The local paper refers to it as "rail, fail, prevail". Let's see...
The Winter Olympics came to a crashing halt for Girdwood snowboarder Callan Chythlook-Sifsof on Tuesday, but for biathletes Jeremy Teela of Anchorage and Jay Hakkinen of Kasilof, it's clean-slate time.
As for Palmer's Kerry Weiland, she and the U.S. women's hockey team are rolling toward the semifinals and a possible medal.
The day at a glance:
• Teela dropped from ninth place to 24th place and Hakkinen slipped from 54th to 57th in the 12.5-kilometer men's biathlon pursuit race, with Teela's race marred by a mistake by race officials, who sent him onto the course too early;
• Chythlook-Sifsof crashed in both of her qualifying runs in women's snowboardcross and failed to advance beyond the preliminaries;
• And Weiland was part of a 13-0 rout of Russia in pool-play action, clinching a spot in Monday's semifinals.
And our other all-star skier, Kikkan (Keek'-un) Randall:'
Randall placed fourth in the first of two semifinal heats and then had to wait through the second heat to learn if her time of 3 minutes, 45.9 seconds was fast enough to put her into the six-skier finals that will decide gold, silver and bronze.
It wasn't.
Instead, four skiers from the much faster second semifinal posted times that vaulted them into the finals. Only the top two skiers in Randall's heat qualified, while the No. 3 and No. 4 finishers in the second semifinal claimed the two "lucky loser" spots.
Randall's semifinal time was 4.7 seconds off the time needed to match the sixth-fastest semifinal time.
We're not doing so well. We'll see how the biathletes do ... and that leaves us with a question:
What's more lame: "biathletes" or "snowboardcross"?
