Pareene at Gawker:
Despite the fact that this is essentially an ad for a Viacom product that also promotes a GE-sponsored celebration of nationalism, this Shepard Fairey poster for Stephen Colbert’s Olympics trip is pretty cool. So go paper Vancouver with it, kids!
I love any good high-level sports competition, so I’ll be watching some winter Olympics even though it’s definitely worse than the summer games. Hockey, curling, and short-track speed-skating are, in my view, the best of the winter offerings. The various figure skating and ice dancing events are pretty dull if you ask me. I think the games could be improved by shifting some of the indoor summer activities to the winter, particularly some of the fighting sports that wind up getting lost in the summertime shuffle. Is there some particular reason judo can’t be a winter sport? I don’t think so.
That kind of move would also make the winter games less white. Speaking of which, any time I think of the winter Olympics I think of Reihan Salam’s great article from four years ago “White Snow, Brown Rage”.
Reihan Salam‘s old piece in Slate:
Mind you, I am rooting for the United States. I am pleased to see that a generation of would-be ski bums are putting aside the Propecia, the Jack Daniels, and “the doob” in the hopes of becoming Olympic contenders. And though I spent my childhood winter vacations eating chipped lead paint, I don’t begrudge those of my compatriots who were off drinking hot cocoa with Muffy, Buffy, and Tad. Still, I can’t help but wonder: What if there had been chocolaty role models taking the slopes by storm when I was but a young pup?
Like the Augusta National Golf Club, the Winter Olympics is “exclusive.” Paul Farhi, writing in the Washington Post, has described it as “almost exclusively the preserve of a narrow, generally wealthy, predominantly Caucasian collection of athletes and nations.” Growing up, I forsook the lily-white Winter Olympics for the multi-culti Summer Games. I still vividly recall the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, when my middle sister and I cheered on every wiry, diminutive American athlete of a darker hue. When you squint, a fearsome Latino bantamweight looks not unlike one of the burnt ochre Salams.
Now, let’s compare that image of a powerful brown-skinned pugilist with that of my Winter Olympic role models. In 1988, we of course had the Jamaican bobsled team, immortalized in the classic film Cool Runnings. Given the team’s lackluster performance, Stool Runnings might have been a more apt characterization. Pluck and determination count for something, to be sure. And yes, Jamaica has no snow, leading some softhearted types to give its Winter Olympians a pass. But even as an 8-year-old, I was hoping for something more. Specifically, I was hoping to see this Third World band of brothers humble their colonialist oppressors with furious bobsled action. Instead, I was told that merely finishing the race was a “triumph of the human spirit” for these stumbling boobs. Meanwhile, pasty and perfumed Hanz and Franz were high-fiving each other on the medal stand. Call it tribalism of the basest sort, but I will never apologize. I want some brown sugar, on ice.
Chuck Klosterman at Esquire:
In order to enjoy the Olympics, you can’t think critically about anything. You just have to root for America (or whatever country you’re from) and assume that your feelings are inherently correct. It’s the same kind of antilogic you need to employ whenever you attend a political convention or a church service or movies directed by Steven Spielberg. When Savannah power lifter Cheryl Ann Haworth tries to clean and jerk the equivalent of a white rhino, we (as Americans) will be obligated to pray for her success, despite the fact that we know nothing about her or any of her foes. We’re all supposed to take inspiration from Sada Jacobson, who (I’m told) is the world’s number-one female saber fencer, which is kind of like being the world’s number-one Real World/ Road Rules Challenge participant.1 In a matter of weeks, everyone is going to be ecstatic about the prospect of Michael Phelps winning as many as eight gold medals in swimming, even though I have yet to find a single person who knows who Michael Phelps is.
This is what I can’t stand about the Olympics, and it’s also what I can’t stand about certain sports enthusiasts: the idea that rooting for a team without any justification somehow proves that you are a “true fan.” All it proves is that you’re ridiculous, and that you don’t really consider the factors that drive your emotions, and that you probably care more about geography and the color of a uniform than you do about the sport you’re ostensibly watching. I have a sportswriter friend who constantly attempts to paint me as a soulless hypocrite because I adored the Boston Celtics in 1984 but am wholly ambivalent toward them today. His argument makes no sense to me. I have no idea why my feelings about an organization twenty years ago should have any effect on how I think now. The modern Celtics have different players, a different coach, a different offense, different management, different ownership, and play in a different arena; the only similarities between these two squads are that they both wear green and they both use the same parquet floor.
