—First off, best new word at the Winter Olympics? MONOBOB. That's right, for one-man bobsledding. Monobob. Sounds like Sideshow Bob getting run over in The Simpsons monorail episode.
—Exactly how much curling and biathlon IS there in the Olympics? Seemed to me they were on EVERY DAY. Can't the two sports be combined? Call it "Triathlon"? Competitors will ski, shoot, and then curl. Or, they can go for extra points by trying to shoot the curling stones as they whiz along. Hitting a sweeper instead is a major deduction!
—How 'bout that Eileen Gu, winning all those medals for China? Why, she's about as Chinese as chop suey!
—And hey, while I know there's no crying in baseball, there seems to be nothing but crying in figure skating.
Crying out of joy, as with Ms. Sakamoto (acceptable, even adorable).
Crying out of disappointment because the judges decided, with considerable reason, that your teammate was a little better than you were (not acceptable).
(Not for nothing, but surely there is a spot in the NFL coaching ranks for old Grunhilde there.)
I hold with the growing multitudes who favor banning children from the Olympics, something that has proved a bad idea for a long time.
But let's be honest. The problem here above all is one particular country.
A country that cheated so openly and grotesquely when it last got to host an Olympics that it was banned—sort of, but not really. And, whattaya know, was found to be grotesquely cheating again!
A country that has been cheating—openly and grotesquely—since it rejoined the Olympic movement in 1952. A country that, back in Communist days, insisted that its completely subsidized athletes were "amateurs."
A country that, thanks to captured Nazi scientists, introduced PEDs into modern sport.
Not to say that there aren't plenty of other athletes, coaches, and sports administrators from other countries that have cheated, too, in one way or another. But at least in those countries, means have existed to catch them out—and they often are caught, and punished.
(Except in Cooperstown. Where a good attitude and a nice smile conquers all!)
I say we need to go further.
I say ban all Olympics from being held in dictatorships, period. Ban all dictatorships from taking part, period.
Put the Olympics permanently in Greece, where they started, and, I dunno, some nicely neutral nation such as Switzerland or Japan.
Enough with the ridiculous expenditures and competitions for new games, which attract so many sleazy grifters to Olympics administration. I would even be for eliminating the medals ceremonies, and flags, and national anthems, that tempt countries to think this is all about them, instead of the incredible athletes involved.
It was awful to see a 15-year-old go through this. It was awful to see a certain individual represent a genocidal dictatorship instead of the country she was born, raised and educated in.
Enough of the awful. Back to the MONOBOB!