Fervor

The Olympics are well under way and even K knows that we watch channel 5-3-5 early in the morning and though out dinner.
I am always cautiously excited about watching the synchronized swimming during the games because, lets face it, this ain't no sport that many people get excited about so it gets very little coverage. The events started on Monday (3:00 Sunday morning our time) and I taped the overnight coverage in the hopes that at least the Canadian routine would get some play time. Not so much. After the next day, the Canadian Free Routine was available on demand on CBC.ca but they only posted the one routine. So we went to bed early last night, and set the alarm for 2:35am so I could watch the live steam of the duet finals.
I had some technical difficulties, sound but no picture (picture was fine before I went to bed) so I ended up watching it on C's laptop instead. It was enjoyable. Alone by myself in the dark, no silly commentary and twenty four amazing swimmers.
The Dutch girls swam first. Of the top twelve routines that qualify for finals the bottom six scoring routines get randomly placed in the first 6 spots to swim and vice versa. The first routine was my favourite of the bottom six routines, the girls were very precise and had the next few routines failing to hold up to my expectations. All I could think about during the Ukrainian routine was "how did they possibly find two girls with funny toe points that match!". The French started off poorly in my books, their music was an annoying mix of Beatlejuice and whining babies and they flexed their feet far too much for my liking.
The pair from China incorporated some really unusual movements and well executed spins but their joined movements were surprisingly basic. Their scores were a slight bit higher than I thought they would be having gotten 9.7 where I thought it was more of a 9.5 routine.
The Spanish ladies had a very impressive first length of the pool. The synchronization was spot on and had high difficulty to match. The music selection was by far the most engaging of the event and the choreography made great use of arms and legs together at the same time. The girls weren't able to keep up the high energy to the end but I do think this was my favourite pair of the night/morning.
Japan's duet had many synchronization errors in both arms and spins- I loved their bathing suits.
The Americans excited me with their starting position- great pose. The girls were slightly off in their first figure and I thought they had a little too much down time coming out of it but the girls swam really close together and had some great connected movements.
For the Russians, it was truly a gold medal to lose. They started off with a great pair of lifts and the impressive first figure showed how how incredibly precise the girls are. The Anastasias were unbelievably sharp, almost to a fault, I would have liked to have seen them be a touch more graceful in the slower sections of music. Perfect tens were well deserved.
The Canadians swam last and had a tough act to follow. I thought they did really well although they had a slow start. I enjoyed the dragon theme they carried through out the routine. Overall it very well executed with the exception of the misses in last figure. They were ranked 6th going into finals and based on only the final routine I would have placed them fourth ahead of both the US pair and China.
Back in bed at 4:15.
There is no synchro on tonight but I imagine I will do the same thing Thursday and Friday mornings to catch the team events. Plans for tonight: Catch up with my favourite mass murderer.