Pre-Tiger, Olympic DOTW

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but now that we’re a good chunk into the Winter Olympics I thought I’d reiterate and clarify some of my thoughts. I’ve never really been that into the winter games, at least not as much as I am into the summer games. Maybe it’s just the emergence of Michael Phelps as the bro-tastic American hero, or that I prefer warm weather, but the winter Olympics have always been missing that “x” factor. Plus, the male figure skating makes me really, really uncomfortable. I just always felt that, aside from hockey and skiing, the winter Olympics were kind of “mmehhh.” In track and swimming it’s a race; you know who won immediately. There’s no charade of supposedly unbiased judges, and waiting for everyone to do their runs, there’s just winners and losers. I think I just need to be able to definitively say “Wow, there is no way in hell I could do that,” while watching Olympic athletes. Who knows, maybe I could’ve been a world class biathlete, but I never got the opportunity to pick it up. There’s a small chance that’s true, but I have no idea because normal people don’t combine cross-country skiing and riflery. I know how to run, swim and ice skate, but I’m not that good at any of them; so I’m positive I can’t do what these dudes and dudettes can do.

Not to mention NBC has kind of biffed it hard this year with the broadcast. Lindsey Vonn is the face of the American Olympic squad; she was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. But her event was in the middle of the day and wasn’t broadcast live. She won her gold medal with no one watching. I know the weather has been an issue for skiing, but let’s get it together Dick Ebersol. And as much as everyone wants to get behind Shaun White as the American hero, not everyone is watching his every move like we did for Phelps. I’ve watched him once and don’t really like him; probably because he’s a ginger. I still find it weird that snowboarding is in the Olympics. So, I was ready to continue my apathy towards the winter games and get on with my life.

Well the other night, the winter Olympics gave me a huge punch in the balls. I was feeling unpatriotic about not really watching too many events so I decided to flip over to NBC and check out what was going on. That’s when I stumbled upon a sport I’ve never really appreciated until Wednesday; speed skating. How I’ve missed this for so many years is completely lost on me. I’ve always known it was around, and I’ve definitely watched it before but I can’t explain why it took me this long to fall in love with it. I guess I just always found Apolo Ohno to be borderline gay and annoying. I can’t take anyone with a soul patch serious, and that goes double if they’re named after a Greek God, especially when he spells it wrong. You’re name is Apolo dude, there’s no reason to make it even more unique and leave off an “L”. Only one guy has ever been able to pull off the name Apollo, and he was a fictional character created by Sylvester Stallone. I’m starting to hate him more and more as I type this, so if that guy’s the face of a sport I’m going to tune out.

But the coolest guy in the Olympics this winter has to be Shani Davis, the only black dude possibly in the entire sport. I mean, I grew up in an upper-middle class New York suburb and I wouldn’t have the slightest idea where to begin if I wanted to get into speed skating. I don’t know anyone that does it, don’t know where you can do it, really have no idea where the hell I would start. So the fact that a black dude from Chicago defended his gold medal Wednesday night in the men’s 1000 M is mind boggling to me. I’m sure there is some logical reason that I could easily look up, but I prefer to think it's some story of him shunning gang-life and escaping the streets through speed skating. Although I think he’s from the suburbs, but whatever; they don’t make movies about that. Whatever the reason, I found myself standing up, screaming at the TV and felt a little of the nationalistic pride I usually reserve for the summer games when he won. The long track events are fucking awesome; dudes just crushing some serious speed on a huge ice track, and the last lap is when all the drama happens. Its mono e mono, just straight up who can go faster.

So naturally, following my Shani Davis epiphany I tuned into the short track with that boofer Apolo Ohno. Right back to my “mmeeehhh” attitude about the whole thing. Not only did Ohno not win gold (he won silver), I spent the entire event hoping for dudes to wipe out and maybe cut each other with their skates. It was more like NASCAR than the Olympics. So, the fact that the ambiguous sexuality of Apolo Ohno didn’t ruin speed skating for me is a tribute to my man Shani Davis.

So while I am desperately anticipating the Tiger Woods statement coming in any second, I wanted to slip in my nod to Shani Davis as Dude of the Week before anything happens with Mr. Woods. Although, let’s be real, what exactly is going to happen when he speaks? He’ll have a prepared statement about how he let his family down, won’t take questions and that will be the end of it. Snoozer, but we’ll have more analysis on that a little later. In the meantime, let’s watch dudes fly around an ice track at retarded speeds. It sounds like the script for a Mad Max movie. So here’s to you Shani, DOTW. Keep up the good work, I’ll be glued to the TV in a homemade “Shani’s #1 Fan t-shirt” Saturday night for the 1500 meter final. Now if I only knew how to make shirts…