The Winter Olympics

This is an exchange between myself and the excellent Kathryn McLeod about what the best Olympic Winter sport is:

************************************************

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.

—————————————————

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…