Olympics Agonizing Moments

After watching the first few days of Olympic events, my list of agonizing Olympic moments runs the spectrum from almost-gold-medal performances to spectacular failures:

- American Johnny Spillane fought valiantly in the nordic combine. He led for most of the final kilometer but faded with the finish line (and the gold medal) in sight, and was caught right at the finish by American-born Frenchman Jason Lamy Chappuis. To Spillane's credit, he seemed quite happy with the silver medal.

- American figure skater Jeremy Abbott finished a disappointing 15th after last night's men's short program (essentially eliminating him from medal contention) after singling a triple axel and then doing only a double lutz in lieu of a triple. How excruciating must it have been for him to have to complete his program knowing full well that he was completely out of medal contention? That final minute or so must've have felt like an eternity to him.

- In the men's 1500 meter short track speed skating final, two South Koreans battling for second and third place, knock each other out just before the finish to let Americans Apollo Anton Ohno and J. R. Celski snatch the silver and bronze medals.

- Dutch speed skater Annette Gerritsen falling in the Women's 500 meters. Years of training for hours a day, and your medal dreams are over just seconds into your Olympic experience.

And of course, to put all of this in perspective, we can't forget about the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. There was absolutely nothing more agonizing than that...