Sochi: Skiing, Skating, Skeletons and Scandal

We’re in the middle of that quadrennial snow festival known as the Olympic Winter Games; this time in Sochi, Russia.  Concerns aplenty as the games began.  Concerns about security, treatment of LBGT athletes and visitors, and facilities that are still in various stages of completion (a local columnist described some areas as looking like a big construction site).  And then there’s Mother Nature.  She’s apparently irritated at Vladimir Putin.  Mountaintop views reveal a shortage of snow and according to the "expert analyst" talking heads what snow there is, is of poor quality.  At the half pipe the snow was too bumpy; at the skiing venues it was too slushy and at skeleton the ice was too warm.  The folks at the Sochi Chamber of Commerce (if such a body exists) must be taking good long pulls from the vodka bottle every time the camera pulls to show vast brown hills. For his part Putin has poo-pooed the criticism.  Calls it cold war propaganda.  Vlad should know cold war.  The man who once called the Soviet collapse the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the (20th) century" sometimes seems to have aspirations of resurrecting it.  Sort of brings a nostalgic tug to my heart strings; the good old days of fallout shelters, those brilliantly colored mushroom clouds, ducking under a desk when the alarm goes off with all those jolly jokes about kissing your ass goodbye and watching the occasional B-52 cruising overhead. My apologies comrade, I digressed. 

Sochi 2014.  Got snow?

Snow quality?  I live in the San Francisco Bay Area.  What in the hell do I know about snow except that it's wet, we yearn for it in vain every Christmas Eve and actually getting it would cause an untold number of traffic accidents once the local amateurs got in their cars.

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And the games just wouldn't be the games without a collection of light moments, head scratchers, and controversies. Bob Costas has an eye infection that's made him look like Rocky after 15 rounds with Apollo Creed. His infected orbs put him on injured reserve, replaced by Matt Lauer.  There's speed skating suit-gate in which there's been speculation that the ballyhooed American suits developed by Under Armor to make the skaters go faster have actually acted as aerodynamic anchors - oops. I imagine heads will get lopped for that miscalculation.  We can only imagine Putin's ice melting seethe over American figure skating commentator Johnny Weir's stunning necklace and tiara that my granddaughter Lucy would kill for.

Can there be figure skating with some sort of controversy? The games couldn't make it out of the first weekend without an accusation that the American and Russian judges were putting on a fix. We've yet to get to the women's figure skating competition which is the real pot boiler.  But in the event that the women's competition couldn't come up with a suitable hoohah NBC has hedged its bet by resurrecting a ruckus of historic proportions.  This being the 20 year anniversary of the Nancy Kerrigan knee capping NBC has decided to include a feature about the 1994 soap opera that includes interviews with Kerrigan and Tonya Harding, who's managed to transform herself into the female version of Jose Canseco - there's an accomplishment..  

When is too much just not enough?  I was watching ice dancing with the wife the other night when she gaped at one of the women in amazement.  “What kind of makeup is that?  My God.”  The skater in question looked like a refugee from a Japanese kabuki theater, with makeup that looked to be ½ thick.  My wife explained to me that the thick white layer packed on Meryl Davis' face is called foundation.  That sounded reasonable because it certainly looked sturdy enough to hold up a house.  I imagine that like concrete the skating team transports the stuff in pails and applies it with a mason's trowel.

 

Ice dancing.  Got makeup?

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The winter games are when we watch sports that we don’t know existed or completely forgot about during the intervening four years.   We certainly didn't pay attention.  That “we” refers to the sports chauvinists that Americans tend to be. We don't consider a nation of Norwegians that pays a hell of a lot of attention to biathlon; a sport that's met with a fair measure of derision in America.  America is a sports crazed culture but it takes pleasure in dismissing as illegitimate nearly any activity that doesn't include a set of goal posts or hitting a 90 mile an hour fastball or a 30 foot fade away. If you have your doubts take a listen to any of the legion of sports talk shows that lead the discussion of sports in America.  Americans look with a snide smirk at Norway's traditional sport of shooting a rifle after miles of cross country skiing but do we ever wonder what a Norwegian might think about an American who seems otherwise sane climbing onto a pissed off bull for an 8 second ride?  I've gone cross country skiing a couple of times and I was in what I considered to be pretty good shape.  Thought I was gonna die. When I finished I didn't know what I was craving more; simply collapsing or eating anything in sight.

