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Saturday, March 3, 2018

The 2018 Olympics #Olympics2018 #recap #review

The 2018 Olympics #Olympics2018 #recap #review

All pictures courtesy of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) or NBC unless otherwise stated


I'll try to make this post as short as I can, but I had a few gripes and a few cheers for this years Olympics. With the 2018 Olympics finally come to an end, it is important to highlight the achievement of all the athletes that worked extremely hard for four years (far longer, actually but you get the point) in order to come to these games and make a household name of themselves. Whether American or otherwise, your efforts in both wins and losses should be commended and I hail you for them. Congratulations to all who medal-ed, and a special congrats to all the Team USA athletes that managed to get on the podium. Ultimately, there were many winners but really only one big loser here: the die-hard fans like me. Let's go through some highlights first, shall we? 

America started with a fairly strong showing both in the figure skating (love it!) team program, and on the slopes and halfpipe in snowboarding. Beginning with Red Gerard, we secured our first gold of the games with his fantastic rail work and jumps in slopestyle. The 17-year-old, even after not scoring high or even landing his first two jumps, completely stomped his third and final run to catapult himself from the teens all the way to first place. Oddly enough, while he may not have had the meme-worthy face that McKayla Maroney did, Red didn't seem very impressed with his Olympics gold.

Chloe Kim
The snowboard domination continued with Chloe Kim. Yet another 17-year-old, Chloe shredded the halfpipe with a score of over 92 out of 100, only to top herself in her final run with a 95 (or it might have been a 96 or 97)--as close to a perfect score as any woman has ever come in the Olympics. She did that by not only ripping the highest air but pulling off some new tricks that only she has been able to cleanly stomp in any of the previous world competitions or X-games. And with Kim being a first-generation American Korean (her parents migrated from Korea in the 80s), these 2018 PyeongChang Olympics seemed poised for her coronation.

We switched back to the slopestyle to see Jamie Anderson repeat as an Olympic champion and defend the gold she won in 2014 by being one of the only women to safely land all of her big tricks on a severely windy day. However, the weather conditions led to some controversy; ultimately, even she fell on her third and final run (she had secured gold by then). Nevertheless, she would have enough time to relax, recover and regroup for her second event, the newly added Big Air snowboarding event which made its inaugural debut nearly a week later. An event where the boarders are given a few runs down one big ski slope in order to hit their biggest trick, Anderson took home a silver medal to add to her two golds.

Shaun White
But the biggest and most talked about medal performance probably of these 2018 Olympics came from the old Flying Tomato himself, Shaun White. After a disappointing showing in Sochi in 2014 where he, as a favorite to get his third gold medal, failed to medal at all and finished in fourth place, White showed up healthy, determined and ready for redemption. And boy did he ever earn it. In what was some of the biggest air ever seen in the history of the Winter Olympics competition, Shaun White flew into the air at more than 16 feet out of the halfpipe, landing every single trick with authority on his final run after splashing out on his second run. With the scores close and in the record-breaking territory, Shaun needed over a 96 out of 100 to get the gold. He'd get a 98, two points off of his perfect score back at the American qualifying competition over a month ago. And with that, he'd cement not only a legacy of brilliance on the halfpipe but would get the USA's 100th gold medal in the history of the Winter Olympics, securing him a new nickname White Gold (#WhiteGold).

Unfortunately, while the fun for the USA Olympics team didn't stop there, it's dominance took a tumble and seemed to become weaker with each day passed in the games. The figure skating team event, a new addition to the games' most watched competition that only made its second appearance at an Olympics, supplied the USA with a rocky start to their on-ice aspirations. While we had a few potential challengers for the gold medal in their own discipline, many didn't get to the level needed either in individual competition nor in the team. Beginning with the much hyped Nathan Chen who was pre-coronated the next king of international figure skating and the first US male to potentially win gold in near 20 years, audiences were quickly let down. Chen was exalted by commentators as being the only young man at 18 who had the gall, the audacity, the bravery and gumption to put not one, not two but five quad twists into his program—an unheard of accomplishment especially when some men still had yet to achieve a single quad. While I fully support that he simply had a bad Olympics where the pressure got to the young kid, he failed to complete a clean short program in both the team and individual events, missing practically every one of his quad-jumps in both programs. While he didn't skate the freeskate/long program for the team, he managed to get through a fairly clean freeskate for the individual event, which saw him nearly complete a historic comeback from 17th place to third before three big-hitters came in at the last minute and knocked him off the podium.

Gay Olympic stand out Adam Rippon made the most of his Olympics debut by bringing home the long program in the team event and doing his absolute best in the men's individual. He was never going to be anywhere near the podium but after being left off the team in 2014, he made his mark on this PyeongChang games.

Sister Maia and Brother Alex Shibutani

Next we had the Shib Sibs #ShibSibs Maia and Alex Shibutani, the 20-something brother-sister duo who ice dance. They've had a large social media following for a number of years now and made their voices known this Olympics. These Shib-lings twizzled their way into American hearts and threw down two great programs in the team event, and two great programs in the individual event, earning them a Bronze for the USA in the Ice Dance event. I will stop here and say that I don't know if it was strange or just a sign of the cultural times but this year's US entrants in figure skating were dominated by Asian Americans; in fact, the only category that wasn't Asian-heavy was the pairs skating. I wonder if this is an effect from Michelle Kwan and Kristi Yamaguchi for having skated for so long or if this was due to the love of figure skating throughout all of Asia. Hm?

