SOCHI 2014.

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As people like me actually know very little about competition in winter sports, and despite this, the 2014 Sochi, Russia Winter Olympics have been outstanding to watch on television, of which the skiing, hockey (especially), cross - country skiing, and even the curling.  Have been searching for an appropriate pictorial for the young people competing in the various events in Sochi, and one might lookup the photoportraits on "Sporting News" or Time.com for starters, and then later at, i.e., the "Sports Illustrated" site that has its annual swimsuit issue out now. 

The thing that struck me about these 2014 winter Olympics as televised on N.B.C. has been that portrayal of the contest times as happening extremely quickly, especially for the individual events like the Downhill and Slalom races, the ski jumping, rink skating and so forth.  I am sure this was the result of the goals of network coverage that called for everything to be timed to the millisecond.  With respect to the commentators, the N.B.C. Sports broadcasting crew remains the best for such events and brings out the competitive and dedicated spirit of every contestant on screen, especially again among those who are interviewed during and after matches.  People like me also greatly enjoyed watching the snowboarding as this is a sport that appears not to be too well - defined, but that captures young peoples' attention and interest among others in the featured sporting contests.  This shows the contests are much more equalized and the winning contestants more stratified than typically was the case in the days of old.  Last, but not least, were things like the speed skating and figure - skating that for me have a more specific and specialized audience, maybe more among actual skaters, that also proved to be well - worth seeing,


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and are apparently the calling for many superior contestants on a very high competitive level.  Overall, many of the happenings at this year's winter Olympics, and obviously I did not catch everything despite watching lots of programming, both early and late when the broadcasts were televised, I still have to mention here as probably being the best winter games since Lake Placid, NY, in 1980.  At least this is a little true for the Norwegians, Canadians and Russians who came out with more gold medals than the Americans who have the most medals overall to date in Sochi.  The television coverage of these games was quite good and everyone need have picked an event and to have made an effort to tune in to their contests - I chose the hockey (USA men's and women's) this year and the teams as they were did not disappoint.  Those Canadiens, especially those from Toronto, ... , are especially tough with their hockey, though people like me believe some voodoo was involved in cutting off the U.S. hopes for the gold medals in this area (no sour grapes here, however).  Am as well not taken aback by the sports successes of the Netherlands (22 medals,) and for instance, Japan (8,) that show how the contests at the Olympics now are more equalized and stratified - that they make room for everyone more than before at this point.  Really a good games so far. 

Winter Olympics 2014 site.

United States Olympic Committee site.

International Olympic Committee site.