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After a real blitzkrieg by Germany in the medal count on Tuesday, the Americans landed full force on Omaha Beach in British Columbia on Wednesday (note: WWII references aside, Germany is our friend and sick – beer + Lindsey Vonn’s birthplace involved). In fact, Wednesday night’s 6 Medal killing spree may be the sickest single day of performances in American Winter Olympics history.

Double Fist + The Bird + Classy Lady... Solid Work Bode

While I maintain that it was a real toolish move on the part of Shani Davis to do one qualifier in the 500M and then withdraw to “focus on the 1000″ because doing so prevented another American from “living the Olympic Dream” (banging out some random Lithuanian biathlete girl in the Olympic Village… having Bode Miller vomit on you… that kind of stuff), at least the guy followed through and won gold. The better story though has to be that guys named “Shani” and “Chad” have now medaled in consecutive Winter Games (and not even in Snowboarding or Ski Aerials). While we’d expect people named “Chad” to do well on the ASP world surfing tour or in the X-Games, the Winter Olympics is generally dominated by people named “Olaaf”, “Gunnar”, and “Sergei”. You shouldn’t think that Chad Hendrick really is breaking the mold though. He’s actually a more accomplished inline skater (typical Chad move) than he is on the ice, and he goes to sick parties (he’s the one on the right) with Playboy Bunnies, Carlton from Fresh Prince, and of course… Apolo Anton Ohno.

Yeah... That is actually Carlton from Fresh Prince.

… And then there was the snowboard men’s halfpipe, in which Shaun White was so thoroughly nasty on his first run in which he didn’t even do his “sick new double corkscrew thing”, that he could treat his second run as a victory lap. The highlight of this event: Shaun’s bro encouraging him prior to his victory lap by dropping a real crisp F Bomb for everyone to enjoy (I’m sure this will result in them tape delaying everything even more…). USA also had a nice throw-in Bronze in this one – a habit of ours over the course of this games that has put us in great position in the medal count (The Bronze Throw-In is sort of like getting a random draft pick in a trade or finding out that your girlfriend is really in to those strip aerobics DVDs – it’s not really the point, but these things have a way of coming in handy down the road)…

So now for the main event… the single coolest event I’ve seen thus far (Korean collapse included) – The Women’s Downhill.

Mancuso (middle) chillin in Sweden with some other Skier Chicks

If you didn’t see it, what “America’s Funniest Home Videos” was for suburban fathers’ crotchs was pretty much what the downhill was for really aryan women: they just got lit up one after another. I’m not talking kinda lit up… these girls would come off of their skis and apparently crash for 200 feet on ice. In the midst of the shock value TV, we also got to see killer performances by two really good looking Americans. I received an instant message from podcast legend Sebastian about a half hour after the event ended with the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciro_Mancuso Apparently, Mancuso’s dad has made an uncanny transformation from West Coast Tony Montena to low key groupie dad. If that isn’t the American dream, well… it is. (Note: Leighton Meester was apparently raised by drug dealers too… is there some odd correlation between drug dealer parents and hot famous daughters? I wonder if people are going to start using the “I only dealt drugs so my daughter would turn out to be hot and famous” excuse?).

The Mirror Shot... Most Commonly Found in Reality Kings type content... Appreciate how hard I worked to justify putting this picture in the article?

After being distracted by Leighton Meester pictures for the next fifteen minutes, I went ahead and began to google image search Lindsey Vonn. When I had gotten as far as “Linds” in the search box, I noticed suggestion #1 was Lindsay Lohan, #2 was Lindsay Lohan Breast, but that #3 Lindsey Vonn had jumped ahead of #4 Lindsay Lohan No Clothes.

She Used to be So Healthy

In order to achieve something that monumental, you have to really earn it, and that’s exactly what Vonn did last night. Even though the announcers inexplicably kept criticizing every single one of her turns, she absolutely dominated the field… injured shin aside. As good as that performance was though, nothing topped her literally perfect (she could not have done a single thing better) celebration/cry/interview that she threw down after the run and win. She was candid, sincere, overjoyed, funny, really good looking… she just nailed it. Every once and a while somebody just nails the post-game celebration. Drew Brees did it two weeks ago with help from the cute baby (kinda cheating)… Vonn did it last night, and in the process made herself millions of dollars. She can do Dancing with the Stars, TheraFlu Ads (the Winter Olympian Cold Medicine Plug is always involved)… maybe even get a skiing reality show on “Versus” or “The Active Network”. If it weren’t for the American love affair with “Ohno Watch”, I’d call her a stone cold lock to be carrying our flag in the closing ceremonies.  In case you missed it, check out her interview below:

(Note: This is blatant copyright infringement… so my thanks/apologies to NBC – consider this reparations for your fall lineup)

The only blemish on the US record on Wednesday – two losses in curling to bring our combined men’s and women’s records to 0-5. While announcing the compelling Sweden-UK women’s match, the announcers began discussion of the big curling controversy: a bunch of the world’s top female curlers are posing nude or semi-nude in Andorran photographer/curler Ana Arce’s annual “Fire and Ice” babes of women’s curling calendar (for which the proceeds go to support Women’s Curling of course).

An odd medium between actual photography and a "Blender" shoot.