Pairs Figure Skaters The Knierims
Speaking of pairs skating (Note: for those not familiar with the difference between pairs and ice dance, a few simple hints: pairs does jumps, dancing does not; pairs has a lot of non-touching tricks and technical moves whereas ice dance requires a close proximity and touching of your partner through at least half of the program) the Knierims, Alexa and Chris won viewers' hearts with their story of love and perseverance that led up to these Olympic games. A couple of years back Alexa suffered a serious medical problem that led to multiple emergency surgeries to clear some kind of intestinal blockage. Chris, her skating partner and boyfriend at the time, was forced to make decisions for her that would ultimately save her life. They married soon after and not only skated on the US's Valentine's Day, but helped to keep the US stable and in the medal hunt in the team event.

And finally we had the crown jewel of the Olympics, the women's figure skating. The two crown jewels of the US team were Bradie Tennell, the 20-year-old skater that came out of nowhere within the last five months to earn herself a spot on the team, and the veteran Mirai Nagasu who, like her best friend Rippon, was passed over in 2014. Mirai Nagasu became the first American woman ever to land a triple axel on Olympic ice. With clean skates both from her and Bradie, the team was propelled to win a Bronze medal in the opening team event. Unfortunately, neither woman would fair well in the individual event which saw all three American women bunched in ninth, tenth and eleventh place after disastrous short programs. The technically-gifted but performance-bland Bradie Tennell actually fell on one of her first jumps, an occurrence that commentators Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir were keen to point out never happens. Mirai also turned in a lackluster performance in which she singled many of her triple jumps and was unable to pull off the same triple axel feat as before. Not that it would've mattered for either of them. The women's individual figure skating event was all about the two Russian princesses.

Russian Skater (Y)Evgenia Medvedeva

In a games in which Russia as a national contingent was banned due to doping, the OAR or Olympians from Russia still showed in droves, hoping to claim precious Olympic medal for their country. But as luck would have it, they hadn't earned a single gold in any event through two weeks of competition. And then, on the final night of the women's individual figure skating freeskate, their chance at gold went from fantasy to reality.

The intense competition between the near-perfect Alina Zagitova and her rival Evgenia Medvedeva made the two young Russians skate beyond their hearts, pushing artistry and technical brilliance to their limits. Alina, the 15-year-old skater who had only gone from juniors to adult competitions in the last year, had a razor-thin one point lead after the short. Evgenia, the 18-year-old with a love of Sailor Moon and K-pop, thought this Olympics would serve as her coronation. The girls not only have the same coach, but train together throughout the year, leaving their friendship off the ice just that: off the competitive ice. After skating her everything to close the freeskate and seeing Canadian Katelyn Osmond skate brilliance to earn her the silver spot, Evgenia watched as she finished just one point behind Alina once again, earning her the silver and bumping Osmond to a bronze. For long-time figure skating fans (and those older than the two Russian teammates) the results bore a familiar ring to the 1998 Olympics when Tara Lipinski snuck in from seemingly nowhere and won Olympic Gold out from Michelle Kwan's more seasoned grasp. Kwan, while hailed as an American sweetheart during her career, would never attain that gold. Lipinski would retire very soon after and now commentates every Olympics.

But the joyous highs and bleak lows would not stop at the Olympics Ice Pavilion in Gangnueng. In what has to have been the most roller-coaster-y Olympics I can remember in the last 24 years, each day of competition was met with someone who was triumphant in securing a medal while another US team member in a different sport caved beneath expectations and barely finished the event. Mikaela Shiffrin, the 22-year-old gold medalist slalom and alpine skiing specialist from 2014's Sochi, was scheduled to race three (actually, maybe five) events, but had to back out of one due to event re-scheduling because of windy weather. She'd eventually race in Giant Slalom and Alpine Combined where she'd win Gold and Silver respectively. But elder stateswoman Lindsey Vonn, in her third Olympics and seeking redemption after missing Sochi due to an ACL injury, was bumped from Gold to Bronze in her specialty the Downhill after drawing a terrible start at first. Even worse, she failed to even complete her slalom run in the Alpine Combined, earning disqualification in the event within a few gates from start. The most-likely final Olympic showing for the 33-year-old past Gold medalist came to a disappointing end. But on the bright side, she got to ski in memory of her grandfather, a Korean war vet who helped inspire her love of skiing.

Vonn
Then there was the slopestyle and halfpipe for skiers which took over in the second week. While wind wasn't as big of a problem for them, cleanly landing tricks proved to be their albatross. The much cheered-for Gus Kenworthy—one of the few openly gay Olympic athletes to make his political leanings known—failed to medal or even sniff at the podium in ski slopestyle, never landing a big enough trick to propel him into winner's position. But barely talked about American Nick Goepper managed to snatch a silver. The same couldn't be said for the women's slopestyle in which Devin Logan failed to even place above ninth place.

David Wise, the defending gold medalist in free skiing halfpipe competition, suffered through equipment malfunctions his first two final runs, escaping unharmed in what shaped up to be a very dangerous halfpipe for skiers. With crash after crash from skiers, multiple men were never able to complete their final runs out of three. But a quick tightening with a screwdriver and some determination to stomp his last run propelled Wise into the gold spot, allowing him to properly defend his Olympic title and put a proud smile on his two children's faces. The same couldn't be said for his female counterpart Maddie Bowman. The defending gold medalist ranked high in her qualifying runs while holding back her best tricks. However, when it came to the final runs, she not only crashed on the halfpipe during the warm-ups, but she crashed on her final trick every single time in the exact same place (at the end of the run) in every one of her three final runs, earning her no greater than a score of 30 out of 100.

