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After 17 days of worldwide camaraderie, gratuitous amounts of sex in the Olympic Village, a lot of very pale white people doing activities that nobody “actually” does, and commercials featuring Canada’s finest celebrities, it is time to break down the 2010 Vancouver Games…

Best Event: Men’s Hockey…

I’m usually the first to say it: Hockey is a niche sport that is demographically doomed unless something really drastic happens. I don’t think I or anyone who watched the Olympic tournament is suddenly going to start following the NHL on a daily basis, but something did happen: We all realized that we actually really do enjoy hockey. The Canadian, American, and Russian squads were a joy to watch, and the Slovakians, Czechs, Finns, and Swedes were all compelling too. While I think the “greatest hockey game ever” talk about the final may be a little much, you can’t deny that Vancouver really did go out with bang.

One sneaky reason it was so good: Subway 5 Dollar Footlongs brought us the coverage with “limited commercial interruption”. Basically, Hockey felt like Soccer on TV (which is a good thing) – even if there wasn’t much scoring, you got to watch the entire thing without breaks and could really get a sense of the flow of the game.

The NHL should seriously consider finding a way to do this for all of their games. It may be that “drastic something”… because as much as the Olympic Tournament and Crosby OT winner was the perfect Canadian Fairy-Tail, it doesn’t change the reality that the NHL is back on today, and it is in danger of falling behind soccer as America’s 7th most important sport?

Tongue Bolt? She's Definitely Down...

The NHL has some separate problems though:

1) A talent pool that is 15X diluted compared to what we saw in the Olympics, with the vast majority of players being boring, foreign, and generally unmarketable…

2) Teams that mean nothing due to the expansion and movement. It’s not just an issue of whether or not people in Nashville ever give a crap about hockey… it’s an issue of people in Calgary watching their team play Nashville and thinking “What is this team we are playing?”

3) Markets that are hockey relevant: Winnipeg, Quebec City, Hartford – Well they are about as financially viable as Enron.

4) Terrible TV contracts and coverage… What channel are games on?

But at least we know we like the sport… I think we really had forgotten.

Olympics Babes: Vonn, Mancuso, and Torah Bright… but mainly Cheryl Bernard and Carmen Schaefer.

Given the S.I. Swimsuit Issue exposure (really underwhelming this year if you haven’t seen it) and the way that NBC decided that she was going to be one of the featured athletes for the Olympiad, Vonn was a shoe-in for this award, but her tearful gold medal speech made you have to love her… Her games thereafter were a letdown (let’s be honest), but either way, I’m excited about seeing her marketing Folgers or whatever for years to come. I mean: can you honestly tell me that the Under Armour ad below isn’t “doing a good job”?

Click Clack?

Her slightly more badass counterpart, Julia Mancuso, is actually considerably hotter. Part of it is her Scarface style upbringing with papa Ciro Mancuso, but most of the credit has to go to Mancuso herself, who has aged incredibly well… actually getting substantially hotter since her Torino gold medals. This was her in the wake of that:

Solid... but she kept getting hotter.

It’s crazy, but that picture doesn’t remotely do justice to the 2k10 version of Julia. She seems like she’s down for the sex-appeal attention, so let’s expect her in Maxim in the relative future… with outside shots at Playboy or somebody “leaking a video”…

One girl who likely will not be going that route, the most successful and hottest Mormon in Vancouver – Australian Snowboarder and Half-Pipe Gold Medalist Torah Bright. It seemed almost a foregone conclusion that Americans Teter-Clark-Bleiler would go 1-2-3 in some permutation, but Torah Bright, who is actually considerably better looking than any of the American girls, stole the show. So here’s to the nice “bring home to mom” girl… named Torah after the “five books”… doesn’t smoke cigarettes or drink coffee… likes dancing and partying without drinking. While this isn’t a lifestyle that I’d choose, how can you not respect her? And she’s a really nice looking girl… in that Australian sort of way:

Here's the the Chaz in the background...

