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inadvertently reverted one of posts (my January 24 post about inter-Korean dialogue because of the Winter Games) to an unpublished draft in the process.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. :-)

Russian Interference

The United States men's hockey team lost big time at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics to the Olympic Athletes from Russia team, 4-0.  What was galling about this game is not that the Americans lost to a Russian team.  What was galling is that they lost to a team that should not even be there.

Sportswriters are inevitably blaming this defeat on the National Hockey League for not letting its players take a couple of weeks off to participate in the Winter Olympics and forcing national teams to rely on college students and minor-leaguers, which decimated the American and Canadian teams more than it did the Russian team, and even though veterans of the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" team may disagree, there is probably some truth to this, as the Russian team was able to find enough players from a major professional league in Russia itself.  But that's hardly the whole story.  The anti-doping ban on the Russian Olympic team made exceptions for athletes who don't have any record of cheating with steroids, and while I expected female figure skaters to dodge the ban, I never thought that there would be so many Olympic athletes from Russia who technically aren't competing for their country still being able to compete in Winter Olympic events.  Nor did I suspect that there would be an opportunity for enough Russians to compete in a team sport like ice hockey.  Both sexes.  As I see it, the International Olympic Committee's exemption on the ban against Russia that allows drug-free Russian athletes to supposedly compete for themselves and not for their country is comparable to a man who gives up buying and eating baked goods for Lent - cake, pie, muffins - but making exceptions for cake, pie and muffins he doesn't have to pay for . . . and being married to a pastry chef who takes home some of her work.   

I'll come right out and say it: The ban on the Russians is a joke.  The mere presence of a men's hockey team from Russia at these Games, even if it doesn't compete under their red, white and blue flag, is courtesy of a big loophole that one of the Flying Wallendas could have jumped through.  Heck, there are so many "Olympic Athletes from Russia" in PyeongChang that the Russians might as well have sent an official team there.  Look . . . a ban is a ban.  No Russians should mean no Russians.  Sometimes the innocent have to pay for the crimes of the guilty.  Life isn't fair, and it shouldn't be any fairer to today's Russian athletes than it was to  the Soviet-era Russian athletes who had to stay home during the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics . . . or the American athletes who had to stay home during the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics.  (Why didn't the International Olympic Committee allow would-be 1980 U.S. Olympic team members compete as "Olympic Athletes from America" in Moscow then? They didn't want the boycott.  Jimmy Carter did.)      

Oh yeah, I ought to tell you about that 4-0 hockey game, which got so violent as Russian and American players were devolving into fistfights with each other.  The Russians were especially aggressive, getting away with a lot of crap that the referees didn't seem to think was worthy of penalties.  There's no doubt a lot of animosity between the Americans and Russians, thanks to this election-interference issue, and this game was certainly reflective of it - and a black eye for Donald Trump, who all but promised the return of détente with Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign.  But that doesn't justify all of this unnecessary roughness.  Back in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, which took place after the Soviet invasion of Hungary, Hungarian and Soviet athletes went at each other, and a riot almost started when a Hungarian water polo player got cut badly over his eye during the U.S.S.R.-Hungary game.  The problem of Russian bots smearing Hillary Clinton isn't as serious as a full-scale military invasion in which people die. 

But again . . . the Russians shouldn't be competing at PyeongChang in the first place.

Downs and Ups

Slovenia, Slovakia . . . 

Tomato, tomahto.

Ha ha!  At the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, the U.S. men's ice hockey team had a rotten tomato of a game against Slovenia, but the guys redeemed themselves in a game against another small country once part of a Communist federation, Slovakia. The U.S. beat the Slovaks 2-1, putting themselves back in the hunt for a medal.  Now they have to face the Olympic Athletes from Russia team.

This could be tough . . .

But not as tough as the break that Mikaela Shiffrin got when she skied the women's slalom, her specialty event.  Though this is the event that she is must famous and was most favored for, she finished a disappointing fourth.

Well, even Crosby, Stills and Nash sang a flat harmony every now and then.

And then there was figure skater Nathan Chen . . . 

Oh dear . . . 

At least he was able to advance.  

Cocky Hockey

The United States and Canada are playing each other in men's hockey right now, and I keep hearing about each of these players coming from different National Hockey League teams. Call me a traditionalist, call me a curmudgeon if you will, but I pine for the days when NHL professionals didn't play for national teams. After all, it wasn't crack professionals that made up the gold medal-winning 1980 U.S. "Miracle On Ice" hockey team, but a bunch of students who played for their country and not necessarily their egos.

Never mind the fact the Cold War is over, it doesn't matter as much if the U.S beats the Russians when you have players on each team who might happen to play on the same NHL squad.