One of the most high-octane sports on the slopes, snowboard cross handed yet another defeat to world-class snowboard racer Lindsey Jacobellis. The 32-year-old who, in 2006, foolishly tried to do a trick at the end of her winning snowboard run only to fall on the trick and go from gold to silver, tried for redemption in her fourth Olympics. And while she didn't fall like she has in every other Olympics snowboard cross race, she finished a heart-breaking fourth and off of the podium. Virtually the same results happened in the men's snowboard cross with the two Americans in the final run wiping each other out halfway through the race and ultimately getting up and finishing off the podium.

Team Pursuit Bronze Medalist Team, Far Right: Heather Bergsma

Speaking of speedy sports, America didn't fare much better on the ice than they did on the slopes. In speed-skating, on both long and short track most of the USA was out-skated either by the Dutch/Netherlands or by Norway, both of which dominated even over the South Koreans that love and revere speed skating so much. Young speed skater Maame Biney failed to even get to a single finals race, though the light hasn't dimmed on a potentially very bright future. I look forward to seeing her in 2022. Long-tracker Heather Bergsma, while her love story with her husband and fellow speed skater Jorrit was touching on Valentine's Day, failed to get on the podium in any other event save for the team pursuit in which the women made history by winning a Bronze medal. And even the short track speed skaters wouldn't fare very well. We failed to podium save for in one men's event. John-Henry Krueger managed to eke out a 1000m silver medal in a sport that routinely sees its competitors go down and into the safety walls surrounding the rink. And though Elise Christie was not on Team USA, skating for her homeland of Great Britain instead, I felt bad for her for not being able to properly complete a single race, repeating virtually her same performance from Sochi four long years ago. At the same time, I also couldn't help but laugh when she began the one race that she did ultimately complete by falling within two steps, tripping over her own blades. She would later be disqualified and yellow carded for disrupting and improperly touching two of her fellow racers.

Oddly enough, many of this year's gold (or medals for that matter) came in sports that were previously either uninteresting or simply low-rated in viewership. The cross-country ski team saw their first medal in over 20 years and first ever for women when Jessie Diggins (a much-hyped young skier who hadn't quite lived up to medal aspirations) and her much older partner Kikkan Randall won gold in the Women's Team Sprint Free. Yeah, I watched it live at 5 o'clock in the morning. The US's Elana Meyers-Taylor and her brakewoman Lauren Gibbs claimed silver in Elana's third Olympics which seemed ripe for a gold medal (the upstart Germans shocked everyone and took the top spot). US Men's Hockey, after giving us an all-time great game versus Canada eight years ago in Vancouver suffered through the first Olympics without NHL players, getting bounced early in the quarterfinals. However, it was the less popular women's hockey team that took the golden crown from Canada, demanding that you watch them because the boys weren't the only ones on the ice. Still, some fans of the sport scoffed at the fact that the match was decided by a shootout, which I also watched live. And after flunking out of the medal bracket in the debut of mixed doubles curling, Matt Hamilton and team leader John Schuster propelled the men's US team to curling gold on the nearest to final night of the competition. I say that these were the rarely watched sports because most of them came on early morning hours (3-7am) and on NBCSN, which leads me to my biggest gripes of these games.

NBC's 2018 Olympics coverage was some of the weakest, most boring Olympics coverage I have seen in quite a while. Just a year and a half removed from the best Olympic coverage since Beijing 2008, in almost every way that NBC succeeded with Rio it failed with PyeongChang, South Korea. Let's first get some political BS out of the way because I read an article on FOX news where commentators thought NBC was promoting North Korea and making it seem like a great place. Obviously this was fake news and anybody who watched the Olympics for two days in a row can tell you that they hardly ever talked about Little Kim's northern regime. Like I said, I watched practically every sport at least once and I counted a total of four times they mentioned/talked about North Korea during the games: at the Opening Ceremony where they pointed out NK's cheerleaders, Kim's sister, and the fact that North and South would play hockey as one team; during the Closing Ceremony (ditto the stuff about the opening); during the figure skating pairs program where an NK couple skated, and either during speed skating or luge (can't remember which one). They honestly didn't even talk about the difference in the Koreas that much during the hockey game they played together. Most of the talk was about South Korea but seeing as how Trump watches FOX News religiously, I can understand how viewers wouldn't have the intelligence to distinguish between north and south.

