The 'Games' this year seemed a bit dull and uninspiring. Perhaps that is just my own perception though. Perhaps there weren't enough Time magazine covers with barbed wire Olympic rings, stories about weird toilets, warnings of 'Black Widows' blowing up planes with toothpaste bombs, or comparisons to the 1936 Berlin Games with premonitions of homosexuals being exterminated, to heighten my attention and excitement. The only bit of drama came from the ever persistent 'Russian Doping Scandal' story.
'Doping' seems to mean a lot of things these days. If you rub the wrong boil ointment on your arse, it's classed as 'doping'. It doesn't mean unusual amounts of asthma medication, or Japanese figure skaters winning gold medals 'doped' up on pain killers though.* Sport is filled with the dopes: the athletes, the officials, the journalists.¹
I liked the pre-recorded 'drones' section of the opening ceremony. Although what I missed was the outrage and accusations of 'State media censorship' when they switched to it, like there was when a back-up recording was used in the 2014 Sochi Games after there was a malfunction in the most important image of the Games: The appearance of the Olympic rings. That meant there was no similar 'feel-good' moment in the closing ceremony, like in Sochi when the organisers mocked themselves over the malfunctioning Olympic rings and the West collectively gasped: 'oh my goodness, Russians must be human too?'.
I thought it very nice that the USA sent vice-president Pence to the games, to sit next to the DPRK representative. The DPRK; the most sanctioned country in the world; the country, we're told, who might blow up the planet at any moment! The USA were unable to send anyone to Sochi though, because "Russia".²
There was no snow in the Republic of Korea, so they manufactured it all. Again [like a broken record]: Four years ago, we heard complaint, ridicule, and mockery, about how the Sochi snow wasn't 'real snow' and how embarrassing it was to have to put it there artificially.³
Alpine skiing: Not bad. Personally, it was a bit of a flop due the German women's team not doing so well. More importantly, their racesuit was the worst I've ever seen (and we thought the 'go faster stripes' of Sochi were bad!). Highlights: Poor American performance; Super-G race where Ester Ledecká pipped Anna [Fenninger] Veith for the gold medal.
All in all, a lackluster Games; very utilitarian. Russia didn't exist; America and China results were woeful.
* http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0004254098
¹ I find the whole topic of "drug" use in sport difficult to resolve. Humans are electro-chemical machines, we exist in, and are, chemistry. We can't be measured like the length of a ski, or number of bullets in the magazine of a biathlon rifle. "Drugs" seem like an intangible thing to track without some level of hypocrisy. As an example, there's already a potent stimulant that's classed as uncontrollable: Trimethylxanthine, aka, caffeine. Maybe its legal status is helped by the fact that all these sporting events are sponsored by caffeinated beverages.
² "the 1980's are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back" - Barack Obama.
³ How much energy was used to generate this snow? We'll be lambasted with Global Warming warnings, and how traditionally snowy areas are now snowless due to rising temperatures, meanwhile we'll burn up the planet to put snow back into these places. It seems like a downward spiral.
"Snow" pic.twitter.com/l9G7ZqyF2G
— OIOIIOOIXIII (@oioiiooixiii) February 15, 2018⁴ How uninspired do you have to be to write "Germany" in faux Hangul script and stick it down the front of a racesuit 4 times. This is truly their worst. The blank one in 2010 was sublime in comparison. pic.twitter.com/rwuG1a8yOK
— OIOIIOOIXIII (@oioiiooixiii) February 18, 2018see also: https://oioiiooixiii.blogspot.com/search/label/Sochi%202014
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