The Sochi Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony is on Friday and it starts up live at 11 am ET from Russia and the event is not streaming online from NBC and will air on the network on tape delay with all its pageantry later in primetime starting at 7:30 pm ET and will be from the NBCOlympics.com website and fans can watch live online from the BBC and CBC with certain websites streaming the coverage.
NBC is live streaming nearly everything from Sochi on their main Olympics website, but they won't be have live coverage of the opening festivities, as the network wants a big number when it airs on tape delay Friday night and felt it would only be proper due to the time difference between Sochi and the United States. There are a number of events that started up before the Opening Ceremonies in Sochi and that is due in part to 12 new events that have been added to the Olympic games since Vancouver, including the team figure skating and the snowboard slopestyle.
Shaun White made some news this week when he decided to pull out of the slopestyle event after sustaining an injury in a practice run on the mountain and while he got some flak for that, the star said he wanted to concentrate on his halfpipe competition, which he is expected to win. Mark McMorris is one of the top names in the slopestyle and some came out to decry White, but he is also dealing with shoulder and ankle injuries and the time off from competing, which would have had the slopestyle semis and finals this weekend, can give him time to fully heal.
The opening ceremonies are the official kickoff to the Olympics and there will be coverage on BBC and CBC and while the US locations will have it blocked, there are ways of getting around it and if people want to watch, they will be able to. NBC is bringing an unprecedented amount of live coverage to the games and they are live streaming nearly every competition and medal round. The Russian time difference is a good thing and bad thing for the Olympics, as the live stream coverage works out well, but it keeps the primetime coverage on tape delay once again, although the network did get great rating from London despite that time difference.
Injuries and conditions on the courses have been an issue already for skiers and snowboarders and already one American is done for, as Heidi Kloser will be out of the Olympics after crashing on Thursday before qualifications, suffering a leg injury. The American team already has lost Lindsey Vonn and now Kloser is done for Sochi and she fully tore her ACL and will be out for the competition and it came just before she was set to start her qualifying. Hannah Kearney is the favorite after winning in Vancouver and she is in first place and could wrap things up with another gold medal in the event after the 21-year-old took the hard fall.
The games started up on Thursday and more competitions are going down on Saturday, as the biathlon, cross country skiing, figure skating, freestyle skiing, ski jumping, snowboarding with the slopestyle finals and semis, as well as speed skating and the luge. More kick off on Sunday and then the men's hockey picks up next week along with the snowboard halfpipe.
Check here for information on where to watch the stream from outside the US or for the official NBC Olympics website.
