I don’t write about the winter Olympics because I don’t give a crap about any of the events, except the sublimely named Super G.
Still, I had to follow this link from Drudge about some knucklehead U.S. figure skater who wore a throwback USSR warmup jacket during a practice session today. He claims to be a major Russophile, and what better way to celebrate it than to have the good ol’ CCCP across your chest?
Of course, if he’d been wearing a throwback German jersey (c. 1936), it’d be a much different story.
Since the Winter Olympics are in Turin I was wondering if the organisers had grabbed the golden opportunity to create a mascot for the event – they could call it Shroudy.
I think the ads would look great with some guy doing a downhill ski run with a shroud billowing out behind him. But then, I’m a retard.
Nobody gives a crap about the Winter olympics because unless you’re a country with snow that does more than shut down everything when you need to go to work you don’t stand a chance of a medal (Having said that the UK won a medal in an event no one here has heard of before!). Also there’s apparently an Ethiopian skier in there this time.
No Eddie Edwards, though.
In the U.S., the winter games are almost exclusively marketed to women. It’s the same reason that, during the Superbowl, ESPN puts on reruns of figure-skating competitions.
As such, they try to make “human interest” stories out of every competitor, without realizing that someone who devotes his life to skiing probably isn’t a very interesting person.
Also, the network has been playing up the “U.S.A., U.S.A.!” angle so much that no one here knows who any of the other competitors are. The moment the U.S. gets knocked out of any competition, viewers leave in droves.
Of course, a new season of American Idol is rolling along, annihilating every show in its path.
As I recall, everyone thought the Winter Olympics were dead after ’92, but there was a bump in interest in ’94, the David Letterman’s Mom and skating soap opera olympics.
I always saw the Olympics as largely a television phenomenon that either captured people’s attention or (more likely) failed to, depending on the programming landscape at the time. We’re still a the point where something can capture the public’s attention — like Curling did last time — but the mass audience is gone.
And a story like this one, about a “snowboard cross” competitor who decided to showboat and lost the gold, goes a long way to explaining why I don’t take these winter sports seriously.