Marion Jones had already been stripped of her five medals at the 2000 games for doping. Today the IOC gave out two of her golds to the second-place finishers, but not in the 100 meters. It becomes the first event ever in which no gold medal was awarded.

The silver medalist, Katerina Thanou of Greece, wasn't awarded the gold because she evaded drug tests at the Athens games four years later.

The IOC feels we have a strong moral and a good legal case for that," spokesman Mark Adams said. "We are not legally bound to give medals. This is a case of taking no action. We have decided not to give her (Thanou) an honor that we don't think she deserves."

Let's get this straight. Thanou was denied a gold in Sydney even though she never tested positive for anything, even though it happened at a completely different Olympic games, and even though she was already punished in Athens?

Sounds like solid reasoning to me.

IOC Withholds Jones' 100-Meter Gold From Thanou [AP]

If you're looking for uplift and a good old-fashioned cry, the Olympics are right up there with Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. These are real people with real hopes and dreams and goals and successes and heartbreaks and chances for redemption and oh my God that adorable orphan from Estonia just nailed that triple axel and we are the world…

But please, nobody follows professional sports to be happy. (Have you met a Jets fan?) In a given year there are such miniscule odds of any one particular band of brothers ending up on stage in two-toned hats and eye-rapist-designed XXXL t-shirts designed that fans have embraced, out of an almost Darwinian sense of necessity, the seedier side of sports.

Which brings us to the dirty little secret of the 2010 Winter Olympics: they are filled with dirty little secrets! Just as you can mask your musk for less with the help of those Designer Imposters ® scents ("If you like Sean John's Unforgiveable, you'll love our Bring It!"), I have no doubt you can learn to love the Games. Sit back, relax, and just let it happen.

Alcohol and Cars Combined!
If you liked… Carlos Dunlap, who was arrested for passing out in his car at a traffic light in the wee hours and ultimately got suspended for (two whole halves of) a game of minor significance.
Then you'll LOVE… Russian figure skater Andrei Lutai, who boozily lifted a Chevy Impala from a parking garage in Lake Placid after a pre-Olympic trial, blew a .18 when he was pulled over five minutes later, and earned himself a one-year ban from competition, which includes the Games of minor significance. (No word on whether he was still wearing pink gloves.) At any rate, the concept of a "one-year ban" is funny because, like, Vladamir Putin is just going to have him killed anyway.

Fun with Narcotics!
If you liked… Name your poison and your boyz, men. A-Roid? Manny just being Womanny? Darius Miles getting highles? (Sorry, that was bad.)
Then you'll LOVE… Germany's Claudia Pechstein, who recently lost an appeal against a 2-year ban for doping despite never having actually failed a drug test. Authorities suspect that she had a blood transfusion, which is really going above and beyond! But a word of warning to Bro-de Miller: the loophole that allowed snowboarder Ross Rebagliati to earn back his medal despite being caught rocking the ganj has, sadly, been closed. Harsh, dude.

Shitty Expansion City Logos!
If you liked...



Then you'll LOVE...



Sexual Harassment!

If you liked... ESPN horndoggery
Then you'll LOVE... Trying to guess what kind of creepy things Norway speedskating coach Peter Mueller said to skater Maren Haugli at a team breakfast a month ago. Norway's governing board called the incident "so serious that [they] had no other choice than to cancel our contract with Peter Mueller ... effective immediately". For his part, Mueller admits he made an "untoward remark about her ... as a joke." But like, at a breakfast? What, were they serving lox?

Totalitarian Border Officials!
If you liked... The story of a ranting raving Charles Oakley getting hassled at the Canadian border on his way to meet his new team the Toronto Raptors. ("They search the BMW. Tens of thousands of dollars of suits only Oak and the Ohio Players could wear are being rifled through, and who knows what else.")
Then you'll LOVE... The story of a ranting raving lefty journo getting hassled at the Canadian border on her way to some speaking engagements. ("After much questioning, Goodman said the officials finally asked if she would be speaking about the 2010 Olympics.")

Gruesome Skate-Blade Injuries!
If you liked... Seeing Clint Malarchuk's jugular pump an enormous pool of blood onto the ice; seeing Richard Zednik's carotid pump an enormous pool of blood onto the ice.
Then you'll LOVE... Seeing US speedskating wunderkind J.R. Celski's femoral pump an enormous pool of blood onto the ice at the recent Olympic trials. Okay fine, the wound missed his femoral by an inch, but blood still fucking pumped: "My first reaction was 'What the hell is that?'" said J.R. "It's purple, red, orange, yellow and I can see the bone."

