And To the Winter Olympics . . .

Finally - 2018 Winter Olympic commentary! 

Red Gerard (his first name is short for "Redmond") won the first gold medal of the 2018 Winter Games for the United States in slope-style snowboarding.  The 17-year-old Coloradan had a few tense moments in the liter twists and turned of his sport, but he managed to hold on and win an upset despite the heavy competition - much of which wiped out.     

I'm still having trouble telling the difference between ice dancing and pairs figure skating, but in the former event, there's no mistaking Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir for anyone else.  Virtue - who is definitely going to be on my beautiful-women picture blog when I return to focusing on athletes there - and Moir rocked, figuratively with their dance moves and literally with their choice of music - a medley of the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy For the Devil," a Latin instrumental version of "Hotel California," and Santana's cover of "Oye Como Va."  Hear how it goes - this pair is going to go gold like Red.

Speaking of the Reds, the North Koreans were at the Winter Olympics to take part with their southern brethren in the Games, and not just against each other.  The North and South Korean female ice hockey players are competing side by side.   And they got shut out side be side, losing to Switzerland.  But the big loser in the thawing of relations between the two Korean governments may be the United States; while representatives from Pyongyang and Seoul were talking and making nice - and South Korean President Moon Jae-in was being invited to go to Pyongyang for further talks to warm relations and cool tensions - Mike Pence, the Vice President of the United States, was being belligerent and rude toward North Koreans and also South Koreans by refusing to acknowledge the Olympic diplomacy going on around him.  More proof that the rest of the world has given up on Americans to do the right thing even if they have exhausted all of the alternatives.

But at least we're not the Russians, who have been banned from sending a national team because of doping.  Russians without a history of doping who are competing are competing as themselves, not as representatives of a country, which likely means that the only Russians you'll see at these Games are figure skaters.

Yevgenia Medvedeva is hot. ;-)

It's safe to assume that all of the Russian surnames at these Games will have the feminizing "a" at the end, yes . . .  

One more controversy about the Winter Olympics' location has also been settled.  It's spelled "PyeongChang," not "Pyeongchang" - the "C" is capitalized.

I hope that has cleared up any misunderstanding.