The Winter Olympics

February 13, 2022

I have been stuck at home recovering from COVID. Fortunately, there has been virtually 24 hour coverage of the Winter Olympics on television. I only care about most of the events once every four years, and now they have my full attention. Here is what I have learned.

In order to promote responsible gun ownership and safety, all gun owners should be required to either run or ski 10 kilometers, and then hit ten targets with a rifle from two different positions similar to the biathlon. The biathlon includes hunting and skiing, and has been used as a military exercise. This would certainly reduce the number of gun owners and guns in circulation. Weekend warriors would find that they have weak ends.

You can create some pretty good drinking games around how many times broadcasters will harp on a specific story. I have been drunk for days because of the number of times I have heard that Lindsey Jacobellis fell in 2006. They say she erased 2006 with her two gold medals. I will drink to that.

The Russians are cheaters. They are already banned as a country, competing as the Russian Olympic Committee. They have maybe the greatest female skating prodigy of all time, but they couldn’t let it be. They had to juice the fifteen year old up with a heart drug to give her more stamina a la Sharapova. I don’t blame her. I blame Putin. Putin is a cheater, and you can’t believe anything he says. Good luck, Ukraine.

Some of our most outstanding colleges clearly discriminate against non-Asian, non-Olympic gold medal winners in their admissions policies. Eileen Gu is going to Stanford, Nathan Chen goes to Yale, and Chloe Kim goes to Princeton. It sounds like a Supreme Court case to me.

If you want a good meal, schedule the next Olympics for Italy. Olympic athletes have been complaining about a lack of fruits, vegetables, and anything else worth eating. You can’t even get good Chinese takeout. As if the IOC had predicted the complaints, it scheduled the 2026 Winter Olympics for Milano and Cortina d’Ampezzo. The games may not run on time, but no one will care. Buon appetito.

Olympic hockey is great unless you miss a bunch of goons beating up on each other. It’s amazing what a great game hockey can be when you focus on skating, stick handling, passing, and shooting.

The Olympics needs crowds. I feel bad (not really) about Chinese athletes, who have no one there to cheer them on. At the Waste Management Phoenix Open, Sam Ryder made a hole-in-one on the 16th hole. Play had to be stopped because of the craziness. The Super Bowl is today. I don’t care who wins, but, between the crowd and the half time show, it should be nuts. That’s fun.