Sochi: Of rusty old timers and sexy young huckers

If you like your internet passing fads fiddle-de-dee – and who among us does not? – you can hardly have missed American figure skater Jason Brown these past few weeks.

The 19-year-old from Chicago with a 19-year-old's ponytail was the kid who came second in the US Nationals with his take on the opening number from Bill Whelan's Riverdance, Reel Around the Sun. More than 3.6 million YouTube hits and roughly the same number of US chat shows later, Brown finally made it on to the ice here in the Men's Free Skating portion of the team competition.

Sadly, things didn’t work out quite as well for him in the Iceberg Skating Palace as it had in Boston in early January. Introduced by a very excited stadium announcer as, “YouTube sensation JASON BROWN!!!”, he actually started reasonably well.

The opening strains of Reel Around the Sun go heavy on the haunting uilleann pipes and his interpretation of it all was suitably ethereal. Just at the point where the bodhrán starts to kick in though, Brown found himself on the floor as his heel skidded out from under him at the end of an AxelLutzWhatever.

And yet, as any good Irish dancer is taught from the first time they lace up a pair of black pumps, Brown kept smiling, kept dancing and finished out his routine. When the scores were totted up he finished fourth to secure seven points for the US team who ultimately took bronze overall.

Men's downhill
The finishing line of the men's downhill up on Rosa Khutor feeds into a vast expanse of white in front of a grandstand, which actually took a while to fill up yesterday morning.

Twenty minutes before the start, it was only about a quarter full and, if you looked out over the back of the stand, you could see why. Impressive and all as the resort looks and skis, it’s a purpose-built contrivance carved into the belly of a hill, which means it’s a one-road-in and one-road-out kind of place. Presumably, there wasn’t room in the $2.6 billion budget for more.

It meant that as the first skiers launched themselves from the top of the mountain, traffic was tailed back a mile and a half down the switchbacks.

Once everybody got in and got settled, the event itself was stunning to behold with the world’s best skiers hurtling down what looked from the bottom to be more a cliff face than a ski slope.

The only thing that chafed the gathered thousands was the comic ineptitude from the French guy whose job it was to do the English commentary.

Now, it’s accepted in Sochi that winter sports aren’t everybody’s specialist subject. But you surely expect the folks whose job is to bring it all to the masses to have some idea what they’re on about.

Not our man, who sounded as though he’d never heard of most of the skiers before. These are direct quotes: “Let’s hear it for the Austrian guy!” “Next guy down the mountain is Fuez Beat from Switzerland! Actually, it’s Beat Fuez!” “This Canadian guy did not have a great time in practice so the top guys are probably okay. Oh My God, he’s going faster!”

Feeling old
There are times when the sole purpose of the Winter Olympics appears to be to make you feel old and out of touch.

Poor old Hazel Irvine fell foul of this on the BBC over the weekend when she blurted out an apology after she thought she heard British snowboarder Billy Morgan blurt out something else entirely.

Asked how he approaches his runs, Morgan said: “I just thought, ‘Huck it.‘” Hazel, not unreasonably, thought Morgan had . . . well, you can tell what she thought. And so she apologised. Then it turned out that “hucking” is a snowsports term, meaning to attempt something beyond what you know you’re capable of.

How do we know this? Because the nice people in the Main Press Centre issued a glossary of terms for the halfpipe and slopestyle to educate us all. And so: “Hucking: Associated with an athlete throwing his or her body into the air, perhaps beyond their skill level. Huckers may lack skill, but do not lack courage.”

Holy huck! (Sorry).