I’m not rooting for flooring.
Stephen Messenger at Treehugger:
While the Eastern seaboard of the US faces whiteout conditions, the host city for the Winter Olympics, set to open this Friday, is finding itself strangely short on snow. Since organizers realized that none was on the way, they have been scrambling to do all they can to ensure there’s enough of the stuff to support the games. The problem is that temperatures during January were the highest on record and snowfall has been sparse. Conditions are so balmy, in fact, residents have been seen wearing shorts.
Nature is Not Providing Any More Snow
According to a report from The Guardian, after learning they weren’t going to be delivered any snow by nature before the start of the games, organizers have been working tirelessly to procure the stuff other ways. Helicopters have been bringing snow every five minutes, trucks have been driving it in from far away, while snow cannons have been blowing constantly.On the mountainside, organizers are cooling what little snow there is with dry-ice to try to keep it from melting in the unseasonably warm weather.
For Nodar Kumaritashvili, a 21-year-old luger from the former Soviet republic of Georgia, this would be his death. In an accident so grisly and horrific that Canadian TV stations suggested viewers turn away, the young athlete died shortly after flying too fast through the 50-50 Curve, losing control on the final 270-degree turn, hurdling projectile-like over an icy wall and slamming into an unpadded — yes, unpadded — steel pole. A rescue crew tried to revive him trackside by pumping his chest and giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but there was no hope. Kumaritashvili was dead, a victim of a sport gone mad and organizers who weren’t paying enough attention.
So sadly, for a subtle country that aches to show its might and efficiency, Canada already has its defining moment of the XXI Winter Games. Regardless of Vancouver’s beauty or how spectacular the competition turns out, how are we going to forget that a luger perished because a bunch of morons built the track too fast? A full house of Canadians, trying to make the best of an awful situation, mustered cheers and energy Friday night during the Opening Ceremony inside B.C. Place. But frankly, they should have postponed the Ceremony for a night out of respect to the fallen athlete, even if NBC protested and had to air Conan O’Brien reruns. Only seconds into the proceedings, the public-address man announced somberly that the ceremony was being dedicated to Kumaritashvili’s memory. No matter how many lights sparkled, how many times they played the stirring “Oh, Canada,” how many athletes tried to smile and how many native singers entertained — Nelly Furtado, Bryan Adams, Sarah McLachlan and k.d. lang among them — thousands of us sat inside the downtown dome and thought only about the senselessness of it all.
Wayne Gretzky and Steve Nash among those lighting the Olympic cauldron at night’s end? Didn’t faze me. I was numb, thinking about the crash and a young man’s family. And I sat disgusted by what I heard from Jacques Rogge, president of the IOC. At an afternoon news conference, he struggled to hold back tears when speaking of the tragedy. “This is a very sad day. The IOC is in deep mourning,” he said. “(Kumaritashvili) lost his life pursuing his passion. I have no words to say what we feel. It clearly casts a shadow over these Games.”
But when asked why the safety warnings weren’t heeded or addressed, Rogge suddenly grew abrupt. “I’m sorry, this is a time of sorrow. It’s not the time to ask for reasons,” he said. “That time will come.”
That time is now, Jacques. Shame on you for not answering the question with more care. We need to know why the track was so dangerous, why no one listened to the lugers about safety. We need to know why some of these Winter Games events are too life-threatening, why we’re seeing too many accidents like the one that left Shaun White eating the halfpipe while performing his dangerous Double McTwist 1260, or the late-January wreck that dislocated the hip of U.S. skier Daron Rahlves and might knock him out of the Games. I realize we’ve bemoaned the growing irrelevance of the Winter Olympics and have urged IOC officials to light a spark.
The Funeral competition was not what we had in mind.
Milton Kent at Fanhouse:
NBC may have intended to throw a big party for Friday’s opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics, but the events of the day, to wit, the death of a competitor, forced the network to call a temporary halt to the fun and frivolity.
