Rob's Rants

I used to take the Olympics very seriously. Especially the Winter Olympics. I’m old enough to have watched the US hockey team beat the USSR to make it to the gold medal game. Since my father was Hungarian, I was brought up to hate Russians, so the victory was probably double-great for my family.

In college and for a couple years after I was a ski instructor, and I lived and breathed skiing. I have been a sponsor of the US Ski Team for a long time, but now I officially give up. Adding snowboarding was bad enough — a bunch of loose-panted slackers doing “tricks” doesn’t exactly honor the memory of Franz Klammer or Stein Eriksen or even Bill Johnson or the Maher brothers. But fine, it’s a new sport, so let them screw around.

Now, however, they’ve added a skiing sport that is simply a fucking joke. I’m talking of course of Ski Cross, which debuted not in the 2010 Olympics as people have been reporting, but as the punchline in the 1984 C-grade ski movie “Hot Dog, The Movie.” Only there it was known as the “Chinese Downhill.” Don’t believe me? Compare the Chinese Downhill below with the New York Times video of Ski Cross.

When the International Olympic Committee starts taking suggestions for sports from a cheezy movie who’s most memorable quote is “What-a ‘za fucka’ is a Chinese Downhill,” they’ve clearly jumped the shark. So they can kiss my ass. And “not on zis side, not on zis side, but right in zee middle.”

I’m sure we’re only a couple of years away from a Triple Lindy in the summer Olympic diving competition.