Figure Skating Highlights Evening Action

Three more gold medals will be given out this evening, as our Fantasy Winter Olympics league hopes to keep up its collective streak of flawlessly picking the gold and silver medal winners.

2:53 PM PST - Snowboarding
Snowboarding opens with the Men's Snowboard Cross. Frenchman Pierre Vaultier is a huge favorite to take this big 16.7 point medal for Adam Claus's Ice Lugers. He's won the cross in four of five World Cup events this season, finishing second in the other one. He's an obvious pick for gold in Canada.
Xavier De La Rue took silver in this event at last year's World Championships and is a threat to take a second French medal. But I'm taking a couple of Americans (Tim Lavoie/Fightin' Ovechkins) for the other medals. The USA's Nate Holland, the only athlete to beat Vaultier, is my choice for silver. I expect Seth Wescott, from the snowboarding mecca of Durham, North Carolina, to win bronze.

3:30 PM PST - Speed Skating
While the distance events belong to the Dutch in this sport, the 500 meter, 1.25 lap sprint is the forte of the North American and Asian nations.

Race 1 is at 3:30 PST and Race 2 is two hours later.

I'm picking Jeremy Wotherspoon (Dave Spence/Paragons) to take Canada's second gold medal, and South Koreans Lee Kang-Seok and Lee Kyou-Hyuk (Brittany B./Buck-Toothed Rabbit Bitches) for silver and bronze.

Japan's Keiichiro Nagashima (undrafted) and the USA's Tucker Fredericks (Zach Chromiak/Banker's Club) also have a good chance to medal.

5 PM PST - Figure Skating
Finally, the event that brings tears to our eyes yet warms our hearts. The Pairs Figure Skating free skate.

The Chinese, and of course John Binz's Da Nang Dynamos, are looking great in this one. Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao turned in the best short program of all time last night and of course rank first. Dan Zhang and Hao Zhang are fifth and Qing Pang/Jian Tong are fourth going in.
Sorry everyone else, but there's just no way Shen/Zhao can be dethroned. I also think Pang/Tong will move up to silver. The love between these two couples was so apparent, that even eating Wendy's with John Binz while watching it made for a romantic Valentine's Day. The longer and less constrained free skate will allow for even more of this love to bloom in the judges hearts, manifesting itself in high scores written in ink warmed by romance.

Russians Yuko Kavaguti and Alexander Smirnov (Dave Spence/Paragons) also had a beautiful short program to place third. I think they'll hang on and get the bronze.

The Germans Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy (Brittany B./Buck-Toothed Rabbit Bitches) really scared me with their opera outfits and Sharpie eyebrows, so despite placing second last night I'm predicting they move down to fourth.