DFL

Celebrating last-place finishes at the Olympics. Because they're there, and you're not.

Monday, February 13, 2006

Late Results for Monday, February 13

Speed Skating: The men's 500-metre competition consists of two races, with the final score being the sum of both runs. South Korean skater Kwon Sun Chun, 22, fell during his first race and ended up finishing 37th, with a combined time of 94.79 seconds. That's 25 seconds behind the gold medallist, and nearly seven seconds behind the next-to-last-place finisher, who fell during the second race.

Figure Skating: The North Korean pairs team, in last place after the short program, withdrew after an injury during practice. That left the field open for Bulgarians Rumiana Spassova and Stanimir Todorov, who finished 19th in the pairs event with a combined score of 111.25. For comparison, the gold medalllists' total score was 204.48.

Standings to date: South Korea's lead strengthens with a third last-place finish -- will anyone be able to catch them? Bulgaria joins the standings, where, except for South Korea, every country has only one last-place finish. But the Olympics are still young; we've only completed day three.

(Post corrected. I mistakenly identified Ukrainians Andrei Bekh and Julia Beloglazova as the last-place finishers in pairs figure skating; they only finished last in the free skate. Thanks to Electric Landlady in the comments for the correction.)

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BBC Radio Ulster

If the podcast hasn't sated your appetite for my dulcet voice, I'll be interviewed on BBC Radio Ulster's Evening Extra program at around 5:50 PM UTC (i.e., in about an hour and fifteen minutes). If you're not in Northern Ireland, you can listen online.

Update, 1 PM: Well, that was fun. Went much better than I expected.

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Early Results for Monday, February 13

Biathlon: In the women's 15-km individual event, 29-year-old Veronica Isbej of Chile finished 82nd with a time of 1:14:55.3 seconds -- about 25½ minutes behind the gold medallist.

Melo ImaiSnowboarding: 18-year-old Japanese boarder Melo Imai finished 34th in the women's halfpipe event with a score of 1.4 in the preliminaries -- presumably as a result of a fall -- and did not advance.

Standings to date: Based on the size of their delegations, Chile and Japan enter the standings in fourth and thirteenth place, respectively.

Later today: men's 500-metre speed skating; pairs figure skating.

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Qualifying Rules: Nordic Combined & Ski Jumping

Part of a series looking at just how hard it is to get to the Olympics; see previous entry. This time I'm looking at nordic combined and ski jumping -- both sports have quotas and a requirement that you be an active competitor outside the Olympics.

Nordic Combined: There is a total quota of 55 athletes; each country can send no more than six, enter no more than four in one event, and send only one team to the team events. Athletes in the world nordic combined league table qualify; others can participate if they've gotten a top-three finish in the FIS Junior World Cup table or a place in the top half of the World Cup "B" competition league.

Ski Jumping: There is a total quota of 75 athletes, with the same limits per country as with nordic combined. To qualify, athletes need to have points in the FIS Grand Prix or World Cup or "at least one point in the FIS Continental cross-country Cup during the qualification period." Eddie the Eagle doesn't live here any more.

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