Hot Hunky Homoeroticism!
If you liked...

Then you'll LOVE...

Miss u, Choire Sicha. Anyway, there's plenty of time for things to devolve even further. After all, Nancy Kerrigan wasn't attacked until January 1994. Get excited, sports fans!

This is Katie Baker, btw.

Amy Goodman, for those of you who aren't godless liberals, is known for hosting Democracy Now! on NPR. Heading to Canada for her book tour, she may not have realized that BC is quarantined from the outside world until February.

(The agent) was incredulous. He kept asking me: ‘What about the Olympics?,'" she said in telephone interview Thursday on her way to a speaking engagement at the University of Victoria. "I was totally shocked. They were demanding to know what I was going to be talking about, in detail."

Goodman said the vehicle she was travelling in with two other assistants was stopped at the Washington-B.C. border around 6 p.m. Wednesday once agents realized she was a journalists.

She said she was asked at least six times if she was sure she wasn't coming to Canada to speak about the Olympics.

China wishes they had realized you could do this, and somewhere, Dan Snyder just wondered if it's possible to cordon off Landover.

U.S. Journalist Says She Was Detained At Border Over Olympic Concerns [Ottawa Citizen]

As has become the tradition, Canada is holding a nation-spanning Olympic torch relay so that the entire host country can get in on that good old Olympic spirit. On a related note, did you know that Canada is really fucking big? And like ... really far north? I guess that even the person who lives on Resolute Bay should get to see the flame too, but man is that a hike. Sorry, but if your place can only be reached by sled dog, you might occasionally miss out on things.

You know, there's still plenty of room in Manitoba. Come on down. They won't bite.

[AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jonathan Hayward]

* * * * *

It's Thursday. I don't need instructions to know how to rock.

Since I'm sure you were watching live coverage of the first week of the torch relay through Greece, you may have noticed one runner completed her leg a little faster than everybody else. That's because hurdler Fani Halkia might have had a bit of metribolone in her system.

Halkia was banned for two years after testing positive at the Beijing Games, but since she also won a gold in Athens, the Greek Olympic Committee are happy to let that slide. Accordingly, they let her carry the torch for a segment of the relay. IOC officials: not happy.

The Greeks backed down pretty quickly, claiming the whole thing was an oversight. But what do they care? She won them a gold, and what is the IOC going to do: take the flame away from Greece?

Disgraced Athlete Gives Relay Its First Hurdle [CTV]

Since the popular election of Marxist dictator President Luis Inacio Lula de Silva, the magazine grudgingly reports, the once-civil society of Rio has degenerated into something akin to a large South American Superdome, with more violence. While their more enterprising Latin American neighbors nurture healthy export sectors, Brazilians — not unlike so unlike us citizens of the People's Republic of Obameristan — have become net consumers, with "yesterday's" Marxist gangs revealing themselves to be (surprise, surprise!)

…purely criminal organizations: they exist in order to sell narcotics to fellow Brazilians. Unlike the export-based drug cartels in Columbia or Mexico, Rio's bandidos are wholesale importers — of cocaine from Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, and of marijuana from Paraguay.

You mean to tell me socialism is a gateway drug to destitution, depravity and foul smells?

"The percentage of crimes solved here in Rio is ridiculous — ninety percent of homicides go unresolved." Part of the blame went to Brazil's "politically correct culture," [City Councilor Alfredo Sirkis] said. "It's all Scandinavian talk in an Iraqi reality. Rio is completely schizophrenic. Everybody's very p.c. — all this violence is seen as coming from some injustice. At the same time, they'd like the favelas to be atomized, a la Buck Rogers, with a Disintegrator."

(Say it ain't so Fredo!)

So what does one complacent socialist state have over another? A charismatic gang leader named Fernandinho, whose Pure Third Command battles the socialist Red Command in the name of you-know-Who:

Pastor Sidney explained that he had got to know Fernandinho in 2007, when some community leaders came to see him. There had been a series of shootings involving Fernandinho and his rivals — people associated with [rival Marxist gang] Marcelo PQD. "It was like a war zone," Pastor Sidney said. "It was very dangerous, and the community was afraid." He had already been preaching in some of Ilha's toughest neighborhoods, and this had earned him some respect. "I was working among the traficantes. I was going out and praying in the streets. I approach them all the same way, as if they were possessed by demons, and found that they accepted it, because there's something supernatural about it. But I had avoided Fernandinho. I'd heard things about him that I didn't like." Eventually, he said, "Fernandinho came to me himself. He watched me preaching. He saw people falling on the ground. And he asked me for a prayer."

