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A funny thing happened on the way to the Olympics being transformed from a strictly amateur competition to a "best vs. the best bar none" free-for-all extravaganza: Professionals realized they were participating in the most prestigious international tournament in the world, a tournament that makes gargantuan amounts of money off them...and they don't see see any of it. Bode Miller probably didn't realize it at the time, but his quote about the Olympics not being that important to him is right bang on. To Professionals, the Olympics shouldn't be important. They're not getting paid. Not even appearance fees. Most major tournaments of any flavour of any sport often pay gracious appearance fees to top-tier athletes to participate in them, banking on the exposure to promote the tourney. Miller, his endorsement checks already cashed and his photo already on Sports Illustrated and Time covers, doesn't really have to do much else at the Olympics to fill his coffers except show up. And he did. Good for him.
If the Olympics truly wants to remain the echelon tournament that it purports to be, it would be wise to start doling out prize money along with those silly medals that probably aren't worth their weight on Ebay. Tennis, track, swimming, and all other major professional tours hand out prize money and appearance fees to their athletes. True, most countries these days do give bonuses to athletes that bring home hardware, but shouldn't the IOC be taking care of that? Because if Miller's showing is any indication, the pride and privilege of performing for one's country just doesn't seem to be enough anymore. Maybe instead of country flags, every medal ceremony should unveil a gigantic c-note of that country's denomination. Then they'll be full of the real Olympic spirit.
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Dear World: Don't hire Canadians to build your ice facilities anymore. They tend to sink Canadian good luck charms into them which inexplicably gets good results. I'm sure you've all heard the fabled story of how the Salt Lake Olympic Committee hired the ice manufactuers from Edmonton to build the rink in 2002, and without anyone knowing, they sunk a loonie at centre ice for a little luck, and as luck would have it, Canada won gold. They also did it again in the 2004 World Cup. Result: Gold. Now, look what happened in Torino: With no good luck charm in the ice, lo and behold, the hockey gods didst not see that it was good, for the hubris of Canada displeased them, andst to teach them the art of humility, they didst smite the arrogance right off Canada's face, and they didst take away the powers of goal-scoring. And they saw that it was good.
BUT: The Torino speedskating facility needed a topnotch ice developer, and guess who they got. Well, I don't know who either, but he was from Ontario, and he smuggled a golden maple leaf into the ice near the finish line. Result: twelve speedskating medals, including five for Cindy Klassen (you know, that thing that Bode Miller said he was going to do but didn't). So let this be another lesson learned: Don't hire Canadian icemakers.
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You remember that scene near the end in Poltergeist where Craig T. Nelson has the other guy by the neck outside in the rain, screaming the plot of the movie? Okay, now pretend I am Craig T. Nelson, that guy is some stuffy IOC figure skating official, and we are at the Olympics, not in my graveyard pool: "You son of a bitch. You changed the judging, but you left the judges, didn't you? The same judges are still there and you only changed the scoring system!! You never changed the judges!!! Why!? Why!?"
Melodrama aside, this is a classic case of same shit, different pile. Sasha Cohen is cute as bloody hell, but she did not deserve a medal. Both Japanese skaters were flawless and should have got first and second (With Slutskaya third), but because Sasha was the sentimental favourite, as soon as she fell (twice) and had to complete her routine with snow caked onto her ass, the Olympics should have been over for her. But, alas, the judges gave her good marks anyway. It's like she pouted at them after her routine, and her doe-eyed whimpering scored some serious sympathy points. To the dismay and disillusionment of everyone in the world. It's like being a member of a jury in a murder trial in which overwhelming evidence shows the guy did it, and 11 out of 12 jurors are solid on nailing him to the wall, but that 12th person says "he reminds me of my cousin. Not guilty."
Head. Forehead. Slap. That's Olympic judging right there. It wants to be partial and objective and an actual sport, but then crap like this happens and it makes you want to strangle the idiot who came up with these rules. The thought processes of the judges was so transparent it should've been broadcasted in bright lights to save us much eye-rolling grief: "Well, a skate that bad definitely doesn't deserve the gold, but she had a good short program and we know she can do better, she just had an off day. So howabout this: We'll bump her out of top spot with the first girl after her that skates clean, and that will be it." The next skater just happened to be the Japanese girl. She skates perfect but downngrades two of her jumps because she knows Sasha has fallen so she doesn't have to go balls out to win this thing, she just has to play it safe and not screw up. Bam. Sasha goes to second. The next girl was also Japanese, but it's not fair giving two medals to one country in figure skating, so despite the fact that she was also flawless and much better than Sasha, she gets fourth. At this point, all Slutskaya has to do is not fall, and gold was hers. But she fell (only once), and though her program was far better and more flawless than Sasha, she gets bronze.