Speaking of South Korea, NBC played it overly safe in their coverage. I don't know if it was some programming idiot's decision to move cultural fluff pieces of the past to the network's plethora of morning shows or if they annexed them completely, but I missed out on all the Korean culture that I thought I'd be getting. I've been watching the Olympics for a long time, summer and winter, and in the past they've been great not just because they featured rarely-watched sports with athletes performing at the top of their field to prove after a lifetime of training that they were the best in the world, but because they were also immersive experiences. Maybe some people don't like it or are still snobs about TV but I've always viewed the medium as another tool for learning. You could learn just as much as you can be entertained by TV. The Olympics were often the epitome of that clash of infotainment. You not only got to root for “your people, your country,” you also got to learn a great deal about how other cultures get along on this little blue rock. With Beijing, I remember the exploration of the temples and how they incorporated the number eight/infinity symbol into their culture because it's such a huge part of their belief that everything continues on forever. With Sochi, I remember Mary's reports on how the Soviet Union broke up to become Russia, it's suffering through a bleak economy after that, the rise of Putin, it's love of ballet and how that translated into figure skating, their particular traditional style of architecture, and even stuff about the propaganda trains used in World War 1 and 2. London was an exploration of how this small island with, technically three nations on it managed to create such strange games that became part of the Olympics, whether it was golf or the modern version of shot put. Not to mention it explored the effects that WWII had on the people there and told harrowing stories about how people felt and survived while bombs rained down on their cities. Rio took us on a journey of art and easy living in not-so-easy conditions, having us explore the culinary arts and eats with Ryan Seacrest and Adriana Lima, or helping us understand why nearly half of the city of Rio and Sao Paolo is painted in vibrant street art commissioned by the cities, or even going back to talk to the inspiration for the song “...and when she passes, every time she passes...” (you know the one. Yeah, I can't think of the title either, hence, the lyric).
   
One Good Memory: First Ever Olympic Drone Show
But with South Korea...? Here, I'm left with nothing. Sure, South Korea likes dragons and white tigers, apparently. And they obviously go wild for anything on ice skates seeing as how, up until this Olympics, all of their medals in the winter games have come either in speed skating or figure skating. But stepping away from the sports what did I get? A few fleeting Johnny Moseley cultural moments where he talked usually about temples while not ever actually visiting one himself. And those were sponsored by Subway. Sure, the games started with a food tour from a professional chef (it's killing me that I forgot his name because he's been on Top Chef a few times as a judge), and I even dared cook two Korean dishes for the Olympics (I'm a bit of an Olympics fanatic and like learning new things and tasting new things), but it hardly satiated my appetite. In past Olympics they not only tried to elevate the games, but the places that held the games, doing their part to help keep the Olympics in high-demand around the world. The host cities and countries knew they could count on people growing ever-more curious and wanting to know more about this foreign and/or exotic place, and would hope that people wanted to come there to start their own adventure. Previously Olympic cities did see a slight bump in tourism either in the same year or the following year of hosting the games. Or at least the countries did, you know, when we weren't in a new-era cold war with them (I'm lookin' at you, Russia). While we have our problems with the North, South Korea is open for visitors. The Olympics used to make the host city feel like it was a place you had already visited and now you craved to go back. This time around... eh! Hell, I didn't even see anything funny or interesting concerning Leslie Jones being there. Again, they may have moved this stuff to the morning shows in a terrible ploy to get me and other fans to watch shows we aren't keen on viewing in the first place (Megan Kelly trying to cover the Olympics? Endless hours of the Today show? Meh!) but why do such a thing when they had ample time to fit some of this stuff in during the nightly broadcast, either during the main show or the hour and a half post-news show? Spare eight minutes and you're golden. But nope! They couldn't and this was due to the third complaint I had:

So Many Wrecks, So Many Missed Opportunities
Everything was LIVE. Look, I know that this is what the people wanted (read: complained about) ever since the dawn of social media. In an age in which everything is immediate and results about wins or losses come directly to your phone or stream on your [insert your social media platform of choice] timeline it is hard to keep up with viewer interest if they discover that the snowboarder girl who raced on Mikaela Shiffrin's borrowed skies and won gold actually accomplished that bizarre feat 12 hours before you show it but there needs to be some kind of compromise between tons of LIVE events and the cozy shows that used to make up the Olympics just two summers ago. This is especially important because the games will be played in this particular region for the next two games (one summer, one winter) with both Tokyo and Beijing being within two stone-throws from PyeongChang in either direction. And on top of that, even when trying to show events live, you'll still miss a lot of great stuff. Case in point, snowboarder Ledecka's gold medal skiing run on Shiffrin's skies. While she was hardly expected to get on the podium for the event, let alone win gold, and I commend the producers for cutting away from skiing during the downhills of the “also-rans,” this very miscalculation actually helps prove my point: everything doesn't need to be shown LIVE.

Frankly, I think the complainers of yesteryear who wanted everything LIVE shouldn't have been heeded so unabashedly. Is it a different type of feeling to experience everything in the same moment as it happens, yes. But there's something to be said about maintaining adrenaline throughout these long sports events. Unlike, say any of the major three professional sports in the US (I guess you can throw in Hockey as it is growing in viewership each year), the Olympics is quite a different animal, though that shouldn't need to be said. It's, essentially, the run-up, the playoffs and the championship all in one. It's a condensed season of our longer sports and it is where everyone is laying it all on the line for one chance at something that comes around once every four years. The drama should be there, yet it's not fully built in. Unlike in the “ball” sports, where fans care just as much about the off-the-field/court drama as the on (die-hards will tell you they don't, but they do) and are subjected to months of rumors, speculation and analyst talk about who is the best team/coach/player/management and filtered information about little quirks in these people's lives, the Olympics doesn't get the long build-up. Tons of football fans now know that, like me, Tom Brady is a water fiend who drinks multiple gallons a day. Does that have anything to do with how he throws a football? No, but sports analysts have twisted, bent and manipulated the story to find an angle they can use to somehow make it relevant to his career.

