And finally ...

Apart from the falling over, what really cheers me up about the winter Olympics is the Cool Runnings type stories of winter Olympic athletes from the most improbably countries. One of my favourites, sent by my Gulf correspondent, was about Pakistan's only winter Olympian Mohammad Abbas who learnt to ski on wooden planks. Given this inauspicious start,79th out of the 81 finishers in the giant slalom was not bad, especially as over 20 other competitors failed to finish.

In a similar vein is the triumph of the Irish two woman bob, finishing 17th out of 21. This victory was made sweeter by finishing ahead of the Australian team who tried to have them thrown out of the competition before it started. Even better they finished ahead of the GB team 1, who started the competition as a medal hope, there is nothing like beating the old enemy. Of course GB team 1 did so badly due to another spectacular crash, but that is really not the point!