Great news everybody: none of the body parts found floating around Olympic venues belonged to actual Olympians!
At least, we don’t think so. Has anyone actually seen Ryan Lochte lately, alive and in one piece?
I still don’t know all the facts about the Lochte-fake-robbery-peed-on-a-wall-maybe-there-was-a-gun story (let’s be honest: I know none of the facts) but I have to say that I believe Lochte – anyone who has ever watched him swim, heard him speak or even just glimpsed him on TV has no doubt pictured some scenario that ended with Lochte having a gun in his face. He just has one of those gun faces, you know?
Speaking of gun faces, it’s time for my bi-yearly look at the real winners and losers of the Olympic Games. I’ll award gold medals to those who shone on the sporting world’s biggest stage, while the losers will be given severed legs, in honour of the unofficial mascot of the Olympic sailing course.
Gold medal: To track and field, for once again being awesome. Track and field is sport at its purest. Who can jump the highest? (Canadian Derek Drouin!) Who can run the fastest? (Usain Bolt, until his little Canadian brother Andre De Grasse catches him in a year or two.)
It’s elemental. You can picture friends sitting around a bar debating who at the table can run the fastest. Can you picture those same folks debating who would come first after a set of 13 laser radial (dinghy) sailing races? Not likely, unless they all go to Stanford.
Severed leg: the kieran. I’m learning to love cycling, but what the heck is the kieran? When I was young we had a family friend named Kieran. He was an Irishman, a wonderful storyteller, musician and drinker. As far as I’m concerned, a one-hour video of Kieran sleeping would be more entertaining than an hour of kieran racing.
The race starts with a bunch of riders slowly following the world’s nerdiest motorcycle around the velodrome. Here’s the tricky part, it seems: they’re not allowed to pass the nerd until several laps have been completed. But in the Olympic final race they kept passing the nerd. Then they’d stop the whole race and talk about it for half an hour.
“You passed the nerd.”
“Did I? But he’s going so slowly. And did you see his dreadful helmet?”
“Yes, but rules are rules. I’ve got no choice but to talk about it with my fellow judges for 30 minutes, and then give you a stern warning.”
Then they’d get back on their bikes, ride for a bit and pass the nerd too soon again and wait for another half hour. By this time even the racers’ parents were flipping to other channels, searching for the latest episode of Sleeping Irishman.
Severed golden leg: to swimming, for still being boring except for the Canadian teenagers. I’ve often ragged on swimming for being a dull sport to watch. On TV it’s just a bunch of swim caps and arms thrashing about chasing a digital yellow line. This year’s meet was more of the same, with the added perk of every race ending with Elliotte Friedman getting the winner’s name wrong (sorry Elliotte – way to own your mistakes). It’s also hard to take any sport seriously in which a 16-year-old kid can dive right in and destroy 26-year-olds who should be in their athletic primes.
But hey, this year those kids were Canadian, including West Vancouver’s Emily Overholt and new national hero Penny Oleksiak! Exciting stuff, no matter what Elliotte calls them (kidding, kidding).
Gold medal: Canadian women. You rock. And how about West Vancouver skier Georgia Simmerling, who took up track cycling 18 months ago and now has a bronze medal? That’s golden, in my books.
Severed leg: to the IOC, for continuing to move the Olympic Games all over the world, introducing new countries to the joys of siphoning scarce resources away from the citizens of that country and into instantly obsolete venues.
The polluted Rio bay that was used for the sailing events was a concern long before these Games began, and the dirty water worries become even more bizarre once the Olympics started and the pool used for diving turned from blue to green. Even the pool was polluted! What chance did the bay have?
Forgetting dumb Ryan Lochte, other athletes, coaches and spectators have legitimately been robbed by weapon-wielding thugs during these Games. A bullet landed in a media tent, a huge camera fell from the sky and injured spectators, and volunteers aren’t showing up for their shifts. Oh, and Brazil’s president wasn’t at the opening ceremonies because she’s facing impeachment.
These Games feel like a tipping point in which the world will finally acknowledge that sending the Olympics to a new place every four years is a horrible idea. Instead there should be a rotation of maybe three or four cities that have the venues and infrastructure ready to go so that we don’t have to watch a new city get pillaged every four years. The whole system is dirtier than Guanabara Bay, and we need someone smart to concoct a plan to get us out of this mess. Get Ryan Lochte on the phone!
Andy Prest is the sports editor for the North Shore News and writes a biweekly humour/lifestyle column. [email protected]
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