An Olympics to forget (apart from Zoi)
A newsletter featuring Mark Todd, Dr Dre, Zoe Hobbs and Wagatha Christie!
The International Olympic Committee has got what it deserved.
I have no idea how much money the IOC trousered from this Olympiad but it can’t be worth it.
There was the embarrassment of hosting it against the backdrop of flagrant human rights abuses; of staged Peng Shuai interviews with Chinese officials present (even the interviewer said it was likely being used as propaganda); of Russia’s continued presence - albeit without their flag - despite incontrovertible proof of state-sponsored doping programmes.
That last one has really come back to bite the IOC with the dreadful case of figure skating starlet Kamila Valieva, 15, who tested positive to a performance-enhancing drug before the Games but will be allowed to continue competing, though not necessarily to receive medals.
The whole affair is a farce, though the decision to allow her to remain in Beijing is probably the right one. It’s hard to see how a 15 year old is anything but a tool of adult malfeasance and to victimise her twice seems worse than the crime.
It’s a complicated, disturbing story and it’s summed up nicely in Q&A format by the New York Times here (metered $).
Everyone will have different opinions in line with how engaged and knowledgeable they are about winter sports, but for me the Olympiad has fallen flat.
Some, like the Wall Street Journal ($), are calling them the saddest Games. A lot of athletes have hated it but have had to be careful about how they express that.
Some of it is unavoidable due to it being hosted during a pandemic. When you take the frisson created by crowds out of the arena sports it will obviously detract from the spectacle.
But you have to ask whether Beijing, all peripheral issues aside, was ever the right venue for a winter Olympiad. The alpine skiing courses, for example, have suffered for not being truly alpine venues. Aside from the fact the snow is man made, it just doesn’t look right.
I’ve pretty much switched off but there’s one athlete who remains appointment viewing.
These games could really use Zoi Sadowski-Synnott adding big air gold to her slopestyle triumph.
The idea of somebody from this part of the world becoming a Winter Olympic superstar is exactly the sort of thing the myth-making machinery of the IOC could use in a time like this.
It would be a great, untarnished, story.
The women’s big air final is set to begin at 2.30pm today.
After a week in which West Ham defender Kurt Zouma embarrassed himself and his club by punting his kitten across the kitchen floor, Mark Todd popped up and said “hold my beer…”
Todd took a branch and kept whipping a horse that baulked at water until it made the leap. It was gross but even after the video went viral there were people defending him. I saw several dumb comments on dumb platforms along the lines of: “I think a two-time equestrian gold medallist has a better idea how to handle a horse than you,” referring to whomever posted the video in their social media feeds.
He said it was an out-of-character incident but all I’d say in response is that he’s 65, been around horses all his life and, well, he looked like he knew what he was doing.
There has been talk that he should lose his knighthood. Hmmm, surely if we want to keep handing titles to people for the sole reason that they play or coach a sport well, we should learn to live with it when their behaviour falls short of Arthurian standards?
The Super Bowl was a fair to middling American football match with a couple of wow moments and an end that threatened high drama but didn’t quite deliver. The best team, the Los Angeles Rams, won 23-20 over the plucky underdog Cincinnati Bengals.
The halftime show was something else though, easily eclipsing the on-field action.
Said Rolling Stone magazine: “Well, that was awesome. The Super Bowl halftime show finally opened up to hip-hop - this was the first time rappers got to bumrush center stage, instead of serving as a sideshow. And it was a triumph.”
The New York Times went positively gaga over the show.
The stories told on the SoFi Stadium field Sunday night were multilayered, a dynamic performance sprawling atop a moat of potential political land mines. In the main, there was exuberant entertainment, a medley of hits so central to American pop that it practically warded off dissent…
The performances were almost uniformly excellent. [Kendrick] Lamar was stunning — ecstatically liquid in flow, moving his body with jagged vigor. Snoop Dogg was confident beyond measure, a veteran of high-pressure comfort. Eminem, insular as ever, still emanated robust tension. Blige was commanding, helping to bring the middle segment of the show into slow focus with a joyous “Family Affair” and “No More Drama,” rich with purple pain. And Dr Dre beamed throughout, a maestro surveying the spoils of the decades he spent reorchestrating the shape and texture of pop.
But the true battles of this halftime show were between enthusiasm and cynicism, censorship and protest, the amplification of Black performers on this stage and the stifling of Black voices in various stages of protest against the NFL.
The Guardian gave it five stars and said: “You can’t do much in 12 minutes, in the gap between a football game, but everything you can do, Dre did.”
Yeah, as I said, the game was okay.
Zoe Hobbs continues to blow away the opposition and set national records.
It seems more strange by the day that she wasn’t selected for the Tokyo Olympics, due to what many, including several high up in the track and field community, consider Athletics New Zealand’s punitive criteria.
As she said herself at the time (edited for clarity): “Not only does a non-selection inhibit the opportunity for experience and exposure to international competition, it also [diminishes] the opportunities that lie after the games ie. gaining support to sustain the already financially stressed environment many of us are in.
“I should have felt the highest of highs, [but] I’ve instead found myself feeling quite the opposite. I’m upset that after having run PBs and records I still didn’t think THAT was good enough, constantly comparing to this [elusive] standard required for selection.”
Hobbs is making her point very well.
Indulge me here for a bit.
One of the most extraordinary stories in British off-field sports history is taking place at the moment.
Known as the Wagatha Christie case, it sets two of the most high-profile footballer’s wives - Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy - against each other in a social media death match.
To briefly set the scene. Rooney, the childhood-sweetheart-turned-long-suffering wife of Wayne Rooney, believed somebody was leaking stories about her personal life to The Sun. She suspected it was Vardy, wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, so set up a sting, posting false stories on her Instagram feed and making them visible only to Vardy.
She allegedly fell for the trap and Rooney subsequently outed her as the rat.
Vardy said “NOT TRUE” and sued for libel.
It just gets more squalidly entertaining with every new revelation, and it’s all captured by the Daily Mail here.
The WhatsApp messages between Vardy and her agent Caroline Watt are brutal, but in a blow to Rooney, a judge today ruled she could not add the agent to the lawsuit.
THIS WEEK
Just a quick reminder that along with the usual newsletters, I’ll be posting every day during the Black Caps test series for paying subscribers.