Catching Up With The Olympics

The next Olympics, the Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, are 379 days away. Does that surprise you? It surprises me, in a "time flies" kind of way. Wasn't it just yesterday that we were snarking about the Sochi Games? Vlad's "Look how cool I am" personal ego trip, at the cost of $51 billion dollars. The light bulbs that wouldn't turn on and the toilets that wouldn't flush. The way-too-warm climate in Sochi, where on several days of the games it was warmer there than here in Chicagoland. Those were the days, for sure, but as always happens, the games went on, everyone lived to tell the tale and when it was all over, the Olympic flag was passed to PyeongChang.

The PyeongChang games are the first of three Olympiads in a row to be held in Asia, followed by the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo and the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing. The location of the 2024 Summer Games will be announced in September, to be chosen from one of three remaining candidate cities, Los Angeles, Paris and Budapest. Will the games return to the U.S.? As I've written before, I think they will. In 2024 it will be 28 years since the Summer Games in Atlanta and 22 years since the Winter Games in Salt Lake City. It's more than our turn.

Farther in the future, cities including Calgary, Stockholm, Sapporo, Innsbruck and 2022 runner-up Almaty are believed to be looking at bidding for the 2026 games. Apparently Lake Placid, New York, which hosted Winter games in 1932 and 1980, might consider a bid, but only if L.A. does not get the 2024 games. All this info comes from a fun website called Gamesbids, which obsessively tracks everything related to Olympic bidding. Check it out here.

Flying High

This is cool!  A picture of the Sochi site, taken from the International Space Station. 

Sorry Vlad? The Gayest Olympics Ever

Simon Doonan, at slate.com, says the Sochi Opening Ceremony was just fabulous, darling.

Blown Out Of Proportion?

An interesting perspective on the Sochi Olympics from the Christian Science Monitor. The author points out that there are glitches at the start of every Olympics and suggests problems are being blown out of proportion because Russia, or possibly because Putin. On the other hand there's this: 

Yet Russia sometimes plays into its own stereotypes, appearing to confirm latent cold war perceptions in the West. Though the fifth Olympic ring failed to open, Russian television viewers did not see it. Russian television spliced in a clip from a rehearsal where all the rings worked.

Again, mistakes at the opening ceremony are hardly unprecedented – and big ones, too. In Vancouver, one of the pillars designed to hold the Olympic flame failed to rise out of the floor. But Vancouver responded by ribbing their own mistake at the closing ceremony, not attempting to convince Canadians that it never happened.

Read the entire article here. 

Schadenfreude? Yes

Another example of a Russian toilet, tweeted by someone at the Sochi games.

And some food for thought about the tone of the coverage. Is the West gloating?

Is Putin Embarrassed Yet?

There was a time when I thought it would be fun to be a sports journalist and get to cover the Olympics. Not today. The stories, and again, more importantly, the pictures, coming out of Sochi are truly disgusting. (The bright yellow water? The buckets for toilet paper? Ick, ick and double ick.) Examples here and here.

I can't help but wonder what Vladimir Putin is thinking right now. These games have been described as his personal "baby", a source of prestige and glory with the whole world watching, at a cost of $51 billion worth of Russian treasure, not all of which has been properly accounted for. Is he even aware of what a mess things are? How narrow is his bubble? Does he have any sense of how this looks from the outside? (And if so, does he care? Possibly not.) Plus, it's fun to joke about toilet paper and missing lightbulbs, but I saw a tweet that raises a more serious concern: If the Russians are so inept they can't get light bulbs for every light fixture and shower curtains for every shower, how do we know the ski jumps are safe?

Finally, at least for now, is it a good thing or a bad thing that the hotel problems of reporters are diverting attention from security at the games? Still thinking about that...

More:  an interesting take on the Russian psyche. I'm hugely curious about how all this is playing in Russia, especially inside Putin's head. His Olympics are being mocked on a global scale because his people can't make the toilets work and the water run clear. The fallout may not be pretty.

And on that note, for better or worse, let the games begin!