Who's excited for the Winter Olympics? I said, who's excited for the Winter Olympics? Oh really? Nobody's excited for the Winter Olympics? I guess that's understandable. All the events are on at three in the morning, there's no more Evil Communist Empire (TM) to root against, and the medals look like the 25-cent blank CDs I buy at Wal-Mart. So, we have to look deeper at the Olympics for entertainment.
On that note, sports fans, I bring you: Catastrophic Wipeout Potential. CWP is the chance that a particular sport will involve an "Oh-my-God-I-can't-watch-wait-where's-the-instant-replay?" moment. Before you send angry letters to my harrowed sports editor, think about this: It's just like gawking at a car accident or watching NASCAR, except with the veneer of sophisticated multi-nationalism that all Northeastern liberals love. So I give you the best of the Winter Olympic Games, ranked according to CWP:
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Ice Hockey: You might be surprised to see hockey this low on the list. Well, Olympic hockey is no longer about guys with more syllables in their names than teeth slugging it out. In Torino, it's about Europeans skating circles around big dumb North Americans. And the women aren't even allowed to check. So don't expect much hitting unless the Americans and Canadians somehow slug themselves into the finals.
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Figure Skating: Why am I putting this after hockey? Contrary to what you might believe, the most painful thing these athletes experience is not when those fey male skaters go in to have their chest hair waxed. On Monday, one Chinese pairs skating team attempted a never-before-seen throw.
I don't know what it was supposed to be, but here's what it looked like: The male skater picked up the girl, who was about 4'11" and weighed 70 pounds, and chucked her up in the air. He fell down and slammed face-first into the boards, while she came down on her head. Guess there's a reason why nobody has ever tried that one before.
In a pretty gutsy performance, the pair came back out and finished their routine, winning silver. Let's see the guys who used to pick on them in the high school locker room do that.
- Downhill: As if this sport wasn't scary enough. You're strapped to two pieces of plastic, careening down an icy cliff at 80 miles an hour. Now you've also got to worry about getting run over by a drunken, out-of-control Bode Miller.
In Monday's downhill training runs, four women crashed, including America's Lindsey Kildow, who went airborne for at least 15 feet after catching an edge. Remarkably, she left the hospital Wednesday and took eighth place in the finals.
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Bobsledding: I haven't seen any of these events and, from what I've read, equipment is so good now that crashing is relatively infrequent. But I did watch "Cool Runnings" on HBO last night and those crazy Jamaican stereotypes had some pretty gnarly crashes. So this gets an honorary ranking based on historical and media CWP. Remember: "'Nuff people say, you know 'dey can't believe, Jamaica we have a bobsled team!"
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Luge: Who came up with this? Strap a pair of ice skates on your back and slide down a mile-long ice chute at one hundred miles an hour. Though honestly, I'd rather do Olympic luge than the Theta Delta Chi fraternity luge. At least the Italians haven't trained dogs to bite your crotch at the bottom of the course at Torino.
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Skeleton: For those people who think that luge is for sissies, we've got skeleton. Just flip over on your stomach and go down the luge course face-first! With the limited ability to change your course, the speed at which everything must be going by and the potential for catastrophe, it sounds a lot like drunk driving to me. Maybe Bode Miller should give it a try!
Is there any sport with more Catastrophic Wipeout Potential than skeleton, you might ask? It might seem impossible, but the answer is yes. So now, I give you the most dangerous of all winter sports: quail hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney.