The mind. It boggles. This is The Memo in full flight, folks. Just as I predicted. And I won't even get into the circus side show masquerading as a sport that dares call itself ice dancing.
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This year's Games was the biggest ever, thanks to the addition of six new events, all of them completely ridiculous and stupid. It's made many events redundant, pointless, and a waste of time except to make some country proud of its solitary accomplishments to the Olympic movement because it can't beat the Austrians or Germans at anything else. Case in point: The two man luge. Come on. Sledding is a solitary sport. Why two? And why just men? What strategic difference is there between one guy screaming down the hill and two? And if they're going to have it, why not at least make it interesting and have a two-woman luge....wearing bikinis....with the slide covered in jello....and at the bottom, they have to make out to score "artistic impression" scores with the judges. That's something I think we'd all like to see.
Hell, why just two men? Why don't they have the three man luge or the four man luge? Where's the three man or eight man bobsled? Look how many biathlon events there are. How come that event can be broken up into twelve different medal-choking categories, but we can't stifle anything so much as a two man Skeleton race (which would officially top the two-man luge as the gayest looking event ever). Seriously, how many different ways of skiing and shooting stuff do we really need, all for the sake of Norwegian pride? What pisses me off about that country is how they always send only three guys to win 20 medals in the same events, but never a hockey team. That creates a weighted and imbalanced medal count, but I'll get to that later.
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Actually, as long as I'm at it, I might as well talk about it now. It's unfair that a country will spend most of its money and resources amassing a world class team to send to the Olympics that must work for the entirety of the Games for a collective one (1) medal, and they only have one shot at it. Meanwhile, individual events are given more precedence, as most of them start and end on the same day, multiple athletes from each country can enter allowing the opportunity for a sweep of the medals, and the athletes can compete in multiple disciplines. How is it fair that a Finnish ski-jumper can work a totality of 48 seconds for three medals, and a Finnish hockey team must work for over 20 hours for the chance at one? There's something seriously weighted towards the so-called "weaker" events here. What the medal standings should really reflect is the number of athletes that win, not events that are won. So individual events are worth one medal. Team events are worth the size of the teams that win. Curling? Four. Two-man luge? Two. Hockey? Twenty. Yes, twenty. It's the toughest, most grueling event in the Olympics, the crown jewel of the entire Games, the only one that is actively played every day, with the hockey gold medal final being the last medal handed out. It deserves the value and prestige of being worth twenty medals in the official standings. Shut up, Norway. If you balk at that amount, tough it up, get good at hockey like your norse neighbours Sweden and Finland have, and send a team next time. No longer will you be allowed to coast on your cross-country medal haul to make you look like the winter powerhouse you think you are. You're a one-trick pony (Austria is the same way with skiing), and if you want to get better at the Olympics, start diversifying your talentpool.
So, doing some calculating, here are the official medal standings:
Got a problem with that? You know why Canada is first? Diversification! Canada is the only country to win at least one medal in all 11 defined Winter sports, and the only country to win a medal in all the team events and relay races. Ironically, despite this resounding success, the country did not win a medal in the only event that really counts for most Canadians: Men's hockey, so most papers across the country are still writing headlines brandishing these Games as a bitter dissapointment.*
While countries like Korea may cleansweep short track speedskating (they only won one medal outside of that discipline, and it was in regular speedskating--way to go to really branch out into other events, guys) and Norway can claim ownership of the biathlon, it's the multi-faceted robustness of Canada that makes it a medal threat damn near everywhere, from snowboarding to ice soccer. And if that's not enough Canadian pride for you, consider this: Canada also had a record thirteen fourth place finishes at these Games, who missed the podium by a cumulative 0.89 seconds. That's right: The Canadian winter sport juggernaught was but a heartbeat away from winning the whole thing.
Yeah yeah yeah, I know: Close only counts for grenades and horseshoes, but keep in mind that with the Games in 2010, this is technically the dress rehearsal. This was Canada flexing its winter sport muscle, vowing to put aside that humiliating claim of "only host country to not win a gold medal". We are going to make up for our failures in Montreal and Calgary tenfold. We are going to shake our stigma of "just happy to be here". We are going to put to rest that nicey-nice first-to-congratulate-the-winner friendliness, because come 2010, world, it is FUCKING ON!
* = not including Cindy Klassen
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