DFL

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

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Early Results for Thursday, February 23

Biathlon: The women's 4×6-km relay ran this morning, and the team from Latvia -- comprised of Madara Līduma, 23, Anžela Brice, 35, Linda Savļaka, 22, and Gerda Krūmiņa, 21 -- came in 18th. Their time of 1:26:21.3 was 10:08.8 behind the gold-medal team, but there were five teams who were nine minutes or more back.

Curling: The finals aren't done yet -- the gold-medal game runs later today for the women, and the medal games run tomorrow for the men -- but the last-place finishers in round-robin play have already been assigned, so I might as well not wait any longer to report them. On the women's side, that's Italy; on the men's side, that's New Zealand. Each team finished 10th.

Hockey: Similarly, even though we won't know who won until Sunday, I can report that Latvia finished last -- 12th -- in men's hockey, thanks to their single point in the preliminary round.

Sara Fischer (Sweden)Snowboarding: The last snowboarding event is the women's parallel giant slalom, which just wrapped up. Swedish competitor Sara Fischer, 26, did not finish one of her qualifying runs and as a result was ranked 30th in the competition.

Standings to date: Sweden finally enters the standings, in 34th place; New Zealand enters in 28th. Latvia, with two more last-place finishes, moves up to 8th place, while host country Italy defies expectations with only its second last-place finish, moving into 17th place.

Later today: men's aerials, women's figure skating.

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Monday, February 20, 2006

Early Results for Monday, February 20

Ivan Borisov (Kyrgyzstan)Alpine Skiing: As many competitors -- 41 -- failed to finish (DNF, DNS or DQ) in the men's giant slalom as actually finished the race. But, in the end, Kyrgyz skier Ivan Borisov, 26, finished 41st. His time after two runs was 3:37.10 -- more than a minute behind the gold medallist and a full half-minute behind the next-to-last finisher, and can be attributed to a very poor first run (his second run was much more in line with the rest of the field, while still last. Borisov is Kyrgyzstan's lone athlete at these Games.

Christelle Laura Douibi (Algeria)In the women's Super-G, rescheduled from yesterday, Algerian skier Christelle Laura Douibi added a second last-place finish with her 51st-place time of 1:43.54 -- 11.07 seconds behind the gold medallist. There were two DNSes, two DNFs and one disqualification. We last saw Douibi finishing last in the women's downhill.

Hockey: While the medals have yet to be decided in women's hockey, I'm able to assign a last-place finish based on the outcome of the placement round game for 7th/8th place. That game is now over, and, with Switzerland beating Italy 11-0, that means host country Italy places last overall in this event.

Standings to date: Because of the automatic qualification rules for host countries, I expect them to do well in the last-place sweepstakes -- apart from entering into sports that they may not otherwise have qualified for, they've just got that many more opportunities. It says something, then, that it's taken until now for Italy to enter the standings. And, of course, because host countries send huge teams, they're at the bottom of the list with their single last-place finish.

On the other hand, because of the way I rank things, small delegations -- like those of Algeria (2) and Kyrgyzstan (1) -- tend to rank quite highly (at 7th in a three-way tie for 14th, respectively) as soon as one or two last-place finishes occur. It's magnified when the same athlete places last more than once -- which can happen at the Winter Games, where good (if not great) athletes have the opportunity to compete in multiple events in the alpine, cross-country and speed skating disciplines.

Not that the standings have any real value, but I know some of you like to chew over them.

Later today: ice dance (what? we should have known who came 24th before the Opening Ceremonies!) and team ski jumping.

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Sunday, February 19, 2006

Qualifying Rules: Curling and Hockey

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, short track, snowboarding, figure skating and freestyle skiing.

Now let's turn to two completely team-based sports in which my own country seems to expect to win all the time: curling and hockey.

In curling, a total of 10 teams qualify for each of the men's and women's competitions. One of these is Italy, as the host nation. The remaining nine countries are determined by the results from the World Curling Championships since the last Olympics.

In hockey, there are eight teams on the women's side and 12 on the men's side. In both cases, Italy qualifies automatically as the host nation. Most of the countries are determined by the IIHF world tables as of the 2004 championships -- the best eight men's teams and the best four women's teams qualify. The remaining three spots on each side are determined by whoever wins Olympic qualification tournaments -- the page doesn't say, but are these regional or continental qualifiers?

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