Miscellaneous Winter Olympic Musings 2018

Gimme a C!

You may have noticed that I changed the spelling of the South Korean city hosting the 2018 Winter Olympics from "Pyeongchang" to "PyeongChang."  I capitalized the C when I saw that the South Koreans had done the same.  Apparently the locals in PyeongChang did so when their town got confused with Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.  I heard an anecdotal story about how a Kenyan on his way to PyeongChang in 2014 for a conference ended up in Pyongyang instead.  Not fun for him, I hear.

Be that as it may, Pyeongchang - which had changed its name from Pyongchang by adding an "e" in 2000 in an earlier effort to avoid confusion with Kim Jong Un's hometown - decided to capitalize the "C," although most sportswriters haven't reciprocated and have continued to use a lowercase "c."  Me, I chose to respect the Koreans' wishes.  I tried using the new spelling, with the capital C, in my tags, but Blogger.com kept changing it back to the old one.   I had to check all of the posts I used the tag on and change them all to conform the tag to the new spelling . . . and I inadvertently reverted one of posts (my January 24 post about inter-Korean dialogue because of the Winter Games) to an unpublished draft in the process.  For those of you who may have been looking for it, there's your explanation.  Of course I republished it. 

Anyway, the competition.  Canadian ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, gold medalists at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and the silver medals at the 2014 Sochi Games, won the title again last night, and even though ice dancing is a subjective sport, based on judging and not who crosses the line first, it is more fact than opinion to say that they earned the gold medal over everyone else.  I saw it myself.  Maya and Alex Shibutani, the so-called Shib Sibs, came in third for the bronze. The Shibutani siblings are probably the most popular American brother-sister act in figure skating since the Carruthers siblings at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics . . . and maybe even the most popular brother-sister act of all since the Carpenters.    

Despite the Russians, the U.S. men's hockey team made it to the quarterfinals after beating Slovakia in a rematch, 5-1.  They may, however, have to face the official non-official team from Russia again.  And even thought the U.S. women's team has been more successful against their Russian counterparts than the U.S men's team has been against their Russian counterparts . . . I still say that neither Russian hockey team should be in PyeongChang at all.

And then there's skiing sweetheart Lindsey Kildow Vonn . . . 

. . . currently appearing in a Bounty commercial showing her in a house built on a slant to play on her living life on a slope . . . 

. . . in one of the slinkiest ski outfits I've ever seen! :-D 

Just remember, when the Summer Olympics are on, one of my ladyfriends enjoys checking out the posteriors on male divers, so please hold your comments about how misogynistic I am.  

Anyway, Madame Vonn skis for gold in the downhill in South Korea Wednesday morning . . . which is tonight in the U.S., and so it will be broadcast live tonight.  It's too bad I won't get to see it - I have to go out tonight for a standing commitment.

Oh well, I missed Mary Lou Retton's perfect ten in 1984, as well as other legendary Olympic moments, so this is nothing new for me.

But I hope Lindsey Vonn wins tonight.  Because if she does, she'll be invited to the White House, and she's already made it clear that she will refuse the invitation because Trump nauseates her.  Breitbart News is already rooting against her for it.   So go ,Lindsey, go! :-) 

A gold medal would be a real quick-picker-upper for her. :-)

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.

Dancin' Fools

 Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir became the first Canadian couple as well as the first couple from a North American country to win the Olympic gold medal in ice dancing last night in Vancouver. Their American friends, Meryl Davis and Charlie White, took the silver medal, the second consecutive Olympic silver medal - the second consecutive medal of any color, in fact, and only the third medal in history - for the United States in this event. History was indeed made.

Even more history could have been made had the Russians - who have had at least one couple on the medal podium for ice dancing since it was first added to the Winter Olympics in 1976 - been shut out entirely. But the bronze medal went to Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, edging out the American darlings of Torino, Tanith Belbin (who's still hot) and Ben Agosto. Domnina and Shabalin managed to skate well enough to keep Belbin and Agosto in fourth place, where they started going into the free, despite Shabalin's earlier injuries. But as far as I'm concerned, they shouldn't have won the bronze.

