Day 4 It must be Tuesday

We had a realllllly loonnnggg day yesterday. 

We started with a breakfast put on by Speed Skating Canada at SSC House at 9:00am. 

Next I got my bushy locks cut.  Now I look like a billiard ball.

Then it was off to the Oval.  We have to be there two hours before race time.  It allows us the opportunity to ensure that nothing can go wrong. 

We had two sets of twenty pairs for the 500M races, each set broke after the tenth pair for ice resurfacing. Well it went fine for the first ten pairs, the the bottom dropped out.  The Olympia ice resurfacing machines decided they didn't want to run any more.  Not just one but both.  The spare machine was brought in and it went around the track, but left the ice looking like a hockey rink in the middle of the period.  It was rough and unsafe for the skaters.

The high paid help put their heads together and decided to delay the restart.  The ice techs and the Olympia people finally got one working reliably enought that it was worth trying again.  Saints be praised it worked just fine.

So two hours later we are now ready to restart the second half of the first set of races.  That set goes well, the Canadian skaters put in some great times.  So it is now time to wait for the second race results.  The medals will be awarded on the combined time from each race.  So if a skater had a time of 34.98 sec in the first race and 35.01 in the second his total would be 69.99 seconds.  If that combined time is the lowest then it wins the Gold metal.

As it turned out, Canada did not medal.  Korea won Gold, the first ever for that country in long track, and two Japanese skaters won silver and bronze.

Today is the Women's turn.  We have hopes for medals.  Hope does spring eternal.

See you later.