‘Selfie’ hotspot
The Olympic flame in Sochi has become a selfie hotspot.
Taking a self-portrait with a cellphone camera has become wildly popular, and the opportunity do it with one of the most iconic Olympic symbols in the background is proving to be one of the biggest attractions at the Sochi Games.
In fact, so many people are doing it upon entering Olympic Park that a bit of a competition has broken out, with fans going for unique poses to set themselves apart from the flood of flame selfies on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
A state-run children’s ballet ensemble from the nearby city of Rostovon-Don broke into a choreographed dance when Swan Lake came over the loudspeakers, while their instructor took pictures with the flame just behind them.
“We’re seeing it for the first time,” Yulya Podgurskaya says. “It’s very beautiful.”
For some Russians, it’s become a can’t-miss chance to express some patriotism and revel in having the biggest sporting event in the world in their backyard.
Philip Shustov went one step further, putting his 10-year-old son back in Moscow on FaceTime on his iPhone to let him see the flame.
Shustov says the flame is the defining symbol “of the games, of New Russia. I don’t remember previous Olympic Games because I was only 3 years old. Now it’s history here in Russia.”
Russia is hosting the Olympics for the first time since the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow.
Fast faux pas
A moment of triumph nearly turned embarrassing for Russian speedskater Olga Graf.
The 30-year-old gave the home country a reason to cheer Sunday, winning Russia’s first medal when she took a surprising bronze in the women’s 3,000 meters Sunday.
She even got a note of praise from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
When Graf’s time flashed on the scoreboard - 4 minutes, 3.47 seconds was a personal best - the crowd at Adler Arena erupted in cheers. She whooped it up on her warm-down lap, then unzipped her skin-tight suit right down to the belly button.
She was wearing nothing underneath.
“I totally forgot,” Graf said sheepishly through a translator. “We have very good suits and they are very tight. ... You just want to breathe and you want to take off your suit.”
When she realized her faux pas, Graf quickly zipped the suit back up with a mortified smile.
“Only afterward,” she said, “did I realize that maybe this video will appear on YouTube. But I don’t think it will be so bad.”Rewind
American skater Ashley Wagner is responsible for the most rewatched moment during NBC’s Saturday night coverage of the Winter Olympics from Sochi.
TiVo Research said Sunday that viewers stopped and rewound their digital video recorders to see Wagner looking up at the scoreboard after skating to Pink Floyd more than at any other point of the broadcast.
The second most rewatched moment also came during figure skating. People wanted to see Russia’s Julia Lipnitskaia spin that ended with one leg held vertically over her head. Men’s slopestyle accounted for the other three of the top five rewatched moments.
TiVo bases its data from a sample of its 350,000 households with the service.
Racing for “VIRG”
On his left glove, American skier Steven Nyman wrote in black marker - “VIRG.”
It was a tribute to his uncle, Virgil, who Nyman said just underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor back in Provo, Utah. Nyman talked to his uncle the night before Sunday’s downhill and knew he would be watching. So Nyman gave him a shout-out.
Nyman fought back tears talking about his uncle after finishing 27th in the race.
“I just hope he’ll be OK,” Nyman said. “I have three brothers and he’s always been good to us. He loves us.
“When I called him, I said I was racing for him.”
Sports, Pages 18 on 02/10/2014