After breaking through a seemingly impenetrable wall of secrecy yesterday, we were able to watch Lindsey Vonn's gold medal run as it happened -- on some sort of Internet broadcast we probably shouldn't have been able to see. Seconds after her downhill rush put her in first place, we tweeted the news without a second thought. And a few minutes after that, we had some complaints about being a "spoiler" -- a notion that made us think a little bit more about the context of these 2010 Olympics.

See, we certainly understand the idea that some people don't want to know the outcome of some events -- particularly big ones involving ONE OF US like Vonn. We've recorded a ton of games to watch later and done absurd things to keep from finding out scores. We can also clearly remember a Winter Olympics from our high school days when the U.S. hockey team was making a decent run and pretty much everyone in school was trying not to find out what happened so they could watch the game when it was going to be shown after school let out. We get how watching something with a known vs. unknown outcome completely changes the experience.

But listen: It's one thing for a person to try to avoid finding out an outcome. It's another thing, in 2010, for a broadcast of the Olympics to pretend none of these things are happening. Really, it's absurd. We live in a one-minute news cycle, not a 24-hour news cycle. Let people watch it live if it's a big enough event (and we can all agree that Vonn skiing is a huge deal for U.S. Olympic viewers), and show it again on tape later. Heck, we still watched it again last night even though we'd already "cracked the code" and watched it earlier. These Olympics aren't happening with a huge time delay relative to the United States, where people might be sleeping when many of the events are taking place. Most of us are wide awake. Many of us are accustomed to getting information as it happens. And few of us are fooled.

SPOILER ALERT TODAY!!! Lindsey Vonn once skied at Buck Hill. It's a fact! Also, Vonn skis again today. It's a combined race, with events starting around 11:30 and 2:30 our time. We will do our best to keep the outcomes off the Twitters and Facepages, but just be warned: you cannot stop events from happening, even if NBC would have you believe otherwise.