Nathan Chen Failed To Medal
The Olympics is inherently different. Most people don't tune in for the season-long coverage of skaters, skiers, snowboarders and the like. So you not only have the run-up to the big finale, but you also have to build a story around these athletes, make us care about them, make us believe in them and their vision of how they want this Olympics to play out, enhance the drama that is naturally built into this worldwide event all in the span of a few days. And while some of these stories may play out over years due to us remembering what happened in the last Olympics (still a little sour that Ashley Wagner got left off the team this time around when I was mad four years ago that Mirai Nagasu didn't make the team), many will be new to us. So when you spend less time on the stories because you have to (or at least feel like you have to) spend more time covering events LIVE in primetime, viewing will inevitably suffer. I find it weird that I hardly know anything about any of the US men's figure skating individuals off the ice, even though I spent a full Olympics watching Nathan Chen cave under the pressure of the spotlight (I am rooting for him 2022), watched Zhou get nearly no recognition (he finished sixth overall and was in medal position up until the final three men) and saw Adam Rippon light up social media as he gave wild and fabulous interviews. That's right, even Rippon, a media darling for this Olympics, is a mystery to me. They covered none of their stories from childhood on up. While we got a brief look at Nathan Chen saying he'd be at the 2018 Olympics back when he was about 8 or 10 years old, the heart was missing from the story, something which I'm sure could've been included had it not felt like they were rushing for time during LIVE coverage.

In fact, the pacing of the entire coverage felt strange. Too many commercials? Hell yeah! That, coupled with the lack of good stories, fed the overall malaise of this year's games. A lot of the fluff pieces that made me care about athletes either came on NBCSN in the middle of the night, and during events where they had no business being, or on Olympic Zone. For instance, our female long-tracker Heather Bergsma had a piece on her about how she fell in love and met her husband Jorrit, and even moved to the Netherlands to train in the speed-skating culture over there. It was a romantic story in which she asked to kiss him on the first date after she also paid for nearly everything. And then he proposed to her by fingering the words into the sand on a beach in which her family has a home in the states and waiting for her to awake that morning to see it from her beach-facing balcony. Cool story, right? You know they showed that at 3:30am eastern time on NBCSN and not even during a long track speed skating event? It was a break between a curling game and cross-country skiing. Her race took place two hours later. Then, a day later when in primetime coverage they could replay her earlier race ON VALENTINE'S DAY, you know what they showed? No, not that sweet story of how they fell in love, instead they showed a secondary shorter puff piece about how she and her husband competed on a show in his country called Battle of the Sexes, and she lost the race and got pretty ticked about it. The love story was about three minutes longer and would've cut into LIVE coverage—that's the only reason I can think of why they'd not show it.

Cultural servings, as said before, were nearly left out completely or pushed down to the Olympic Zone—the half-hour pre-show that was supposed to air every night (except Sundays) before primetime coverage. Not a national show, the O.Z. was run by your local news affiliates and tried to feature at least one story that was given to them by the national HQ but then filled it with stuff that you were supposed to find interesting to your region. Eh! Did I really need a full seven-minute segment on the growth of curling in Northeast Ohio? No. Did I want to see more about America's effect on Korean culture or how vastly different the north and south are? Yes. But with all of those duties shirked off to the half hour local team, I barely got anything, and didn't even start watching O.Z. until halfway through the games.

Not Americans

My point is that focusing more on the stories of the American athletes or of the expected champions/greatest competition to those athletes during primetime would've served us as viewers far better than sitting through a slew of also-rans in any of the competitions. Sure, snowboard was a favorite of mine and I enjoyed watching all 30 competitors do their qualifying runs... Once! There were often two qualifying runs for each event, then three final runs. In the hour and a half of time that each event took, I couldn't have been the only viewer sitting there and wondering, “Do I really need to see 15 skiers who supposedly have no chance of medalling ski down a hill only to end two seconds off from the leader and wind up in 13th place?” Where is the drama? Where is the adrenaline in that?Show me the Americans regardless, because I'm here for that, and also show me the top five best in the world, but don't give me the chick skiing for Hungary (I think that was the country) who is going down the halfpipe pulling no tricks and is only there because she shortcutted the system. It makes for funny social media fodder, sure, but I hardly want to watch her go through twice and listen to the commentators struggle to say anything worth a damn. I'm hardly ADD and ably sat through all of this, but for the love of god switch away from these events and show something else so that viewers' minds don't wander. There was other junk on and other stuff to do.

Ultimately, this is the problem with most sports but got highlighted during the Olympics because of the nature of the Olympics: most sports are legitimately only interesting for about seven minutes of playing time. Think about it, the first two quarters of football are nothing worth seeing unless one team immediately starts to run the score, or when one team pushes their downs to within 20 yards of the end zone. Only about the last quarter of basketball is even worth watching and you can catch that crazy dunk or pass highlight from the second quarter on Sportscenter later. Soccer only gets truly interesting when the ball gets to within 20 feet of the goal, which actually rarely happens. Baseball is only interesting if someone steals some bases, hits a homer or the field team flubs the ball, allowing a run. Hell, even a pitcher's no-hitter can leave you feeling like you wasted your three hours if, in the final inning he lets someone hit a homer. Don't misunderstand my complaint, they definitely should still have LIVE events, but they need to jump around more in order to keep the ADD attentions of tech-distracted viewers these days.

