This Means War
Norway wins! Norway wins!
And when they took home the gold in this week’s Olympic 500-meter speed-skating
competition, winner Havard Lorentzen rubbed more than a little salt in the wounded
pride of Team Holland. “We don’t like it
when the Dutch win that much,” Lorentzen proclaimed. “It is good to beat them.”
And the U.S. too, from
the looks of it. Norway, with its
population of 5.3 million hearty souls, is having its way in Pyeongchang at the
Winter Olympics. As of this morning,
Norway has eleven gold medals to five for the United States. Think of it—a little over five million people
generate eleven gold medals; a tad under 327 million people manages five gold
medals. Go figure.
I feel bad, kind of,
for American athletes; being the parent of a dedicated jock, I know what
training entails and have a pretty good idea what disappointment in the face of
defeat looks like. That said, this relative
lack of medals couldn’t happen to a more deserving host network. NBC hasn’t been content to devote prime time to
Americans in also-ran mode; the network uses its national and local news to promote
that night’s contests. Gosh, all those
human-interest stories on people who don’t medal. How considerate.
This is what happens
when the “peacock” network tries to lay a golden egg. Never mix metaphors, guys, not in business or
Olympic sports.
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