The Winter Olympics have barely begun and so many things are going comically wrong that everyone will soon forget Denver’s Superbowl performance. That was just one off game. Sochi is providing a smorgasbord of hilarious failure on many fronts.
The Olympic Games – Promoting Friendship
Some of it’s not so hilarious. Apparently Sochi had a big problem with packs of stray dogs. Their solution: poison. Animal lovers are not happy.
I am an animal lover but not a sentimentalist. I can understand that something had to be done. Stray dogs are mangy, ugly things that probably have fleas and too many can ruin your whole vacation (Bangkok is full of them, but you don’t notice so much because of all the rats).
Still, they’ve known for a while that the Olympics were going to be there. If they’d taken care of that little problem 6 months ago, nobody would be saying a thing.
Then, of course, there was the whole controversy about how Putin hates gay people. That was never a controversy in any previous Olympics because nobody ever admitted to being a gay athlete. There has been great progress in the gay rights arena, but Putin failed to get the memo. Really bad timing on their part.
The fact that the snow on the ground is sparse (perhaps they could import some from Chicago, I hear they have a bit of an excess this year) is beyond anyone’s control, but it is one more indicator that Sochi was a bad choice. If it were being held in the Canadian Rockies or the Swiss Alps, this would not have been a problem.
But, it’s the infrastructure that’s proving to be the biggest headache. Not only are Russian toilets comically gross (side by side shitters), but there are a lot of structural problems with the new hotels, where the construction hasn’t been actually completed but they’re open anyway because, by golly, it’s time and the guests have arrived.
Here’s the funny part. (For the whole quote go to this article in Think Progress.) When Dimitri Kozak, this Olympic’s head honcho, tried to say that reporters were exaggerating the claims to deliberately embarrass Russia, he said this: “We have surveillance video from the hotels that shows people turn on the shower, direct the nozzle at the wall and then leave the room for the whole day.”
That’s right. They have cameras in the showers. Let me repeat that: Cameras in the showers. That’s the most damaging admission since Larry Silverstein said “As for Building 7, we’d already decided to pull it.” There are Russian police watching reporters take showers. Probably the athletes, too. Athletes have hot bodies.
The games have just begun and there is a chance that they will be remembered for the longest ski jump ever, or a spectacularly beautiful figure skating routine, or some tremendously heartwarming example of sportsmanship.
There is a chance. But, I’m pretty sure that these games will be remembered as the ones with the cameras in the showers. That’s a detail that sort of jumps out at you.
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