When the International Olympic Committee met last weekend to decide the host city for the 2022 Winter Games, it had a choice between two cities: one with snow and one without. But who needs snow, right? After all, the last Winter Olympics were held in the tropical slushie of Sochi. So Beijing got the nod….
Tag: Winter Olympics
Farewell from Sochi… but first, let’s rig the medal count
Something’s fishy. A little over a week ago, Russia was in eighth place on the Olympic medal tally. Sure, they bounced around a bit in the standings, hitting second place on a couple of occasions, but never once did they take the outright lead. Then, with less than 24 hours of the competition left, who…
An Olympics volunteer shares a nation’s lament
Hello again, is Vladimir. Has been a while, da? I share you secret. I have intoxicated. I am drunk whole bottle vodka. Twice. Now I have hurt in head from vodka and hurt in heart from ice hockey. All of Russia is like bear with sore head. We can’t believe we lose Olympic ice hockey….
She’s baaaaaaaack
Ten years ago, the unfolding Athens Olympics drama of Jana Pittman’s Knee provided some fantastic sport for these pages (or the emailed missives that preceded them). There were daily knee updates, media pursuits on crutches, odd Greek-inspired fashion statements, Princess Leia side buns, whale music and meditation rituals. Plus a world-class repertoire of blub —…
An open letter to Bruce Brockhoff
Alex Pullin has no idea how he got his nickname Chumpy. Or if he does he ain’t saying. Aussies of a certain age remember an ad for a dog food that was ‘so chumpy you can carve it’. Watching the men’s snowboard cross was a bit like eating said dog food. We had golden expectations…
Silver lining to the Sochi fog
We were strapped into our couches, anticipating our best shot yet at a gold medal. We’d just eaten a dinner with green and gold veggies (sweetcorn and broccoli), donned our favourite Aussie t-shirts (we all did this, right?), turned on the telly and… nuffin. There was a snowboard cross course there somewhere. We just couldn’t…
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