FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, February 10th, 2014

2014 SOCHI WINTER GAMES – FEB. 10 NBCSN AND MSNBC HIGHLIGHTS

Tonight at 8 p.m. ET on NBC: Three-Time U.S. Olympic Medalist Julia Mancuso in Super Combined & 2010 Short Track Bronze Medalist J.R. Celski in 1500m

Live NBCSN Coverage Tomorrow, Feb. 11, Beginning at 3 a.m. ET, Highlighted by

Stamford, Conn. – February 10, 2014 – Coming up on NBC Olympics’ coverage of the XXII Olympic Winter Games:

  • Tonight at 8 p.m. ET, NBC’s coverage features 2010 silver medalist Julia Mancuso in the super combined and 2010 short track bronze medalist J.R. Celski in the men’s 1500m. For more information on tonight’s primetime program on NBC, click here.
  • Tomorrow’s live coverage on NBCSN begins at 3 a.m. ET and is highlighted by men and women’s cross-country individual sprint gold medal finals, where Alaska’s Kikkan Randall, the 2009 world silver medalist, is a strong medal contender in the women’s event.  NBCSN will also feature women’s curling with Team USA vs. Russia; live coverage of figure skating pairs’ short program; and live coverage of the gold medal final in women’s ski jumping.
  • Live on USA Network at 5 a.m. ET on Tuesday, Team USA takes on China in men’s curling. CNBC’s coverage of women’s curling begins at 5 p.m. ET Tuesday with Team USA vs. Great Britain.

Following are highlights from today’s NBCSN and MSNBC coverage of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi:

Analyst and three-time Olympic hockey medalist Natalie Darwitz on USA’s women’s hockey team’s speed (Team USA beat Switzerland 9-0 and faces 2010 Olympic gold medalist Canada live on Wed., Feb. 12 at 7 a.m. ET on NBCSN): “No team can match team USA’s speed, it’s dynamic and it’s really a game changer in this tournament.”

Luge analyst Duncan Kennedy on Italian Sandra Robatscher having her uncle and six-time Olympic medalist, Armin Zoggeler, as a mentor: “It’s like your uncle being Sebastian Vettel if you’re a racecar driver… He [Zoggeler] is the superman of sliding.”

Sliding sports and Formula One play-by-play voice Leigh Diffey on Austrian Nina Reithmayer’s disappointing qualifying runs (Reithmayer is in 19th-place after qualifying): “This is like watching a PGA Tour golfer, slicing continuously, hooking it, duck hooking it off the tee.”

Olympic correspondent and four-time Olympic track and field medalist Ato Boldon after going to the top of the ski jump: “Being up there and getting a chance to look down, and get a sense of just how brave you have to be to even be up there undertaking the sport. Forget what you finish in the final standings, it takes a great degree of courage to be up there.”

Analyst and four-time U.S. ski jumping champion Jeff Hastings explaining ski jump scoring: “What they’re looking for at the takeoff is just a smooth move with no erratic movement. They want to see aggression and they want to see you go direct to that ski. Here at the Telemark landing, where they’re hoping to put one foot in front of the other at the Telemark, that’s really where they differentiate themselves in style. Telemark landing gets you an extra 2.5 points.”

Play-by-play voice Ted Robinson on the Dutch sweep of the men’s speed skating 500m: “It’s incredible; never could the Dutch dominance be clearer.”

Analyst and Olympic speed skating gold medalist Dan Jansen on men’s 500m strategy (there are two races held on the same day of competition with the two times added together to determine final score): “The difficulty is that you expend so much energy in the first run, there’s no holding back. You don’t pace yourself, you go out there and then you have to get out there again and do the exact same thing.”

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