There was plenty of drama Thursday night at the finals of men's figure skating at the Vancouver Winter Olympics. One skater's laces broke in the middle of his program. And American Johnny Weir performed exceptionally well and crowned himself with a wreath of roses while waiting for his score.
I like this lead by Tom Goldman, sports correspondent for NPR. He answered most of the W's and that is good for the audience. He also put in some words that could make the audiences picture the event happening without even watching it on television. I think it worked pretty well for a standard newspaper lead writing style.
I believe the lead to be just the first sentence. That being said, it gives a lot of the Ws and is overall very informative as to setting up the rest of the story. It intrigues me and keeps me reading down the page. Actually I thought the entire story to well written and kept my interest throughout its entirety.
I thought it was interesting also that there is an image that goes to another story on skating fashion linked with the other photographs. I thought this useful for development of the story and gives it an extra something
I agree with the above comment. I think the lead can be either the first sentence, or the first paragraph. The lead makes me want to read more about what happened at the event, and makes me wonder if anything else happened that couldn't be fit into the lead for it to be effective. The rest of the article was very visual and helped in the aide of readers imagining what the event was like without seeing footage.