davidnielsen's blog
Jinxed Skeleton
I'm going to be very careful if I have to cover the skeleton competition in Turin.
What a difference four years can make.
At the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, the U.S. skeleton team was one of the best stories to cover. Jimmy Shea had a magical time, winning a gold medal while competing with a photo in his helmet of his grandfather, Jim Shea, a 1932 Olympic double-gold medalist who had died a month earlier in a car accident.
Captivating Tristan Gale also won a gold medal for the U.S. in the women's skeleton.
Four years later, though, and it seems that the U.S. skeleton team is cursed.
Where are the 2006 Winter Olympics being held, anyway?
The Winter Olympics begin on February 10 in Turin, Italy. Some of my media colleagues prefer to say Torino, which admittedly flows better off the tongue. But it is remarkably inconsistent. After all, we didn't say that the 2004 Summer Olympics were in Athina or the 1964 Summer Olympics were in Roma, did we?
No, Turin will do just fine. Besides, Turin is the long-time home of the Italian carmaker, Fiat. Torino was the name of an ugly Ford car, infamously driven on the 1970s TV detective show, Starsky and Hutch.
Let's not further embarrass our hosts by reminding them of that debacle.