Okay, maybe they were techincally better than Belbin and Agosto, and there was no controversy about whether they deserved third place - not like at Sarajevo in 1984 (the year of Great Britain's Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean), when another pair of Russian ice dancers, Soviets Marina Klimova and Sergei Ponomarenko managed to edge out Judy Blumberg and Michael Seibert of the United States despite the evidence that the two Americans deserved the bronze. (I discussed this on my blog four years ago, so go here for that.) Unlike Blumberg and Seibert, Belbin and Agosto were happy with their finish, and rightfully so, believing the results were fair. So why don't I think Domnina and Shabalin should have won the bronze medal?

Because they're the most vulgar ice dancing couple I've ever seen.

This is the same Russian pair that caused a stir for their Australian aboriginal dance routine, particularly with their aboriginal costumes, which had leaves, brown body stockings and loincloths, and that's not to mention the white face markings. It was Domnina and Shabalin's idea of a "folk dance," which was apparently a required theme in the Olympic ice dancing program this year. Their poorly conceived routine was enough to drop them from first to third place in the end, but as far as I'm concerned, they didn't drop far enough. Not only did Australian aborigines take offense, but even Native Canadians expressed concern. Domnina and Shabalin toned down their costumes and skated in the final program looking more tasteful but still somewhat vulgar. Oksana Domnina looked a bottle-blonde disco queen, and Maxim Shabalin was a disheveled mess.

For more on the native costumes controversy, read this excellent column from Tracee Hamilton of the Washington Post.

Anyway, the continued Russian presence among ice dancing medalists leads me to wonder if some wags are right in suggesting that ice dancing should be dropped from the Winter Olympics. Some say it should be eliminated due to its redundancy (to the layman, at least) to pairs figure skating, but I propose it be dropped because the Russians keep winning at least one medal in it every four years. After all, baseball and softball are no longer Olympic sports because the same countries kept winning all the medals. Maybe Russia doesn't win as many ice dancing Olympic medals as it once did, but when you remember that non-Russian couples like Torvill and Dean (ever notice how women in figure skating pairs always get first billing?) have traditionally been an exception when it comes to the gold medal, you have to take that into serious consideration.

Oh yeah, the Kerr siblings from Great Britain were also-rans, disappointing Brits who were hoping for Torvill and Dean Mark Two.

Miller Time Again

Bode Miller has redeemed himself. He finally has a gold medal after winning one of each other color in the Vancouver Winter Olympics and after having won nothing at Torino in 2006. Yesterday he won the gold medal in the men's combined skiing event. Coupled with the silver he won in the Super G and the bronze in the downhill, this kid's on a high like never before.

And for once it didn't involve alcohol.

Four years after having wasted opportunities at Torino by skiing wasted, Miller is now considered a bona fide, not a potential, Olympic champion. He continues to insist that skiing for him is not about the medals, only going out and skiing your hardest and most aggressively and, when the situation demands it, your most conservatively. I'll let Miller himself explain it:

"My proud moment and my feeling of accomplishment doesn't hinge on those things [winning medals]. It hinges on the skiing that I put down. That's what means a lot to me right now. To do it this way at this point in my career in the Olympics, and in the super combined in particular, is just an unbelievable challenge, and for me to rise to that challenge felt really cool."

Miller still has a chance to win more medals at the Vancouver Winter Olympics. what that the regular and giant slalom races still coming up.

Meanwhile, on a completely unrelated note, American ice dancing couples Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto and Meryl Davis and Charlie White are each in a position to get something ice dancers from other countries, even Great Britain, have that Americans have always lacked. Public medical insurance? No, an Olympic gold medal in ice dancing! (The British victors referred to are Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean from Sarajevo in 1984.)