The network eschewed the expected opening panoramic shots of Vancouver and its surroundings set to the Olympics theme, “Bugler’s Dream,” to go right into coverage of the story of Nodar Kumaritashvili, a Georgian luger who died Friday during a practice run before the official opening of the Games.
Off the top of the broadcast, Bob Costas and Matt Lauer, on hand to anchor the ceremonies at Vancouver’s B.C. Place, launched a solid eight-minute block of coverage into Kumaritashvili’s death.
The reporting, smartly handed off to the network’s news department, was probing, but sensitive, noting the questions that had been asked about the safety of the course, as well as documenting the crashes that had taken place before Kumaritashvili’s fateful practice run.
Still, the tone of the coverage seemed aimed more at explaining the accident through the prism of the inexperience of the 21-year-old athlete rather than calling attention to what the viewer could obviously see.
Namely, the wall over which Kumaritashvili slid over seemed perilously low, and his crash into an unpadded concrete support beam appeared inexplicable, yet it took to near the end of the report for news anchor Brian Williams to raise those questions.
John Nichols at The Nation:
Not to be too tough on the organizers of the opening ceremony of the Vancouver Olympics, but how come someone else had to sing the Leonard Cohen song?
Of course, there was going to be a performance of “Hallelujah,” the passable Cohen song that has achieved iconic status thanks to cover versions by Jeff Buckley and so many others.
But why have k.d. lang sing it?
Why not Cohen?
After all, if the Olympics opening ceremonies are about anything akin to cultural authenticity — a suggestion that organizers take seriously, even if savvy critics find it amusing — then any not have the writer and original singer (and the man who, upon his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction was aptly described by Lou Reed as having entered “highest and most influential echelon of songwriters”) of the song perform. True, Cohen is 75 and he’s got an ailing back, but something tells me he could have made it to Vancouver for this show.
His performance, perhaps as a duo with lang (a longtime Cohen fan whose performance Friday night was riveting), would have been far more powerful than what we got.
And what of the obligatory version of “O Canada”? Was it really necessary to have a talented young artist, June Award-winning jazz stylist Nikki Yanofsky,” mutate the national anthem into a cringe-worthy power ballad. If the organizers really thought the song needed to be punched up, they should have just gone for it and had Rush perform. (A note here: The full band, not just Geddy Lee.)
Better yet, have Joni Mitchell perform “A Case of You” and then break into “O Canada” where her lyrics reference the song.
Even better, how about War Party morphing their aboriginal hip-hop anthem “This Land Was Ours” into “O Canada”?
Oh Canada. After much speculation about who would light the flame, tonight’s very lengthy, very Canadian, Winter Olympics 2010 opening ceremony ended with a, shall we say epic, passing off of the Olympic torch: from Rick Hansen, to Catriona Le May Doan to Steve Nash (yes, he’s Canadian) to Nancy Greene Raine, to the Great One Wayne Gretzky (was there ever another choice?). It was perfect. Then things got a bit tricky. It’s a moment perhaps best enjoyed via Twitter (video below):
@cherwenka: Uh oh. We forgot the cauldron.
@eahanks: OH GOD. SOMETHING HAPPEN OR I WILL HAVE TO LOOK AWAY
@rachelsterne: “Truth be told, they may be experiencing something of a mechanical failure here.”
@rachelsklar: omg gretzky’s face. omg. please work, whatever is supposed to work. also, i’m sorry for laughing.@cherwenka: Anyone else thinking about spinal tap right now? #olympics
@MajoratWH: An OC “door malfunction.” How discreetly Canadian.
@raywert: Wayne Gretzky doesn’t look happy.
@eahanks: Someone is getting fired right now, in very angry French, I imagine. #van2010
@raywert: How many Canadians does it take to light an Olympic torch? #toosoon #Olympics #badjokes
@dceiver: Okay, so apparently, Gretzky is going off to do this again with Chief Justice John Roberts, and everything will be fine.
@cherwenka: RT @colleenlindsay: This just in: Olympic torch pillars being recalled by Toyota. #olympics
@MajoratWH: Anyone can do harmonically balanced, 4 pronged indoor ice crystal. 3 legged one, so unconvetional, arch, unique. #torchexcuses
Fear not, the flame was eventually lit. The Winter Olympics 2010 have officially begun.
