Other Sports

Bob Costas is back! He’s back, and a lot less pirate-looking!

Let's go in for that close up. pic.twitter.com/rQg3bYiftO

— SB Nation GIF (@SBNationGIF) February 18, 2014

During Costas’ absence, Russia has taken the top spot in the medal count (if you count total medals — Germany currently has the most gold medals). Norway has been dethroned from the count, and if you believe the gents from Oslo, it’s partially because of a ski-wax conspiracy. This isn’t the only controversy that Costas has missed: some lugers are positive Russia turned up the temp on the sled track to give their sledder better odds; the Russians, for their part, are still protesting that disallowed hockey goal against the U.S. Men’s team.

We’ll come back to that, and all the other hockey goings-on. But first, WE CURL.

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It’s day 6 of the Sochi Winter Olympics (or day 7, if you count the opening ceremony), and we have been reminded that Norway is very good at skiing. Also, there are a lot of Olympic medals for skiing events. By simple syllogistic reasoning, we can deduce that Norway has a lot of medals so far. And we’d be right. Well done, us. Gold star.

Here are the other things we’ve cared about over the first few days. YES, there are spoilers from this morning. I assume y’all were watching the Women’s USA-CAN hockey game, so nothing should be a surprise.

Hockey: Egads, the USA-CAN Women’s game was a contentious affair. The first two goals were scored on power plays, and the third goal went in after play was whistled dead. Technicalities. I could describe this game as two evenly-matched teams, where Canada’s savvy defense & transition play saved its bacon in the 3-2 win. Or I could sarcastically congratulate the refs on finally calling out Canada for too many players on the ice with less than a minute left. It would’ve been nice if they noticed things like that any time in the preceding 59+ minutes. Grumblecakes, say I.

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Only one day until we begin our coverage of Sochi 2014!

… To be honest, I might want to encase “coverage” and “Sochi” in a pair of scare quotes. As a small blog / zine / word jumble, the Recorder will not be actually present in Russia. We’ll be providing inexpert coverage from the glow of our TVs in various Chicago locales — when we’re not at our 9-5 jobs or sleeping, naturally. Luckily for our readers, I have acute insomnia, so I don’t sleep much.

Before we start the official coverage, though, we want to bring a lot of the background noise from these games into the foreground. There have been calls to boycott the Sochi Winter Games; before that were the calls to move the games to a different city. There’s many a good basis for these calls: corruption, expenditures, corrupt expenditures, ill-preparedness, security threats, regional instability, animal cruelty, and significant human rights concerns. Any one of these reasons ought to have given the IOC pause. Unfortunately, there was no such consideration. Not publicly, at least.

While the IOC and member nations haven’t boycotted these games, many individuals are. I can’t fault anyone for that, even though I worry such actions hurt the athletes more than the companies, politicians, and bureaucrats that might deserve the figurative pain. Over at SB Nation, they’ve suggested a way to both watch & support Olympic athletes while also supporting an organization opposed to Russia’s draconian anti-gay laws and culture. Check out the article, which also links to the bars in Chicago that will be remote Pride Houses for viewing the Opening Ceremonies.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. At the Addison Recorder, we are going to be talking a lot about the Olympics over the next few weeks. We’re sports nuts, pop culture geeks, and geographical nerds. We’re going to write a lot of words that will be excited, sincere, snarky, silly, insightful, and not-so-insightful. We’re not always going to mention the background events that have caused so much concern. So let’s make sure we set the stage and put them out front.

Because we are really, really worried about these Games.

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