Left to Right: Kikkan Randall, Jessie Diggins
The little secret about all of this is that I, as an Olympics die-hard, know that they have been showing events LIVE for the past two Olympics where people complained. The biggest problem that some idiots seem not to understand is that most events take place during the day, meaning that events played LIVE during work hours. I remember seeing gymnastics at the Rio Olympics in 2016 at noon and it was LIVE, then watching the replay of it in primetime. They featured the beach volleyball LIVE because Brazil was too hot to play it during the day. Sochi was a similar case where the time difference was just enough to have events play at odd hours just outside of primtime, but you could still find stuff with that LIVE tag somewhere in the screen's corner. These people who complained about LIVE coverage are still doing that and remained unhappy for the last four years. Rather than cater to them and suffer through the worst ratings in years, maybe focus on putting out the best possible show you can.

Seemingly in an effort to make up for their lack of good programming, NBC and its affiliated networks stuffed in a few good things in the last two days of coverage, after most events had concluded. First was the micro-documentary on the figure skating competition of 1988 in Calgary, Canada that played on NBCSN in the dead of night on Saturday-Sunday. Following the four expected champions, the film angled itself as two sets of rivals finally going at it for the golden prize. On the women's side you had American Debi Thomas versus East Germany's Katarina Witt. Thomas, the first black female to skate into the international spotlight during a time in which the black community was suffering through the crack epidemic, became an instant beacon of hope and adoration for young AA girls. Katarina was the Olympics darling that needed to win Gold a second time after winning in 1984 simply to remain a figure skater in her country. In a strange political barring, Germany was not going to allow her the privilege of becoming a professional figure skater (it was somehow outlawed) unless she beat the black girl.

Debi hadn't the same fire under her that Katarina did, distracted more with her boyfriend and academic studies (medicine) than with what her coach had to say. They would skate to the same opera, each choosing Carmen for their final free skate. But where Katarina oozed the sex appeal of a grown woman confident and sure in her allure, Debi stumbled through her program and let her “Just Do It” attitude (a phrase she is seen uttering to herself before her short program and takes credit for coining months before Nike adopted the saying) sink into an aura of doubt and self-defeat. She'd finish with bronze while Katarina earned gold.

I Own No Rights to this Pic; Left: Katarina; Right: Thomas 

Katarina would return to her country and go on to not only become a pro skater but do TV, film, movies and become an all-around darling of her people. Debi would go on to marry her boyfriend at the time and become a surgeon, only to later get divorced, be declared bipolar, get into another abusive relationship, and end up broke, nearly a million dollars in debt and living in a trailer with her newest husband. She appeared on Iyanla Fix My Life a few years ago, trying to reclaim her peace, yet doesn't regret anything that happened because skating wasn't that important to her.

On the other side, we had the Battle of the Brians. In a story that directly connected to 2018's figure skating competition, Canada's Brian Orser would skate in his home country against America's Brian Boitano. In '84 Orser was the would-be champ that loss gold to Scott Hamilton due to a part of the competition that is little known to fans of today's sport: compulsory figures. Figure skating got its name from the first part of the three-pronged competition, compulsory figures or just figures. Figures preceded the short and freeskate and consisted of skaters having to draw complex figures on the ice with their blades, often only using one foot at a time. The skaters would have to go forward and backwards carving their blades into the pristine ice to draw shapes and pictures determined by the judges—think figure eights but more complex. This showed body control and superior technique. Shockingly, it accounted for 60% of the overall score. Orser, an amazing showman with both jumps and emotive connectivity in both his short and freeskate programs, scored terribly on the figures in '84, costing him what would've easily been a gold then. He worked harder than he ever had before on his figures between then and Calgary. Feeling the weight of a country upon his shoulders he sought only to finish in the top 3, then he'd have a chance at the gold. He succeeded. But Brian Boitano, the ten-year rival that Orser couldn't shake, had arrived. With Hamilton now out of each of the boys' way, it was between the two of them, each matching the other during the world cup skating season. Boitano knew he'd have to be perfect to defeat Orser. He finished just one spot ahead of Orser in the figures competition, so it would all come down to the programs. In the short he slightly faltered, leaving room for Orser to sneak into gold's spot. But it was in his long freeskate that he connected the most perfect performance ever, propelling him to gold over Orser and forcing the Canadian to take silver once again.

Left to Right: Brian Orser in red, Brian Boitano in blue 

After that Boitano went on to become a hugely popular skater throughout the 90s in the US and would eventually appear on an ambassador delegation of gay past athletes sent to Russia under Obama's direction for the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Brian Orser went on to become a highly sought-after coach and has coached current two-time gold medalist Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan for the last couple of years.

The 2018 coverage also had another documentary on the 1968 Olympics. While it was good, this Serena Williams-narrated film felt slightly disjointed and jumped around trying to cover everything that happened during the lead up to and playing of the Olympics. Focusing on the “summer” (that's in quotes because two reasons: the winter and summer games used to take place in the same year, and though these were the summer sports like track and field, they held the games in October) games, the film became an amalgam of four different stories that all intersected around the games.