You’re still probably wondering who the “tongue bolt” girl was as if it’s the mystery of the “Sailing Stones“. That is, of course, one of Switzerland’s biggest winter sports stars (shes no Simon Ammann), curling prodigy Carmen Schaefer. I haven’t confirmed this with any sort of in-depth research, but can you think of another female athlete with this kind of piercing? She also rocks the nose stud… so you can 100% know that’s the kind of girl we are working with… if you know what I mean. Apparently, she does Maxim-style photo shoots over in Europe:

The Reflective Water Shot... Classic.

But did you notice who else sneakily has a nose stud? The real star of this Olympics – Canadian Womens Curling “Skip” Cheryl Bernard. Bernard, very simply, may be the hottest 44 year old woman alive with no background in Supermodeling/Plastic Surgery/Excessive Cocaine Use/Pop Stardom. She’s Demi Moore Caliber… and that’s a really really good caliber.

This brings me to the next point…

Breakout Event: Women’s Curling

Off the Charts on the MILF Scale...

If you were sickened by the figure skating monopoly on NBC primetime, then like myself, you probably retreated to daytime coverage on USA Network or the night owl pre-opening-bell coverage on CNBC to catch some “real sports”. On those channels, more often than not, you’d find women’s curling – a sport that really has “Base-ketball Style” catch-on potential. Sports Guy Simmons has been raving about taking curling, going co-ed with it, having cheerleaders, doing it in a packed arena of wasted fans, and generally WWE-ing it up, and I think he’s spot on. This is the kind of sport that is really easy to understand- making it accessible, but also has so many strategic nuances and angles that it is never boring and a constant learning experience. It has constant unintentional comedy with all of the brooming and screaming; it seems like the kind of sport that “anybody can do”; it has ridiculous team sweatsuits; and most of all, it has hot athlete women who don’t look so “athletic” as to not be feminine, but not still athletic enough that you think they are “cool”. If I’m Donald Trump and I want to launch a ridiculous sports league, I’m looking at Xtreme Curling with Cheryl Bernard as my franchise player… even if her collapse in the last two ends against Sweden in the finals was the biggest heart-breaker of the games.

Most Overrated Event: Half Pipe

Now that we’ve conquered the medal count, we get to hear how we only won because “we invented a bunch of BS events to do so”. When this argument is made, the first sport to be implicated is Half-Pipe. I actually think this is unfair… What makes half pipe any less of a sport than “Ice Dancing” (clearly an “activity” not a “sport”)? Nothing… Does the USA dominate it? Well, Torah Bright is a clear argument to the contrary… though we did win 4/6 of the medals awared, but China decided to go and dominate Women’s Short Track and won every gold in the sport… and nobody is saying we should remove that from the games.

Going to Miss British Columbian Kim Cattrall... Who has looked 35 from the time she did "Police Academy" to the present.

My issue with half-pipe is totally different. It’s that it is boring and anti-climactic. First of all, only like 4-5 people ever have a chance to win based on starting scores and degrees of difficulty, and that number would really be closer to 1-3 if people didn’t make mistakes. When Shaun White won the gold, I couldn’t have been less interested – nothing was at stake. He landed a high degree of difficulty first run without even whipping out his “Double Croissant Bearclaw Stalefish” or whatever it was that was his “new move” (which he did do on his victory lap of a 2nd run). The point is – there was no story. Also, the sport has always depended on the guys “going bigger” each and every time that we see it, but we may have reached the plateau where no more rotations and inversions can be added, and the judging is based on nitpicking and “amplitude”… which is sort of lame. And who can tell a trick with 5 rotations 2 inversions and a method grab from one with 6 rotations 1 inversion and a mute grab? I know Shaun White was supposed to be the story of the games… but I’m sticking with Cheryl Bernard.

Thoughts on Canada: Vancouver was the right kind of venue, but as an American, it just wasn’t that interesting…

With the minor exception of Torch-gate and the major exception of the Georgian luge tragedy, you’d have to say that this was a pretty smooth Olympic Games and that the venues were totally up to par. I can’t knock any of that… or that the Canadians did well as hosts. While we may not consciously seek out the Olympics for such, a major point of enjoyment for me and I believe for many is being able to learn about a foreign place and people.

Who doesn't love Michael J Fox? Seriously... He's the Faith Hill of Canada.

