I don't know how many of you have been watching the Winter Olympics, but my wife and I have watched the coverage whenever we get a chance. Personally, I prefer the events that have a solid way of evaluating performance (like a stopwatch), rather than the ones that are subjective and require judges.
Anyway, there's been a couple of things that struck me as odd. First, during the opening ceremonies, why were they playing 80's American pop music? Not that I mind since I happen to like that kind of music, but these games are hosted in Italy, right? (BTW, the F1 racer doing donuts was cool!)
Second, and this is really bugging me, we noticed last night that the Russian team jacket has "RUSSIA" written in big letters across the back. Being native English speakers, it didn't hit us for a long time that it wasn't written in Russian! That would be "Росси́я". I know that English and French are the offical languages of the Olympics, but that doesn't necessarily extend to the team's garments. Besides, I'm almost certain I remember seeing "CCCP" on the Soviets' uniforms pre-1991. Unfortunately, we noticed this too late to see what the other teams were wearing, so I don't know how their countries are written. Anyone have any info on this?
B.J.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
It makes sense for the labelling to be done in an alphabet the most people are likely to be able to read. CCCP was at least a known acronym even if it should have been USSR. And besides, back then, just trying to get the Sovs to attend at all was hard enough without antagonising them over using USSR instead of CCCP.
Let us all just instead console ourselves with the thought of all the French IOC members who're besides themselves with Gallic rage that the team jackets don't say La Russe. 8)
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
I think the uniforms have to be approved by the IOC so I would assume that it has something to do with the English/French are the Olympic languages thing.
Probably being an Australian is the reason - but I don't find anything particularly exciting about the Winter Olympics. I mean - sure they are exciting - but they aren't that interesting for me. I'm not a big sports watcher but I usually do become the armchair expert when the Summer Games are on.
Australia has won another gold medal these games - which is pretty good considering our population and limited alpine regions.
I still like how we won our first Winter Olympic gold medal in 2002 when Steve Bradbury at his last Olympics won the speed skating by not falling over when everyone else did! Classic! Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Not really - it was one guy who took out the other two at the final lap, as I recall; we had a lot of angry Canadians at the bar that night.
Mark
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Ya fell over eh!
heheheheh
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Incidentally, this evening the Russian Fed skater Slutskaya was wearing a jacket labelled in Cyrillic while waiting for her final scores.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)