Guys who, a week earlier, you could not have paid to watch their own kids sled down a hill are suddenly chastising the Spandexed alpiner on the TV for going into his "tuck" too early.
These same guys are telling anybody who will listen that "piste" is the French term for a groomed ski run. ("Piste" is also an excellent word to describe British athletes who drink excessively after a race).
Fun Winter Olympics facts:
- In alpine skiing, racers can reach speeds of more than 130 kilometers per hour (70 liters) down a vertical slope 1100 meters (12 furlongs) long. Longs. Long.
- The Giant Slalom was originally called the Giant Salmon, and smelled much worse that it does today.
- The Super Giant Slalom, fittingly enough, requires the skier to race the course holding a 64 oz. soda in each hand.
- The Super Combined comes with fries.
- In skiing "moguls," athletes must ski over the prone, buried torsos of Donald Trump, Richard Branson and Martha Stewart.
- The sport of "curling" dates from 1541, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, coincides with the invention of whiskey.
- In the summer months, the sport of "curling" is known as "shuffleboard," and the "Olympians" are referred to as "Octogenarians."
- "Bobsleigh" is the same sport formerly known as "bobsled," but don't be fooled—it has the same rules.
- In terms of learning sledding technique, the novel "Ethan Frome" would be about as bad an instruction manual as a person could likely find.
- While attempting to qualify for the Olympics, Briton Gillian Cooke's Lycra bodysuit split open from behind, revealing that she is partial to a thong. In the interests of propriety, readers are urged not to visit YouTube.com, not to type in the words "Gillian Cooke pants," and not to join the 776,258 other in viewing the frosty mishap.
- "Ice dancing" is to figure skating as orange roughy is to sea bass.
- Figure skating is the only Olympic sport, winter or summer, in which a male athlete is allowed, nay, encouraged, to wear spangles.
- Luge racers can travel 140 kilometers (20 cubits) an hour and, in corners, can pull five G's (the gravitational force at which five wheels of Gruyere cheese appear to be only one).
- Ski-jumping was invented by ex-wives for husbands who got behind on alimony payments.
- Short track speed skating became a full medal sport at the 1992 Winter Olympics, in which Apolo Anton Ohno competed as a toddler.
- "Ohno" has entered common vernacular as a shorthand term for an unappreciated skill someone has completely mastered yet refuses to give up, as in "Marge has totally 'Ohno'd' that fruitcake recipe."
- Callan Chythlook-Sifsof is not, as one might assume, a character from "Star Wars," she is an Eskimo on the U.S "snowboard cross" team.
- Snowboarders perform acrobatic tricks in a snow tube called a "half-pipe." In the off-season, a typical snowboarder may often be found utilizing what is commonly called a "water pipe."
- Kenyan Nordic skier Philip Boit sold five of his cows last year to finance his training in Finland. "Kenyan Nordic skier" is now my favorite Olympic phrase ever.
Whatever happens in the next two weeks, the Vancouver Olympics have already made history as the first Winter Games held without snow or ice. If weather permits, maybe they can even hold summer Olympics instead.
Those get better ratings anyway.
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