You can call Canada a lot of things: “The 51st State”, “America’s Hat”, “Iced Texas”… they are all partially true, but they all indicate something: Canada isn’t very foreign to us. In fact, most of the Canada coverage either seemed like something we had seen in South Park or elicited the “Oh, I always assumed Ryan Reynolds was American” response. NBC struggled to make Canada interesting… not because it isn’t… simply because we already know so much. I guess Bhutan wouldn’t have proper facilities though right?

Events That Could Go Away: Too Many Events That Seem Like the Same Thing…

So why do we need to give out a gold medal for “Normal Hill” ski jumping and “Large Hill” ski jumping? and then make matters worse by giving out gold medals for 10k Nordic Combined Normal Hill and 10k Nordic Combined Large Hill (Nordic Combined = Ski Jump + XC Skiing)… Why is there a 2 man bobsled and 4 man bobsled? What is the major difference between 1000M short track and 1500M short track races when nobody makes moves until the end anyway? Is the Super-Combined just an excuse to give another medal?

I guess I’d much rather see more distinct events than extra medals given out for people doing the same thing that they just did… Ski Cross was new this Olympics, and I thought that it was a really cool addition. Why not look to add more inventive events like that in the future?

Final Verdicts on Figure Skating: Too Much Primetime… But I’m In Every 4 Years…

Every four years, males are forced with the conundrum: I’m supposed to be watching the Olympics for the sake of “bro-knowledge”, but watching figure skating is pretty emasculating? I really enjoyed the skating when it came in small doses, but the issue was that NBC, in their 17 nights of coverage, managed to put figure skating in primetime on 11 of them (2 for mens, 2 for womens, 2 for pairs, 3 for dancing, 1 for the exhibition, and 1 in the closing ceremonies), and that was a Jim Morrison level overdose.

Johnny Weir was surely a "free spirit"...

Here’s what I got out of it: Kim Yu Na was sick… so sick  that I really am glad that I got to watch her do her thing. The Japanese girl was gnarly too, and the Canadian girl was a classic “good Olympics story”. The Americans, though, just didn’t have it… and weren’t attractive enough for me to be invested given such.

On the men’s side, everybody dresses like they are going to a Halloween party at a gay bar, but they are really impressive too. I don’t know why Lysacek beat the Russian dude with the mullet despite doing tricks that were less impressive, but I guess that’s an indictment of all sports with subjective “judging systems”. I even thought that Johnny Weir got hosed; he clearly deserved a Bronze given that his performance was clean, and the guy who got third fell…

As for the dancing and pairs… who cares? (I suspect these are really “girl things” even more than the individual events), and why do we need 3 nights of ice dancing? If I were the showrunner for NBC, I’d televise the men’s and women’s long programs in primetime in full, show the big guns’ short programs as well as the pairs/dancing medalists’ long programs, and relegate the rest to the CNBC zone…

But every four years, I guess I’m down to halfassedly follow the skating for a couple weeks…

Thoughts on the NBC Coverage: They really brought their A-Squad, but the programming was well… slow.

Love Costas (we can cryogenically freeze him for the next 2 years), love Michaels, love Collinsworth… Mary Carillo grew on me, but how much of the Olympics coverage is totally filler? Lame human interest pieces on Canadian culture? In studio interviews with whichever random American got a Bronze yesterday? Mary Carillo undercover in Mounty Training? Lenghty segments introducing athletes who NBC knows is going to win since it is on tape delay? Really dragged out podium ceremonies to the point that national anthems make your stomach churn after 2 weeks? I just want to see some sports… and not tape-delayed sports that I already know the results of. That’s just not NBC’s angle.

The Opening/Closing Ceremonies: Canadians are a goofy bunch.

While both the opening and closing ceremonies were a little more “relaxed” and “cozy” than the gongshows that we got to see in China, they did feature a lot of “native canadian” Indians dancing like they were in the Village People or Michael Jackson “Black or White” music video, vast quantities of Canadians dressed in whites using snowboards as props, and a constant reminder of why we make fun of Canada: the musical lineups featuring Nickelback, Bryan Adams, Nelly Furtado, Alanis, Avril Lavigne, and Simple Plan. Quick poll: Name a single artist on that list whom you can admit to being “really into” without being snickered at? Avril Lavigne may be your best bet… (even though we ironically listen to all of the above on the radio constantly). I mean… this Nickelback…

(Actually a solid music video…)

Breakout American Stars: Ryan Miller and Patrick Kane…

The Foremost Couple in Canada before RR upgraded to American Scarlett Johansson. Guess it's Avril Lavigne and the Sum-41 Guy now.

