The Olympics are Over, For Now

Part 1

Learning Things About Norway

People always wig out a little when Scandinavian countries kick ass at the Winter Olympics. The US has companies that dump hundreds of millions of dollars into the IOC coffers and are rewarded with host countries that agree to have events live at strange local times so they match up with American prime-time Television viewing hours, as well as the addition of American-friendly winter sports (see: snowboarding events).

While some American fans scoff at biathlon, Europeans have been cross-country skiing and shooting rifles for decades. In fact, those sports started off as Norwegian military training exercises, so it makes sense that they tend to score well at them.

Germans have earned something like 34 of 42 possible medals in luge throughout the entire history of the Winter Olympics. They do have, like, seventy luge ice-tracks in Germany, compared to the six we have here in the States.

On one of the websites I read regularly there were plenty of think-pieces on Norway and their sports heavy culture, and country in general, and I learned some things I didn't know. 

Like the fact that Norway is one of three countries that still whales. And that's a verb, as in "hunts whales commercially." (The other two are Iceland and Japan, if you're curious.) It turns out the market for whale meat in Norway is rather soft right now, so the majority of the meat and blubber is sold to the, ahem, mink farms or ranches, to feed the minks before they're rectally electrocuted to death and skinned for fashion. 

Kinda a double shit-sandwich on that one. 

But Norway has ranked on top of the global happiness index for a few years now, usually trading spots with Sweden or Denmark in the past but now on top, and they have lots of money. But the wealth disparity is nothing as drastic as here, so everybody is doing well. And they invest heavily in sports. I mean, LA city proper has nearly as many people as Norway, and if LA city proper were a country the size of Colorado, with proper national agreements in place that make international trade easy and profitable, and low levels of wealth disparity, and an eye for making sure everyone gets the most benefit possible from smart government choices, you better hope it would resemble what Norway and other Scandinavian countries look like.

Maybe without the whale-blubber fed mink coats...

Something else I didn't know about Norway is that they don't keep score in youth sports until the age of 13. They want the children to enjoy the physical activity and learn how to cooperate (for team sports) without the emphasis put on "winning". 

Now is a good time to note that they just won the most medals ever for a Winter Olympics.

Norway also has a skier named Rocky and Bullwinkle.

No, wait, her last name is Mowinckel. And her first name is Ragnhild. 

Seriously, try and say that full name outloud and tell me that I'm crazy that I swore every time I heard it I was hearing "Rocky and Bullwinkle." 

Ragnhild Mowinckel.

And she looks like this:

Part 2

New Favorite Winter Olympic Sport

I have decided that I have a new favorite. Not sure what my old favorite was, but now it is Parallel Giant Slalom.

This is a snowboard race against an opponent (the "parallel" part) in single-elimination once the heats are over, as they wind back and forth between the flag dealys called "gates" (the "giant slalom" part).

The sport is okay enough---races and all---but my love for it stems mostly out of vanity: hearing the announcers say over and over "She's so good at PGS..." and "...this is turning into such a classic PGS battle..." and all the fighting over PGS and PGS-this and PGS-that...I'm easily amused.

The gold medalist for the women is the Czech snowboarder Ester Ledecka. This is the sport she does mainly---PGS and snowboarding. But because she comes from the Czech Republic and is naturally gifted at snow sports, she qualified for the Winter Olympics in downhill skiing. As a qualifier, she was one of the last racers down in the Super-G event, a skiing event that's the second most effed-up looking one. All of the late skiers are after thoughts as they interview the eventual medal winners who hang out in front of branded backdrops playing out the string.

Only Ester, on borrowed skies, came down two-tenths of a second in front of the leader, a heavy favorite from Austria. Everybody was stunned, including Ester, who couldn't believe it, telling the camera guy who was suddenly in her face, "No, you're wrong," and "You must be joking."

This is the first person to ever medal in two different sports. And they're both gold.

Like I told Corrie: just because she was an "unknown", doesn't mean she's not a supremely talented athlete with abilities that can't be contained and don't care if you haven't heard of them. I've followed sports long enough to see this kind of thing before...Hank Aaron before he was famous...Tony Romo and Kurt Warner from the NFL...

Surprise!

Part 3

Do I actually like Ice Dancing?

I found myself rooting for the Canuck pair that inspired a GQ writer to quip: "THE CANADIANS ARE ICEFUCKING!"

While that's obviously hyperbole, it's closer than you think:

Tess Virtue and Scott Moir have skated together for years, retired, then un-retired to go for one more gold medal. They beat a supremely talented French pair that Corrie was rooting for.

See? Rooting interests makes it interesting.

Ice Dancing is not to be confused with figure skating, which is the throwing-jumping-spinning craziness that has a colorful history that I can easily associate in my own memories (Katarina Witt and Kristi Yamaguchi; the Kerrigan-Harding situation being out-shined by Oksana Baiul; Brian Boitano making it into a South Park movie song). I mean, who can forget watching this bad look for bitter and impatient Nancy when seeing it live:

This year saw on the ladies side an epic battle between the once-untouchable 18 year old Ruskie Evgenia Medvedeva, and her new nemesis, fellow Ruskie and new champion, 15 year old Alina Zagitova:

They both skated masterfully, with the elder Medvedeva more elegant and classical, and the younger Zagitova a little stiff and robotic (only in comparison to the other Ruskie, though), but the younger dared to be bold, and saved all the jumps for the end of the program. Doing that takes advantage of the percentage boost in the scoring---tired legs are harder to jump with.

***

And now we wait four years to care again about Winter Sports, and then again lament why we don't just win everything.