Outside of the Olympics and the underwhelming NBA Trade Deadline scene, the biggest thing going on in sports world over the past couple days has been the commencement of the UEFA Champions League Round of 16. (For those who aren’t familiar: UEFA Champions League is the competition pitting the best clubs from each European soccer league. The specifics of how teams qualify is pretty crazy, but relevantly speaking, the 32 best soccer teams in Europe break into 8 pools of 4 and play “Home and Homes” with the top 2 teams advancing. This stage takes place in the fall, while the round of 16 commences in February. In the round of 16 as well as Quarters and Semis, the teams play “2 Leg Matches” – basically a full soccer game in each home stadium with the scores being added together and using goals scored on the road as the first tiebreaker. This week featured leg one for half of the matchups; next week will feature leg one for the other half; the week after will feature leg two for the first half of the matchups; and the fourth week will feature leg two for the other half… then we move on to quarterfinals. Basically, the Europeans have managed to make one playoffs system last an entire calendar year… about what would happen if every NBA series went 7 games. The Games that happened this week: Manchester United 3 AC Milan 2, Arsenal 1 FC Porto 2, Real Madrid 0 Olympique Lyon 1, and Bayern Munich 2 Fiorentina 1.

Here is what I noticed in watching these games:

Below is the highlight reel for Arsenal-Porto. At 3:30 and 10:00 you’ll see Arsenal keeper Lukasz Fabianski making two of the most clownish F-ups you’ll ever see a goalie do:

I actually think mistake #1 was way worse than mistake #2. On mistake #2, Sol Campbell is as much to blame as he is, but mistake #1 was a simple case of somebody sucking at their job… Fabianski’s next start is probably more likely to be with the Kansas City Wizards than with Arsenal… or even a team in his homeland of Poland.

I know... It was legitimately hard to look at.

Fabianski aside, Arsenal was far from inspiring against Porto, a team that plays a similar style of football to “The Gunners” but with about 20% of the talent… and Manuel “at least I don’t rock a bleached mohawk anymore” Almunia isn’t much better in goal anyway. Porto came in with the strategy of dumbing down the game and basically intentionally fouling Arsenal as much as possible, and the strategy worked perfectly. Arsenal has so much “pace”, “skill”, and “athleticism”, but couldn’t they use a guy like Man Utd has in Darren Fletcher – who really is none of the above but is constantly involved in the play and indiscrimantly fouls anyone near him? If they managed to sign one of those… and a goalie in the summer transfer window, then they’d legitimately be in the same league as Chelsea/MUFC/Barca/Real. Right now, they just aren’t (but I expect them to win 1-0 at home and advance on the away goal rule).

As for goalies who they should be targeting in the next transfer window, how about Lyon’s Hugo LLoris? He’s almost as creepy looking as their current goalie; he’s young (23 at a a position where guys go til they are 40); and he’s been really nasty of late both for Lyon and France.

Which of these brutally European looking dudes is France's Keeper? The One on the left...

Lost in the wake of the Thierry Henry handball mess in the France-Ireland world cup qualifier was how LLoris kept France in that game in the first place, and now he gets a clean sheet against Real Madrid (basically the Mets of the Soccer Scene at this point… tons of talent… no chemistry). The guy is damn good… too good to stay in Ligue A indefinitely. If Arsenal doesn’t consider him, Chelsea and MUFC should look to him as successors to Petr Cech and Ed Van Der Sar respectively.

Even though they won on a goal that should not have counted (Klose was clearly offsides when he scored)… and they benefited from an awful red card call on Fiorentina, Bayern Munich has to be considered the dark horse in this field of 16 remaining. Their lineup is full of the best Dutch and German players in the world, including kid phenom Thomas Muller – who may even be the most individually brilliant and creative option for Germany in South Africa. The generic lineup for Bayern includes Ribery, Lahm, Van Bommel, Robben, Klose, Schweinstager, Gomez, and Muller among others. How can you argue that this squad is not in the same league of talent as the current top tier of Real/Barca/MUFC/Chelsea?

Who took 1992 Tiffany Amber Thiessen, threw her in a time machine, and had her read about Greece's debt crisis off of a teleprompter for me? ...Not that I mind

As for Manchester United – AC Milan, MUFC played one of those games where they look awful and dominant simultaneously. Time after time, their entire defensive line would just sort of hang out and watch while Milan made through-passes to set up scoring opportunities.

The Rio-Evans-Rafael-Evra lineup just doesn’t work, but it’s hard to say how they get better without a healthy Vidic or waiting on the summer transfer market (and how can England justify Rio’s captaincy when he isn’t really even in form to be starting for the team?). Still, with Wayne Rooney playing at this level (if I had a game tomorrow I’d prefer him to Cristiano… potentially anyone), you have to think MUFC is going to be fine til they match up with Chelsea/Real/Barca… and that maybe Tevez’/Cristiano’s presence at United was really holding his development back?

One final note… when you stay up all night watching Olympic coverage on CNBC, you end up watching the market news after 5am by accident. You’d think I’d just change the channel when this happens, but these shows are pretty much the definition of “white collar softcore”. It’s like Eliot Spitzer was a “Make a Wish Kid” and this was the result. If I had to pick between a “Babes of CNBC” or “Playmates” swimsuit calendar, how could I go against Nicole Lapin? If only she doubled as an international curling star, we really could get one. I quite don’t remember the cable networks having girls like this on air five or ten years ago. 2000 Era Paula Zahn on FNC started the trend… Laurie Dhue really took it to the next level in the NeoCon Heyday… but I think Joe Francis just invited these CNBC girls onto his bus.

America: Truly the land of progress…

Real,

Nick

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