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.

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.

Early Results for Wednesday, February 22

Cross-country Skiing: The men's and women's sprint events ran today; I'm assigning the DFL to the slowest time in the qualification round. The first 30 skiers qualified for the quarterfinals in each event. In the women's sprint qualification, Greek skier Panagiota Tsakiri, all of 15 years old, finished 66th with a time of 2:43.28, more than 30 seconds off the pace. The women's sprint is 1.1 km. In the men's sprint qualification, 22-year-old Edmond Khachatryan of Armenia was 80th with a time of 2:49.98, about 36½ seconds off the pace. The men's sprint is 1.3 km.

Snowboarding: In the men's parallel giant slalom, I'm going with the last-place result in the elimination round, which is less ambiguous than the qualification round. In that elimination round, Austrian boarder Alexander Maier, 31, was ranked 30th; he was disqualified on one run so a comparison of his time is meaningless. One boarder was disqualified during the qualification round.

Standings to date: Armenia enters the standings in 20th place, Greece moves from 19th to 10th, and Austria moves from 13th to 7th.

Later today: A whole swack of women's events: 1,500-metre speed skating, slalom, aerials, and, in short track, the 3,000-metre relay.

Early Results for Friday, February 17

Cross-country Skiing: In case you're wondering, no, the skiers from Brazil, Kenya and Ethiopia did not finish last in the men's 15-kilometre classical, though they were in the back of the pack. No, the last-place finisher was 48-year-old Prawat Nagvajara, the lone athlete from Thailand at these Games. He finished 97th; his time was 1:07:15.9, more than 29 minutes behind the gold medallist. (More on Professor Nagvajara in a moment.) Only two skiers were more than 20 minutes back; another eleven skiers were more than 10 minutes back; there were two DNFs. It looks like this event may be one of the more open ones at the Winter Games (see the qualifying rules); many of the athletes who are the sole representatives of their countries were in this race.

Snowboarding: The finals for the women's snowboard cross have not yet been run, but I'm already able to assign a last-place finish in this event based on the qualification runs. 25-year-old French boarder Julie Pomagalski was disqualified on her second run and had to make do with her first-run time of 1:36.32, which was 8.47 seconds behind the leader and left her in 23rd place; the top 16 advanced.

Standings to date: Thailand is now the first country to have as many last-place finishes as athletes; France enters the top ten.

Later today: men's skeleton; women's alpine combined.

Early Results for Thursday, February 16

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.

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.

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."

Melo Imai Injured

Because I did not see the women's snowboarding event (can't be everywhere; must sleep from time to time), I could only infer that Melo Imai's low score was due to a fall or a crash (see previous entry). But it turns out that the fall was quite nasty: she crashed into the lip during a trick and injured her lower back. She was airlifted to a hospital in Torino. Fortunately, it was as a precaution: her injuries were not deemed serious. More on Imai's accident from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Daily Yomiuri, and the Mainichi Daily News. Thanks to Amateur for the heads-up about this in the comments.

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.

Snowboarding: 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.

Early Results for Sunday, February 12

Alpine Skiing: Romanian skier Florentin-Daniel Nicolae, 25, finished 53rd in the men's downhill this morning. With a time of 2:00.93, he was 12 seconds behind the gold medallist and a bit more than a second behind the next-to-last finisher. There were two DNFs.

Cross-country Skiing: Two pursuit races ran this morning. The explanatory book for cross-country skiing at Torino (1.5 MB PDF file) explains how pursuit works:

The pursuit competition comprises two parts for which one medal is awarded (in the past there were two medals for each part of the pursuit). The first part of the men’s pursuit competition will be a 15 km mass start Classical Technique race. After the 15 km, the athletes come to the stadium, change their skis and the ski poles in allocated boxes as quickly as possible whilst the clock is still running and continue the competition with 15 km in Free Technique. The first athlete to cross the finish line after the second part of competition is the winner. The first part of the ladies' pursuit competition will be a 7.5 km mass start Classical Technique race. After the 7.5 km, the athletes come to the stadium, change their skis and the ski poles in allocated boxes as quickly as possible whilst the clock is still running and continue the competition with 7.5 km in Free Technique. The first athlete to cross the finish line in the second part of the competition is the winner.

In the women's 15-km pursuit, 26-year-old Maja Kezele of Croatia finished 64th with a total time of 51:36.3, which was 8:47.6 behind the gold medallist and nearly 20 seconds behind the skiier finishing 63rd. There were three DNFs. Later, in the men's 30-km pursuit, Turkish skier Sabahattin Oglago, 22, finished 66th with a total time of 1:28:03.8 -- more than 11 minutes behind the gold medallist and 45 seconds behind the next-to-last skier. There was one DNS and a whopping 10 DNFs.

Snowboarding: In the men's halfpipe (not the water pipe, silly), Polish snowboarder Mateusz Ligocki, 24, finished 44th in the preliminary round and did not advance. I don't know what happened; his score of 4.0 is quite low compared with the 30s and 40s in the final round.

Standings to date: Turkey's small Olympic delegation (seven athletes by the numbers available to me) means that their single last-place finish puts them in third place.