Last Leg have just called it "Sochi Olympics, terms & conditions apply"

Team GB in parade

Get the snowflake fail t shirt at: http://www.redbubble.com/people/jimiyo/works/11500446-sochi-fail-whale

There's someone knitting on the downhill snowboard track start


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One of the Norwegian competitor's coach, as I recall. Bit of kidology to keep the rider calm I suspect?

The slope style final was very interesting and exciting. According to the commentary team, the run had softened slightly overnight. This made it slightly faster, which presented the boarders with a problem. Essentially the time in the air in the jumps is more or less pure physics, decided by how fast the boarder is going when they leave the lip of the jump. If the snow is slightly faster you spend a fraction of a second longer in the air. When your trick involves rotation that means you have a tendency to rotate slightly too far and end up off balance or out of line (i.e. with the board not pointed directly in the line of travel). As a result we saw a lot of boarders slightly fail their landings and put a hand on the snow as they did so, which is something the judges dock points for. So scores were consistently lower than expected unless you got a perfect run and technical correctness became a more important factor than the more showy aspects.

Britain's Jamie Nicholls put in a great first run to be in second place initially and stayed on the podium for much of the competition only to be edged out by the last few riders. This was kind of expected as the second round is run in reverse order of first round scores, so the best riders end up going on the last runs. Nicholls finished 6th with Britain's other rider Billy Morgan finished 10th after having the kind of problems explained above. Gold was won by American Sage Kotsenberg with Norwegian Stalle Sandbech in silver and Canadian Mark McMorris getting bronze despite competing with a broken rid, for which you have to say hats off.

Great image - Norwegian boarder Sven Thorgen bounding off the head of the Russian doll course ornament during his run.

I feel sorry for Jamie Nicholls, being in silver and walking away with nothing.

Great Britain has a Snowboarding Medal!

Jenny Jones put down a great second run second on the list and held onto a podium place through all 11 other riders. Experience showed as she judged a clean, technical run would win out over doing massive tricks with slightly rough execution. I have to admit I'm a big fan of Jones; she's the first British professional snowboarder I heard of and she spent a long time flying the flag pretty much on her own. She was due to retire a couple of years ago just as it was announced that Slopestyle was going to be at Sochi and she's hung on and worked for it. It's the first British snowboarding medal ever and in fact the first British medal ever on the piste, depending on whether you think Alain Baxter was robbed or not . the actual medal ceremony is 3.30 this afternoon. I'm going to be out at something I can't postpone. Damn.

Jamie Anderson won Gold for the USA to give them both golds in slope style with Finland's Enni Rukajarvi in silver.





One important note : If you're on the slopes, ski or board, WEAR A HELMET. Czech Sarka Pancochova fell so hard that (IMO) she lost consciousness for a few seconds and her helmet was split in two. If she's just had a hat or hood on, I'm pretty sure it would have killed her.

BBC News Item

You have to love Aimee Fuller.

Another shot of Panochova's busted helmet.

News so far today : Katie Summerhays came seventh in the slopestyle skiing and the people who complained about the commentary on Sunday will have collectively exploded if they were listening to it. Canadian Kim Lamarre won bronze, American Devin Logan silver and Dara Howell, also from Canada, gold.

Also, the half-pipe course is coming in for a lot of criticism as qualification goes on this morning. Lots of falls and quite a few riders claiming it's not up to scratch. It's too slow and therefore you can't get enough speed up on the build up to tricks.

https://twitter.com/darrenrovell/status ... 44/photo/1

The Canadians have an enormous fridge full of beer you can only unlock by scanning a Canadian passport across it.

Ireland's Seamus O’Connor has qualified for the half-pipe semi final. GB's Dominic Harington and Ben Kilner both failed to qualify.

Canada's Yuki Tsubota is reported to have broken her jaw in a fall during the women's ski slopestyle this morning. Ouch.