and dedication all building to one moment.
Is it better to crash out after two and a half seconds…
…as France’s Marion Rolland did yesterday (above) in the women’s downhill, at the Vancouver Olympics.
Or is it better to fly down the track and launch yourself into one of the biggest jumps probably ever seen on an Alpine run, with the finish line in sight?
I can’t find any available video footage to embed into the post of Sweden’s Anja Paerson, who did that is some spectacular style yesterday. As she hit the last jump of the Whistler track, Hot Air, and soared through said air for almost 60 meters. You can see it at TotallyCrap.com, the fist skier shown – this video is OK but the rest of the site might be NSFW.
Now 60 meters that’s knocking of for 60% of the distance the winner of the first gold medal at these Olympics jumped to win the individual normal hill ski jump. Hell Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards jumped 73.5m in the ’88 games, so it’s not far short of that.
Now I ain’t putting Eddie down here, after all with bugger all backing and limited training compared to the others in the competition he had the balls to not only sit on that plank at the top of those hills – which alone would scare the shit out of many. But he had the guts to push himself off that plank down the jump and launch himself, knowing that he had to lean forward into nothing but air and that if he got that wrong he would be landing jaw first into some compacted ice which wouldn’t provide much protection from the ground underneath.
After all that Lindsey Vonn’s gold medal winning ski was outstanding, I thought Elisabeth Goergl’s run would take some beating, until Julia Mancuso knocked nearly a second off it and I thought that could just nick it, but Vonn then taking nearly another second of that was top class.
And all that while ARSEnal and Judas Cuntabll were having piss taken out of them in Portugal, what could be better.