DFL

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

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Late Results for Thursday, February 16

Han Jong In (North Korea)
Monika Wołowiec (Poland)
Figure Skating: Of 30 skaters to enter the men's singles competition, 24 qualified for the free skate. Of the six that didn't make it out of the short program, 27-year-old Han Jong In of North Korea was 30th with a score of 42.11. Qualifying skaters had between 55 and 90 points.

Skeleton: Of 15 athletes entered in the women's skeleton, Polish sledder Monika Wołowiec, who turned 30 on Tuesday, finished 15th with a combined time after two runs of 2:05.30 -- about 5½ seconds behind the gold medallist. Wołowiec currently lives and trains in Park City, Utah; here's an article about her from the local paper, The Park Record.

Speed Skating: The team pursuit finals for both men and women ran today. Only eight teams were in each event, and all teams made it to a final of some sort. The last-place finishers will be the ones who placed second in the D final. On the women's side, that was China; on the men's side, that was Japan.

Standings to date: China and North Korea enter the standings, Poland moves into sixth place and Japan moves into eighth. Romania still leads, followed by South Korea and Russia. Remember that the standings can be found via the sidebar at right.

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Early Results for Thursday, February 16

Veronica Isbej (Chile)Biathlon: Chilean competitor Veronica Isbej adds another last-place finish (see previous entry) with her 83rd-place result in the women's 7.5-km sprint. She had a total of four faults -- not by any means the worst result in shooting -- and a final time of 33:52, which was 11:20.6 behind the gold medallist. There was one DNS. There's some coverage of Isbej's previous last-place finish in the Chilean media here and here, if you read Spanish (I don't).

(Note: Multiple last-place finishes by an athlete simply means that they're tough, courageous and qualified enough to enter more than one event. Kudos to them that are even capable of finishing last more than once.)

Cross-country Skiing: In the women's 10-kilometre classical, 20-year-old Vedrana Vučićević of Bosnia-Herzegovina finished 70th with a time of 42:45.8 -- nearly 15 minutes behind the gold medallist and nearly nine minutes behind the 69th-place finisher. There was one disqualification (Beckie!) and one DNF.

Nordic Combined: In the team event, the Russian team of Ivan Fesenko, Anton Kamenev, Dimitry Matveev and Sergej Maslennikov, sixth after jumping, were less successful in the cross-country ski relay and finished ninth. Two teams withdrew during the jumping portion.

Alex Kupprion (Germany)Snowboarding: In the men's snowboard cross -- it's basically motocross on snowboards, quite neat actually -- there are heats, just like short track. Once you get into the 1/8-finals the events don't appear to be timed, but, after the two qualifying runs, German boarder Alex Kupprion, 27, had the slowest combined time: 1:24.66 -- 4.73 seconds behind the leader after the qualifying round. Kupprion was in 36th position; the top 32 advanced to the 1/8-finals.

Standings to date: Russia moves into third place, Chile moves into fifth, and Bosnia and Germany join the race.

Later today: women's skeleton, women's and men's team pursuit in speed skating, and men's figure skating.

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Qualifying Rules: Snowboarding

Part of a series looking at just how hard it is to get to the Olympics; see previous posts on biathlon and cross country skiing, ski jumping and nordic combined, speed skating and short track.

In snowboarding, there is a total quota of 140 athletes. No more than 14 athletes can come from any one country, no more than 10 of those can be of the same sex, and no more than four may be entered in any one event. But countries aren't allocated spaces that they can fill at will; athletes must qualify: "Qualification is obtained by being in the first 25 in a FIS World Cup competition or World Championship during the qualifying period of the event in question. The athletes are required to have a minimum of 120 points in the FIS snowboard league table in January 2006 for the event in question."

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