Oddly, even though the opening ceremony is tomorrow evening (afternoon UK time) there's already competition taking place. Even more oddly, because the Olympics have a tradition that nobody should be out of competition before the opening ceremony takes place, it's competition for places only. This morning has been Slopestyle Snowboarding, which is what you'd think of as 'traditional' snowboarding with a series of jumps to do tricks off and rails to grind, with scores judged out of 100 by a panel of 6 judges. The best four scores go direct to the final, with the remaining boarders having to compete again in a semi final. The best four from that make up the remaining finalists. The slope style provoked controversy before competition when runaway men's favourite Shaun White pulled out over concerns about course safety. Everybody got through OK, although two of the women did have major falls which they both walked away from.

For Team GB, the men did incredibly well with Jamie Nicholls going direct to the final with fourth place and our other boarder Billy Morgan finishing strongly in sixth. For the women both Jenny Jones and Aimee Fuller are in the semi final after finishing down the field. Boarders to watch are Staale Sandbech in the mens and Torah Bright in the women's - Bright is the 'Michael Phelps' of Sochi going for medals in all the 'freestyle' snowboarding disciplines (Slopestyle, Half pipe and Boardercross) and in with a good chance of getting them all.

Men's semi & final are on Saturday and the women's are on Sunday.

It certainly made my 5am shift rather more enjoyable than it otherwise would have been. I do enjoy the winter olympics, more so than the summer ones.

They built their image around that, but they weren't (and still aren't) gay.
That was at the insistance of their then manager.
They are both hetrosexual.

Mark

I know that they are both married now as well, to men. The fact that the lesbian image was fake does make the whole anti gay policy look wobbly.

That seems a bit of a reach...

Not sure where I saw it, probably El Reg or N24 news channel, but AVG went to Sochi and honey potted mobile phones, laptops and tablets in a café and hotel. The phones and tablet had been hacked before they had finished their coffee (over the wifi) and the laptop was cracked over the hotel wifi within minutes.

I was wondering - aren't those the colours Google normally have for the relevant letters in their name on the home page? i.e. that might very well be the design they used regardless? The quotation is interesting though. One newspaper did point out the guy playing music in between the rounds at the snowboarding on Thursday (who isn't a local) did play both YMCA and The Pet Shop Boys .

As for Dave's story it's bad but would it be any different in a cafe in the UK or Germany?

Opening Ceremony s this afternoon, 3.30PM on BBC2, with a commentary free broadcast on the red button. We were discussing it yesterday, and rather struggling to come up with bits of Russian culture or history that would make for an appropriate part of the ceremony. And the group included someone who did Russian at University...

Just noticed The Guardian's homepage

http://www.theguardian.com/uk

So the opening scene of the opening ceremony is meant to climax on five enormous snowflakes hanging from the ceiling expanding to form the five olympic rings. One of the snowflakes entirely refused to expand.




Going well so far!

And the BBC commentator has just mistaken Aimee Fuller (a slopestyle snowboarder)


for Chemmie Alcott (a downhill skier).


Ok, I know they're both blonde, but it's your own bloody team.

PLus : The number of countries who have one or two athletes competing is hilarious.

Chemmie Alcott - Why the hell wasn't I informed of her?!

Is there such a thing as a smutty smilie? I need one

She's had like three broken legs in the last four years, only actually qualified for Sochi about a week ago, even though we have no other female downhill skier worth talking about..

A video you might be interested in.

Vanessa Mae's just walked through. The commentator made an observation about how massive her medical insurance must be.


And an athlete whose name I didn't get from I think an island nation (!) who has (and I quote) 'coconut powered underpants',.

I thought this was in alphabetic order, but Croatia have just come through after Togo ?!?