Olympic Retort, Part III

The 2-0 loss by Team Canada to the Russians doesn't really say anything more than this: the only league where champions can be assembled on short notice, and repeatedly save the day, is the Justice League. Once the Russians knew that their manager Pavel Bure was not going to let Viktor Tikonhov (who ran the Soviet teams like a gulag) anywhere near them, they were winners already. The Canadians never needed anyone to second-guess, harass, and intimidate them: it's why this country has so many talking heads and sportswriters.

It was brave of Cindy Klassen to come out just before winning the women's 1500m....as a Winnipegger. Remember in 1980 when Gatean Boucher won two gold medals at Lake Placid, and Rene Levesque sniping at Pierre Trudeau, "Quebec 2, Canada 0"? If Ralph Klein ever starts pulling that, the rest of us are screwed. Pretty much the entire Olympic team seems to come from Calgary, and the local media loves to draw little cowboy hats on the ones who just train there.

The Gushue rink's 11-5 win over the U.S. guarantees Canada 19 medals, this country's best ever result in the Winter Games. Don over at RevMod knows waaaaaaaaaay more about Curling than this page, but if there's a sport that deserves its surprising ascent of popularity, this would be it. Much of the U.S. coverage of the Games refers to events like boardercross or short-track speed skating as "NASCAR on snow, or NASCAR on ice". This page enjoys those events, but also has an editorial policy of "F**K NASCAR", and Curling is about as far from NASCAR as one can get.

Chandra Crawford wins a gold medal in the cross-country skiing sprint with a time of 2 minutes, 12.3 seconds. Given that it took over a year for Beckie Scott to get her gold medal from the 2002 games, it's great to see a Canadian athlete shave a few months off that mark.