Sport Globalization and International Issues

“Of course we expected more from our team, but this is still no reason to lose heart, wear sackcloth and ashes and self-flagellate,” Vladimir Putin said of the final medal-count for the Russian Olympic team.

Our next Olympic Winter Games will travel to Russia. This will no doubt trigger a whole raft of faux documentaries featuring menacing nesting dolls, and the sudden and more strange return of Yevgeny Plushenko. We have not seen the end of him, I fear.

The recent summertime decision of a British Supreme Court Justice that women ski jumpers will not be allowed to compete in the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, was greeted with many protestations of "tea and sympathy," or rather "beaver tails and sympathy," in a nod to its Canadian hosts. Even the Justice exuded solidarity. In her written opinion, Justice Lauri Ann Fenlon said, "The IOC (International Olympic Committee) made a decision that discriminates against the plaintiffs.

There may well be box seats for the spectators at ski jumping events. To get to any seats at all, I stared at the never-ending portable stairs built into the hill I had to climb.  Already, I was blaming the organizers: for the signage written in the host country's  language that I could not read; for having security guards everywhere, who like security guards everywhere do nothing until they decide to do something; for the still falling snow at an event that required snow.

Originally submitted by: barcode 2x