Cross country - the finish line.  Got stamina?

That chauvinism is something I've been guilty of but then I realize that these Olympic athletes are doing something that I've never really had the discipline for – to totally dedicate myself to achieve the pinnacle of something – anything.  How many of us can say we've had that singleness of purpose?  I and so many other husbands in America really, really don’t like figure skating but it certainly doesn't invalidate the skill, the athleticism and the sheer dedication that it demands.  I’m amazed that they can do anything more than go in a straight line.  It takes me back to my twenties when a girlfriend took me ice skating at the now defunct rink in the avenues of San Francisco, a few blocks from the ocean.  While she skated effortlessly I inched forward with my arms straight out trying to keep my balance.  She said I looked like Frankenstein.  After I’d fallen on the same hip enough times to cultivate a mushy, multicolored flower of a bruise I hoisted the white flag and limped around the corner to my house where I applied a bag of ice to my thigh; less the one cube that I applied to a large tumbler of Jack Daniels. You couldn't pay me enough to put on skates again.

I do have a major gripe about ice dancing though.  Well my gripe is about the commentators and it isn't Johnny Weirs color coordination - which is impeccable.  They keep mentioning "twizzle."  "She lost her twizzle" or "her twizzle is off," they say.  Can they please explain what in the hell twizzle is?  Is this something out of the Snoop Dog dictionary of slang? 

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For four years we forget all about half pipe, bobsledding, downhill skiing; sports that seem to me to be absolute insane madness.  Take skeleton for instance, in which the athlete rides down a frozen track at around 80 miles per hour on what looks like a baking sheet mounted on skids.  My stocking cap’s off to those folks.  I watch in awe at their brave, death defying prowess. 

Downhill skiing.  Got guts?

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I don’t watch the games, summer or winter, with the same nationalistic fervor that I used to.  I guess it made some sort of sense in my younger days when the iron curtain cut a scar across Eastern Europe and a cold war burned in the hearts and minds of America and the Eastern Bloc.  It was a different Olympics then; an Olympics that my children don't know existed.  We viewed the Soviets and their minion states; East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia as cheaters.  It was a time when professional athletes were banned from Olympic competition yet Eastern Bloc athletes were heavily subsidized by their governments, while American athletes struggled to make ends meet and at the same time maintain a full time training regimen.  And then there were the allegations of Eastern Bloc doping.  It made for a classic good versus evil storyline.  Nationalistic zeal was in full fury in 1980 when a collection of US college all-stars defeated a well-trained, dominant, world class Soviet hockey team (it was essentially the Soviet Army Hockey Team).  That game is probably, along with Bob Beamon’s record shattering long jump at Mexico City in the summer games, my most memorable Olympic recollection.  When the wall came down and the Soviet Union broke up, much of the air was let out of my jingoistic balloon.  That and the mellowing of age I suppose.  Sure it’s nice when some fellow from Park City or Lake Placid stands on the podium but it really doesn't call up that lump in the throat.  I suppose I'm leaving myself open to being called an un-American bastard, but I'm over wearing one of those USA caps, or taking up the "USA, USA" chant or coveting one of those hideous Lauren sweaters that look like something granny cobbled out of remnants (At least Ralph had the good sense to have them made in America this time).  As long as the competition is clean and compelling, I’m good with it no matter who wins.   

 

The Olympic sweater.  Got style?  NO.

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The Olympic drama plays for another week.  So far what stands out for me is not necessarily an athletic feat per se.  It isn't a stupendous ski jump or the hockey shoot out or a horrific crash.  It’s a look.  During the women’s skeleton competition the “expert” analyst described the need to relax on the course.  Hell, watching them slide down the course at breakneck (literally) speed the last thing that comes to mind is relaxation but I suppose that I get the concept.  But like excellence in any sport it obviously takes concentration and focus.  And so as the competition went on the broadcast focused on American Noelle Pikus-Pace whose story is compelling in itself let alone her skill.  Slow motion close-ups zoomed in on her as she started her death defying plunge down the course and the first thing you noticed, the thing that registered was the expression in the eyes. She's locked in as she has to be yet at the same time she seems to be in another place; strangely peaceful. If the zen of sports exists, this was it.

Relaxed intensity?  The eyes have it.