Nerd Alert

It's uber-nerdy to point this out, but one of the cross-country skiing news sites held a contest to see who could correctly predict the most places in the Olympic XC races. I finished 21st, out of 103 entrants - in the uppermost quartile, but not exactly scorching the track. (On the other hand, the best North American finisher in the men's marathon yesterday finished 34th out of a registered 82 racers - meaning that I'm a better chooser of racers than he is a racer?)

Like many others' choices, my picks were led astray by the usually well-founded assumption that Norway wouldn't suck. Unfortunately, they most surely did. And in looking through the top 20 finishers, it appears that many people made their money on the sprint events, where the pool of legitimate competitors (and likely winners) is much smaller than in the distance events. I couldn't find anyone in the top 25 who correctly picked any of the podium places for yesterday's men's 50k skate race. These topics are worth discussing in my forthcoming Olympic recap...