You could go with Vonn, but as much as we appreciate her good looks, crying, and gold medal performance despite her bum shin, she didn’t really blow us out of the water with a “Phelps-job”. In fact, nobody did.

Apolo Ohno got medals, but they weren’t the right color… and the cat has been out of the bag on that guy for years. I like Apolo, toolish as he may be, and I really appreciated his positive vibe and “Olympic Spirit”, but he didn’t “kill it” this time around.

Bode Miller was a pretty good story, but he only got one gold… and he started off so far in the red with the fans that even that performance won’t really make him a star in America.

Who am I most excited about in 2014? Without a doubt, Ryan Miller and Patrick Kane. American hockey seemed to have been in a minor lull this decade as Russians, Swedes, and Canadians even more than usual came to be the NHL’s biggest stars (another major reason for the lack of excitement about the game), but the performances by these two went a long way to dispel that notion. These guys aren’t just good; they are as good as anybody in the world – so much that we should be really excited about their development as players.

America had sort of lacked an alpha dog in the post Brett Hull / Mike Modano era, and now we don’t. Kane is the guy. Forget Crosby and Ovechkin – they’re really really sick, but the NHL needs to start marketing Kane as the guy if they want to get the ship on track. He plays in a perfect market to do so with the Blackhawks, and they are a team that really could win the Stanley Cup this year. If Kane can continue to become a superstar, it would do a whole lot of good for the sport.

Miller, simply put, has probably announced himself as the best goalie in the world in the post Hasek/Roy/Brodeur era… or at the very least put himself in the center of the conversation. He was amazing for the entire tournament. He didn’t let in bad goals; he made amazing saves; he couldn’t have done more. In 2014, he will give us a chance to win gold… just like he did this time around.

Best American Performances: The 4 Man Bobsled Team and The Bros of Nordic Combined…

As cool as it was to see Shaun White win half-pipe and have our squad pick up medals in skiing and skating and all of the things that we are normally half-decent at, wasn’t it way more exciting to see USA beat the German juggernaut squad in bobsled to get our first gold since the Truman Era? or see Bill Demong and Johnny Spilane pick up a gold, two silvers, and a team silver in an event that we NEVER are remotely competitive in? Those were the performances that made me the most proud – America dominating by… actually dominating.

How to Make it Better: Well, lots of ways…

1. Get rid of the BS filler pieces and show us actual sports the entire time…

2. Figure Skaters dress in country-specific athlete uniforms like everybody else… not like it’s a costume ball.

3. More Women’s Curling.

4. Put the Olympics somewhere crazy. I’d never heard of Sochi before this year- maybe it’s gnarly. Have the good people in Dubai not considered building mile high complexes to house every single winter event indoors, including the alpine skiing?

5. More new events like Ski-Cross. Actual races are way more fun to watch than the “clock races” that dominate the games. Why is short track more fun to watch than long track is? It’s pretty obvious.

6. NBC/The IOC should let people on ESPN/Youtube/elsewhere have access to the footage and not be total d-bags about it. I recognize it is a money thing, but come on…

7. Help develop teams around the world to make this thing global. India had like 3 athletes in the entire games despite having over a billion people. Brazil? Barely involved… Nigeria? Indonesia? Don’t even think about it… Look at the medal count here:

Notice What's Missing?

Thanks Kazakhstan for getting a silver in Women’s Biathlon to get yourself on the list, but you’re the only country that one wouldn’t call Soviet/Developed/Monied/Nordic… I want to see Jamaicans winning in the bobsled, not because Cool Runnings was that good of a movie, but because the Olympics are supposed to be bigger than what they are now…

I brought it up already, so I’ll rest my case on this music video:

The Vancouver Games hardly missed the point as badly as Michael Jackson did here in trying to get what “the world coming together” means, but we can always do better…

We should start with more Women’s Curling…

Word,

Nick