Sunday brought a merciful end to the 21st Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver and concluded our quadrennial reminder of just why most of these sports languish in obscurity.
It was an Olympics bookended by the continuing tragedy in Haiti and an new one in Chile while suffering one of its own when Georgian athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed in practice for the luge event. That accident forced last-minute changes to the track and an overall shortening of the course as men began competition from the women’s starting post and the women moved down to the juniors’ position.
While NBC is getting better viewership ratings for the Vancouver Olympics than they did in the 2006 event held in Turin, Italy, there is serious discussion around the television world that the peacock network may relinquish the grip it’s had on the games since 2000 after their coverage contract expires with the London Summer Olympics in 2012. It’s estimated that NBC will lose $200 million on this year’s coverage, with the main gripe from viewers being the network’s usual practice of tape-delaying popular events for showing during prime time – in the Pacific time zone where Vancouver lies it could mean the results are known up to 12 hours before they’re actually broadcast.
Meanwhile, while the United States led the pack in total medals won, there seemed to be a shortage of the sportsmanship for which the Olympics is known. A long-running feud between American speed skater Apolo Ohno and his South Korean opponents boiled over with accusations and counter-charges of cheating and blocking in a sport which is supposed to exhibit speed and grace, not resemble an all-out last-lap scrum at a NASCAR race.
Topping that was the wild celebration of the Canadian women’s hockey team after they dispatched the United States in the final. Although they waited until after the medal ceremony and the arena was cleared, the beer-swilling, cigar-smoking on-ice party lasted nearly an hour as the Canadian ladies savored the victory in a sport they consider their own. The Canadian men were more subdued in victory.
Nor could the specter of politics escape this edition of the Olympics. No doubt it paled in comparison with the massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972, but American figure skater Johnny Weir became the target of radical animal rights groups and had his safety threatened because his skating outfit featured natural fur. He relented this time but still “loves wearing dead animals” as part of his on-ice costumes.
Believers in anthropogenic global warming also had a field day with this Olympics, pointing out with glee that snow had to be trucked in before the events began because a month-long warm spell had melted the bounty of a snowy December. Meanwhile, regions like the mid-Atlantic only lacked the hills for good skiing competition since they had the several feet of fresh powder required for a base.
All in all, Vancouver was the red-headed stepchild of Olympic Games, combining tragedy, a huge gaffe in its opening ceremony, and a lack of truly compelling storylines into a bland stew of overly hyped events which dragged on for two weeks before coming to an end just in time for the ratings period to expire.
In 2014 it will be Sochi’s turn as the city along the Black Sea has its turn in the Winter Games spotlight, and the Russians are happily spending upwards of $60 billion (at current exchange rates) over an eight-year period to play host. Good thing it’s their money.
Michael Swartz, an architect and writer who lives in rural Maryland, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.
This cleared right after my last LFS article was published here on March 1st. It was featured (among other places) in the Epoch Times, which also ran my “Green Police” op-ed a few days earlier.