ski cross. It should be a good day. Currently, the medal count stands at 25 medals for the US, 21 for Germany, and 14 for Norway.

Britain has never won a medal in ski jumping. Prior to 1988, they had never had an Olympic ski jumper in the Olympics. That all changed when Eddie “the Eagle” stepped into the picture. He was the only person to volunteer, so he qualified.

He skied in the 70m and 90m hills, and placed last in both. Although he was a hit with fans, some of the athletes thought that he was making a mockery of the sport. As a result, they passed the “Eddie the Eagle” rule, requiring Olympic participants to be in the top 30% of the sport, or in the top 50. The Eagle was not able to qualify in subsequent Olympics.

In cross-country, the women had their 15 km pursuit. Marit Bjørgen once again wins gold for Norway, while Sweden’s Anna Haag, who came in fourth in the 10 km individual race, ended up with the silver medal.

The ice dancers had their compulsive dance program. Unlike pairs and singles skating, ice dancing has three nights of competition. The Russian team of Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin are first after the first day, but don’t count out Charlie White and Meryl Davis, or Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto, just yet. They came in third and fourth, with two evenings of competition to go. The third US team came in 14th.

Skeleton finished its final day of competition. Jon Montgomery of Canada took the gold for the men, and Great Britain’s Amy Williams won the ladies’ event. Noelle Pikus-Pace of the United States came in fourth, only one tenth of a second away from the bronze.

The ski jumping quals for the large hill occurred today. Nicholas Alexander and Peter Frenette of the United States made it to tomorrow’s event.

One of the more recent controversies in the Olympics (and there have been plenty) involve women’s ski jumping. There are two separate disciplines, ski jumping and nordic combined, that involve ski jumping, and women are excluded from both of them. My question is… why?

Olympic rules require that any new event added to the Olympics must include women. That’s why when they added snowboardcross, or ski cross, they have both women’s and men’s events. Double’s luge has technically been coed since 1992. These old rules don’t require that the IOC add women’s events to already existing disciplines, like ski jumping.

Women have tried to get ski jumping added since 1998. For 2010, the ski jumpers even tried, unsuccessfully, to force inclusion. Their request was shot down.

Gian Franco Kasper, IOC member and president of the International Ski Federation (FIS), was quoted as saying in 1995 that ski jumping “seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view.” I believe that a similar argument was made for running the 800 meter competition… after the 800 meter competition in the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, some of the women dropped to the ground from exhaustion. Doctors were quoted saying that women who competed in such events would “become old too soon”. After that event, all races longer than 200 meters were banned until 1960.

Will we see women’s ski jumping in the 2014 Sochi Olympics? So far, I haven’t seen anything to suggest it. There currently isn’t a world cup competition for women’s ski jumping, only a continental cup. I do think that there’s a good chance that it will be included in the 2018 Olympics, and by 2022, I’d be surprised if it was not included. But that will probably be too late for today’s ski jumpers.

More information on women’s ski jumpers can be found at Time.com. For information about the 1928 Amsterdam Race, see The Complete Book of the Olympics, 2008 Edition, pp. 305-306. Photo of Lindsey Van, US ski jumper.

On day 1 of Vancouver 2010’s competition ski jumping, speed skating, and biathlon took place early on. Women’s moguls, male luge, and short track speed skating will occur later on in the day.

Fog and slush delayed the men’s downhill competition today, and it has been postponed.

Yesterday, all three US ski jumpers qualified for today’s run, but they didn’t make it to the second run today. Switzerland’s Simon Ammann took gold, becoming the first ski jumper to win multiple gold medals on the Normal Hill. His first gold was in 2002 in Salt Lake City.

The Netherlands expected Sven Kramer to get the gold medal in the 5000 m distance in speed skating, and he didn’t disappoint. Lee Seung-Hoon of Korea was a surprise with the silver medal. Team USA’s skaters aren’t as strong at this distance; Chad Hedrick came in 11th, Shani Davis was 12th, and Trevor Marsicano came in 14th place.

The women’s 7.5 km biathlon was won by Anastazia Kuzmina of Slovakia. The favorite, Germany’s Magdalena Neuner, came in second. The top US showing was by Sara Studebaker, who came in 45th place (out of 89 competitors).

Luge will go on, but safety measures have been put in place. For one thing, a large wall was constructed on that dangerous turn, and the ice has been reshaped to make it slower. Additionally, competitors will start at lower gates, so that they will not be going as fast. The officials said that the track was not to blame for yesterday’s accident… sure.

All medal winners for today’s events have been entered into my medal count chart.

There are only 13 more days until the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games. Two weeks from now, the first medals will already be earned in the downhill men’s skiing competition, the women’s 7.5 km sprint in biathlon, women’s moguls, normal hill ski jumping, and the 5000m men’s speed skating.

Ghana will be making its Winter Olympic debut this year, in the field of ski jumping. Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong, who has only been training in the sport for about five years, trains primarily in an indoor ski slope in London. However well he does in the actual event, the “Snow Leopard”, named after his leopard-print ski uniform, should be proud to make history for his country.

Clara Hughes, who is a speed skater and a cyclist for Canada, was chosen to carry Canada’s flag during the opening ceremonies. In 2002, she became the fourth athlete to ever receive a medal in both the winter and summer Olympics.

Claudia Pechstein, who has received speed-skating medals for Germany in every Olympics since Albertville in 1992, will probably not be competing in Vancouver, even though she is still in the sport. She was banned from skating for two years due to blood doping. Unless she succeeds in court, she will not be participating in the Vancouver Olympics.