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Short track speed skating is easily the greatest of all the sports the winter Olympics have to offer.

However, the first thing that we have to address are the catsuits worn by the athletes. It’s the elephant in the room, the resonant fact that simply cannot be ignored. Whenever we’re talking about speed skating—the strategy, the danger, the speed, the sheer ridiculousness of it– we’re also talking about how goddamn sexy the competitors are in those outfits. And yes, it is true, I’m not at all against sexually objectifying beautiful athletes I’ll never encounter. In fact, it’s pretty much the main reason I watch the Olympics these days. The human form– full of potential and ambition– performing stunning feats in it’s most perfect earthly manifestation? Yes, I’ll take two helpings please!

Make no mistake, this is the subtext to every speed skating viewing experience you have.

Beyond that there is the fact that the speed skaters, with their helmets and visors, armed with a razor sharp foot knife that’s about as long as a forearm, look like superheroes come to skate for truth and justice.

These people are weaponized, and the fact that it’s short track speed skating ( to say nothing of the positively insane short track speed skating relay) means that they’re CONSTANTLY wiping out.

It’s so unpredictable that luck is almost as important as skill. It’s a last-person-standing kind of sport, one that’s so cruelly constructed you’d think it was invented by a sadistic gym teacher.

No matter, the fact that a wipeout is almost a certainty, and that a wipeout is usually a tangle of kicking razor blades, a crash could have very dire consequence. And so when you see one of the athletes cross the finish line, know that they have just skated through death, and when they take off their helmet and throw back their head, elated and forever, know, too, that they are one of us, and that for a moment at least, we are all beautiful and immortal.

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Well Michael Murray you may enjoy watching sexy athletes court death (because?!) but give me a performance I can watch later via Robyn Doolittle’s tweeted emojis any day.

Or night.

Because we don’t have cable and I don’t want to watch sexy athletes court death, but I don’t want to watch English villagers disappearing one by one on TVO either.

We get it, TVO. English villages are full of old people and old people are murderers so do not move to an English village unless you’re old and want to murder people. The end.

But speed skating? Seriously? Speed skating?? What’s that – one emoji? Done. Well I’m sorry, Michael Murray, but that’s not a story. So not sorry. Figure skating, though, figure skating is a sportstory (yes, that is so a word!) that a reporter can emoji (yes, that’s a verb – I emoji therefore I amji) for people who can’t watch the Olympics BECAUSE OF THE COURTING DEATH THING, MICHAEL MURRAY!

And it’s just like being there on your couch watching Patrick Chan do his short or long or whatever – but faster. My emotions totally ran the gamut, but like in one second.

Don’t believe me? Here it is.

Ms. Doolittle called it, “Watching Patrick Chan: An Emoji Journey” – so right away a heads up that it might be a bumpy ride. Fortunately, I had a cup of mint tea right here beside my computer, just like I do now. Then there was a Canadian flag, which, you know, I’m actually a down-with-borders type but okay. Then a pair of ice skates (well duh, Robyn). But then, oh my Gord – a laughing emoji! Yay! Wait… what? A grimacing emoji!? Nooooooo! Not again! Too soon! Too soon! Oh sweet Jes – a crying emoji? Already? What the – SWEATING?! Oh now come the eff on – screaming? Really? We’re screaming now? In agony? Or maybe… Ah, never mind. Looks like we’re weeping buckets.

Okay. Well. Glad that’s over. <schhhlurp> Ah, mint tea. So refreshing. And just one more week…

1. Chances that an American athlete would break down a door in the Olympic Village 7-1.

I considered this bet to be easy money. We all know that athletes are competitive, and none more so than entitled, overfunded American ones who really like to get their party on. Combining this personality type with the decrepit state of Russian infrastructure and the rage associated with steroids and steroid-masking technologies, it was almost a guarantee that a door would be smashed in. I bet $700 on this, and when Johnny Quinn, an American bobsledder and ex NFL player, broke naked through his poorly functioning bathroom door in the athlete’s village, I was a winner.

Result= +$4900

2. Who would win the gold medal at men’s skeleton in Sochi?

I was on the Lisgar Collegiate Institute boys’ skeleton team in high school, and I can tell you participation in that sport is an insane death wish—you fly face-first down an ice cliff on a bladed Krazy Karpet using your toes to steer. (It should go without saying that high school was a VERY difficult time for me, a time made even more painful by the ceaseless bombardment of snowballs I endured whenever I took sliding to the track.) Gambling on this sport is like playing the lottery, as none of the martyr/athletes really has any influence on the outcome. That being said, it would have been wise to pick a Russian, as it’s common for officials to heat the track to make it slow and sluggish after the Russians have competed. However, the odds on handsome Spaniard Amber Mirambell (300-1!!) proved too enticing and I bet $500 on him for gold.

Result= – $500

3. Over/under for deaths in short-track speed skating (including relay): 7

I felt very compromised betting on this as I abhor the idea of rooting for anybody’s misfortune, but it seems clear that there would be way more than seven deaths in this sport. Honestly, I think there could be seven deaths in just one race. It’s Roller Derby with knives, practically a Slasher film. I bet $1300 on the over.

Result= – $1300

4. Olympic Sex Tape

Given that the matchmaking app Tinder was the breakout star of the Sochi games, it was speculated that it would be the first Olympics that featured a leaked sex tape.

Odds that a sex tape will surface: 3-1

Odds that the Russian men’s ice hockey team will be involved in the sex tape: 1-1

Odds that the Jamaican bobsled team will be in the sex tape: 9-1

Odds that the sex tape will be of a homosexual nature: 50-1

Odds that the sex tape will include any of the mascots from the Opening Ceremonies: 50-1

Odds that an ice-dance duo will be in the sex tape: 200-1

I bet $3000 that there will be a sex tape and placed $250 on each of the sub-options. Fingers crossed.

Result= – $4500

6. Odds that there will be a biathlon shooting accident involving a homosexual: 25-1

I could see that getting certified proof that the accident victim was an actual homosexual was going to be a bureaucratic nightmare, so I just avoided this bet altogether.

Result= Even

7. Odds that America, in the corporate form of Sports Illustrated, would attempt to upstage the Olympics by featuring Kate Upton in a bikini, floating about in a zero-gravity plane, as their feature story instead of, say, sports: 7-1

You simply cannot bet against America being America, and so I wagered $200 on the model in a zero gravity plane.

Result= + $1400.00

Total= Even