First was the unrest in Mexico and Mexico City at that time. Still seen by some as a third-world country, Mexico City's Olympic games was “the first to ever be hosted by a Spanish-speaking country” (that's racist coding for those brown people beneath the US, because no way they'd actually say the same thing about Spain). Mexicans were supposedly lazy, inferior and/or violent similar to negroes, so questions arose about how they could ever pull off a proper Olympics. The president and mayor of Mexico City decided to squelch any negative press that could arise about Mexico in the lead-up to the games. And as it so happens, all hell broke loose just a few weeks before the start of the Olympics. What would later be known as the Tlatelolco Massacre occurred when a group of protesters consisting of students and laborers looking to improve their lot through political action were met with military might. The documentary revealed that in 1998 classified documents were released stating that the first shot may have come from a military person mixed into the protesters crowd, specifically placed there to insight violence and give reason to the soldiers to start shooting the protesters. No less than 20 people died that day, 10 days before the games. Upon arrival to the city, some athletes visited the area (it was previously a sorta tourist attraction as it sat right near a Mayan temple) and noted the pristine appearance, only to then be able to swipe their hands across the cleaned surfaces, or peel back thin layers of paint to see the blood stained stones beneath. Still, the games went off without a hitch or uprising, even daring to have a woman light the torch for the first time ever, showcasing a forward-thinking mindset.

The second story followed high jumper Dick Fosbury. A young white man who wanted to do the high-jump but could never quite clear the bar with his gangly limbs, he pioneered the most commonly used technique today by leaping over the bar back first. Up until this gold-medal-winning technique, people laughed at him for his inability to complete proper jumps. It also briefly touch on another athlete who set a record in the long jump, jumping so far that they had to go to a local store to get a tape measure because the device they had wasn't long enough.

The third story was about Czechoslovakian gymnast Vera Caslavska. At the time, her country (now divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia) was under immense political pressure from the USSR to essentially surrender to its power and become part of its would-be empire. A partial power-play in the ongoing cold war between the USSR and the US, the former drove tanks down the streets of Czechoslovakian cities as they staged a minor invasion. Vera, inarguably the greatest gymnast in the world at the time, had to sneak way from her home in one of the big cities in order to train in the hidden countryside. She only had whatever the forest gave to train with. When she went to the Mexico City games she tried not to let politics get to her but could hardly turn her mind away from the sights she remembered seeing as tanks rolled into her hometown. Slated to win all of the individual medals in gymnastics, the film framed it as though she may have been cheated out of such an honor when in one event the Russian girl was marked higher than her though she hadn't ever been marked that high in any other world's competition, and in another event, after some deliberation, Vera's score was changed to match that of a Russian competitor's, ending the discipline in a tie. Vera made her strongest political statement when, during the medal ceremony, she stood next to her Russian co-gold medalist and looked away and down at the floor when they played the USSR's anthem.

Finally, the biggest storyline of the film focused on the iconic symbol of black power, oppression and the struggle for blacks and minorities to be heard: the two fists raised in the air. Months before that peaceful protest, college student athletes who were black were gathering up to plan a boycott of the Olympics completely as a protest against what they considered to be unfair collegiate treatment of blacks. Outside of the overarching civil rights movement, blacks were recruited by colleges to play various sports but after graduation they were essentially sent packing back to wherever the hell they came from and told not to show their faces again. One past athlete who went on to very quickly earn a doctorate after his undergrad education, saw the problem in the white or integrated colleges having no pipeline for past black students to become coaches or even faculty members at their alma maters, whereas whites were routinely invited back to become part of their college's sports legacy. Not only that, he, having lived it, realized that many of the athletes came from poor upbringings and remained poor during and after their collegiate experience. Scholarships would cover their rent, leaving barely enough money for food for an entire week, let alone a full month. And with tough schedules put on athletes finding a job was near impossible. Even if they were able to handle their schedule, few people hired negroes. Essentially, it was the same argument then as it is today, except with racial politics playing an even stronger role. Something had to give.

If that weren't bad enough, the Olympics were to permit a country like South Africa to participate, which at the time was still battling its way through apartheid. Blacks were looked at the world-over as race horses, animals that could do the work to entertain or win sports events but hardly useful outside of that. And the topping on it all was the current IOC president Avery Brundage whose history with racial prejudice made many black athletes bristle with rage. In the 1936 Germany Olympics it was Brundage himself who told Jewish athletes from all countries that they would not be allowed to participate in the Olympics because it would make Hitler very unhappy. The athletes wanted him gone. They wouldn't get Brundage to step down in time for the Olympics, but they would get some concessions from the USOC who allowed them a certain bit of leeway in living accommodations, promised to look at the college system of black athletes treatment and even allowed for black and other minorities to coach the Olympic teams. They even got South Africa and another country uninvited to the games. Still, a great bit of work was left to be done.


In a move that would not only backfire but crush the inspiring image of a past hero that some of the black athletes still held, the USOC and IOC contacted Jesse Owens to play their house negro. As one of the interviewed athletes said (paraphrased), “They dug Jesse out from somewhere, dusted him off, put him in a suit, stuffed a wad of cash in his pocket and gave him a script to read.” He warned them about protesting, guaranteeing them that they'd have a near impossible time finding a job if they were to visibly protest in any way during these games. They booed him out of the room, recognizing that he had appeared during those German Olympics, then disappeared from the American conscience for near 30 years until that day. He was never truly allowed to make money as a racer after his Germany golds. Instead, he was relegated to a bit of a negro sideshow, often taking clownish races that pitted him against fast animals like horses or dogs in order to make ends meet. Strangely, it now seems as if he was speaking the truth to them rather than a script, which is precisely what they were fighting against happening to them, but in fighting against it, it would be the exact thing to happen to them. This, in no way, says that they shouldn't have protested. To the contrary, they should have made their protests more known.

