Winter Olympics

Tivo and the Winter Olympics go together like Italy and pasta. You can record all the coverage, and then dash past the commercials and the pretaped segments that try to make every athletic victory into an emotional triumph. (But for one athlete, winning means more than landing the perfect jump. Five years ago, when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, her career seemed to be over....) You can briefly pause to watch speedskating, realize that you can only gape at their quads and their speed for so long without getting bored with them going in circles, and then race on to ski jumping and watch a few people hurl themselves into space, and then go on to the luge and watch helmeted people hurtle down a tube on teeny-tiny sleds. Then you can slow down and watch all the pairs figure skating, wince at the falls and the missteps and the tacky outfits, and marvel at the graceful Russian couple who were clearly superior to all the others.