While the raised, black-gloved fists of gold medalist Tommie Smith and bronze medalist John Carlos during the playing of America's national anthem has become iconic and is commemorated in two statues (one on their alma mater's college campus and another in the national black history museum in DC), they were far from the only ones to try protesting. In what was still to this date the most decorated track and field US team, many of the black athletes that won medals protested by wearing all black, taking off their shoes to symbolize the poverty of black collegiate athletes, wearing tall black socks, blocking out the American flags on their uniforms with protest buttons and the like. Many went unrecognized or passed with little fanfare. Some even earned the ire of both white and black people. One athlete's wearing of a black beret to identify with the Black Panther Party was first seen as distasteful by the whites, but then when he took it off and held it over his heart while saluting the flag as it raised, that was seen as treacherous to the cause by blacks.

Black Bobsledders Lauren Gibbs and Elana Meyers-Taylor
In the end, Carlos and Smith's protest would get them sent packing immediately back home to the states. And just like Jesse Owens warned, they would return to an economic climate that didn't respect their stand for equality in sports. Many of the job offers they had before the Olympics, even from other blacks, suddenly disappeared in the wake of their early return. For years, they would struggle through little to no employment opportunities, and even see their friendship challenged by John Carlos' claim that he let Tommie Smith win the race. Carlos' life would hit a terrible low when his wife of more than nine years killed herself, unable to deal with the up and down of financial struggle. But they pressed on and today have regained some semblance of their friendship and are each enjoying new lives that consist of community involvement with youth. They don't regret their protest as they believe that without it, there wouldn't have been such changes in American society that eventually led to the first black president.

In the end, this 2018 Olympics felt lacking and somewhat bland and boring in comparison to past Olympics. In fact, that feeling was only highlighted by the dive into the pasts of 30 and 50 years ago when the world sat on edge to witness great competition between Americans and foreigners, or when athletes from all walks of life made subtle, yet powerful statements about social and political issues that would ripple through time. With the lack of medal ceremonies shown in primetime (I don't care that Shaun White's medal ceremony would've not played LIVE and would've played a full day after he won the gold. You can “spoil” the sporting event, you can't spoil a medal ceremony) NBC tried to somewhat make up for this on the back end by showing a one-hour showcase of Olympic Gold, but even that fell supremely flat because it focused more on snowboarding's impact in the Olympics in the last 20 years rather than focusing fully on the stories behind each medal we won in this Olympics, gold or otherwise. And it still didn't fully show a medal ceremony. I wanted to see that anticipation on an athlete's face when they see the tray with the medals come out, and they see their fellow competitors get the bronze and the silver, and they tear up a little before the gold is even placed around their neck. This Olympics, unlike in the past, tried to tell stories but failed to build an initial connective draw to these narratives, then not dragging us all the way to the end by showing the athletes on the podium. And don't blame the IOC for this, NBC knew the schedule well beforehand.


The closing ceremony was far superior to the opening, which is all upon the host country. For whatever reason, whenever I watch the Olympics with someone now, they always have to compare it to Beijing's opening and closing in 2008. Look, I know that it was great and that it will most likely go down as one of the greatest openings of all time (frankly, the entire Olympics was one of the best Olympics I've ever seen) but we can't keep comparing that opening to every Olympics ceremony in perpetuity or else we'll never appreciate another ceremony again. With that said, Korea's opening was rather weak. In what was certainly a try-hard ceremony, all I got from it were that they liked white tigers, among other animals, and that they like digital stuff. While you can say virtually the same thing about the closing ceremony, it simply felt different, more artistic and more intriguing. I loved the blend of K-pop with traditional cultural sounds and music, the guitar kid was absolutely shredding to life, the snowflakes extinguishing the fire was uniquely brilliant, I liked the extravagance of EXO's stadium-filling performance and I even enjoyed China's presentation with the skating pandas. In all, it felt like a spectacle, which is precisely the way I want the opening and closing to feel.


With everything that has taken place in the world in the last 18 days both inside and outside of the games, I still couldn't look away from them but for two and a half brief hours on a Saturday night. For me, they are the epitome of a quote by a woman whose name I simply can't recall. She stated the quote on a show while sitting on a panel and talking about sex and about it being good. Well, the Olympics are like sex: even when it's not that good, it's still pretty good.

What do you think? Did you watch the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Winter Games? If so, did you enjoy it? What was your favorite event? Who did you root for most to get a gold? Were you enticed to try out any of the featured sports? And what are you looking forward to from the next Olympic games, summer or winter? Let me know in the comments below.

Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking
If you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER#BrandNewHome or the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 4 coming summer 2018. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary on Amazon. Season 2 of that coming real soon. And look for the mystery novels The Knowledge of Fear #KnowFear and The Man on the Roof #TMOTR coming this fall/winter. Twisty novels as good as Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, you won’t want to miss them. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, “Whoa! Hey, snowboarder dude, you just cut me off while I was skiing quite modestly down this mountain.”
'Dude, it's like they say there's no friends on a fresh powder day!'

P.S. Yeah, I don't know. I heard that second line from one of the commentators during one of the snowboard cross races and thought it was kinda cool, and totally sounded like something a boarder would say, though I've never boarded in my life. Anyway, I'll try to think of a better, more original sign-off next time.
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