And lo and behold, Fernandinho began curtailing his killing squad, these days sparing the lives of Brazilians who inadvertently wear red nail polish, and dodging the apparatchiks who would have him quashed

Fernadinho got away; the police found a four-and-a-half foot cake decorated with the Twenty-third Psalm, spelled out in icing. They also found an effigy of Marcelo PQD, wearing red panties, hanging from a lamppost.

Maureen Tkacik is a contributor to Beliefnet, a senior editor at Insight magazine and author of the forthcoming memoir The God From Ipanema: Encounters With Christ at Carnevale (Regnery, 2010).

I'm sure some, in their organic community gardening, self-esteem overflowing hearts, actually do expect Michael Phelps to once again take a break from getting stoned to ply the old Rosetta Stone in the service of conversational Portuguesa. (Oh, to hear what Magellan might think about that!)

But the jaundiced-eyed realists among us know the real victor in this struggle was declared long before Obama's $50 million effort was so devastatingly "O-botched-a": the 2008 Olympics. Barring the return of Christ the Savior Himself never again in our lifetimes do I expect to watch an Olympics as paradigm-bustingly spectacular as last year's meticulously well-planned games in Peking.

The 2008 Games marked the official, definitive emergence of China as the world's superpower. In a year the American economy back home was gasping its final breaths before succumbing to the lethal tug of a sordid legacy of affirmative action mortgages promulgated by Barney Frank and Freddie Mac, China would be the only major country whose GDP actually grew.

In a year a majority of American voters finally capitulated to the siren song of socialism, China reached out and took a firm and decisive grasp on the Baton of Market Capitalist Freedom. The rest of this great race, readers, is China's to run.

It all goes back to numbers. Numbers form the architecture of the capital markets and by extension, freedom. But Americans are number wimps, spoiled by decades of pork barrel grade inflation, "recentered" standardized test scores and the wrongheaded notion that free markets can also be a place of "minimum" wages, mortgage "renegotiations" and 800 SAT points just for signing your name.

The Chinese people, by contrast, hold an innate reverence for numbers. When the International Olympics Committee blessed China with their unprecedented economic development opportunity in 2008, the whole nation rallied around the number eight, declaring it sacred and putting the wheels in motion for per capita GDP to surpass $8,000 that very year!

And while Americans were whining and moaning about unfair treatment from the judges sabotaging their precious athletes, they utterly missed the real lesson: the nation that aces its math tests is the nation that captures the global economy is the nation that decides who receives the highest score in freestyle gymnastics. Were we too preoccupied with "sports" to comprehend this basic truth?

Because we were certainly seemed too busy with another thing: words. Contrary to what the Plagiarist In Chief might have you believe, they really are "just words" and further, if they're coming from the mouths of liberals "words" is probably just a nicer word for "whining."

The Chinese understand this. I've been reading a new and fascinating book called The Snakehead on how the enterprising people of Fuchow, China outsmarted international immigration and transportation authorities to effectively colonize downtown New York City. These were the lower classes of China, hardy folks with third and fourth grade educations — and yet they formed mind-bogglingly elaborate supply chain operations, opened Chinese restaurants in every last end of the earth (one of their first targets: our great helmsman's native Mombasa) and bribed authorities in at least three dozen different countries. All without ever learning any other languages but their own; the numbers, as the saying goes, did all the talking.

As it happens I have met some of these hardworking Chinese in my current neighborhood in downtown New York City. They're impossible to miss: they own most of the restaurants, the laundromats and the real estate brokerages. And I could not escape the thought that some elementary language skills might come in handy from a revenue perspective in the case that an English speaker, say, loses her laundry receipt and the bag cannot be located, or finds herself on a Chinatown bus headed to Cleveland when she thought she was specifying "Washington."

But that is such a short-term view. In due time, we'll all be fluent in the native tongue of the laundromat and the Chinatown bus — no doubt because we'll be working for them. That's just freedom at work, readers, and the best we can hope is to better prepare the next generation for the calculus Olympics.

Maureen Tkacik is a senior fellow at the Institute for Pragmatic Prosperity the author of (Home)School of Bach: The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective Home Headmistresses. A graduate of the Corpus Christi Christian College for Women in St. Louis, she lives in New York City and votes in her native Columbus.

Our Kenyan Prince found that the only thing rotten in today's state of Denmark was his entourage of neighborhood fixers. When he flew—with taxpayer funds!—to Copenhagen, the only "wonderful" thing he found was the backbone of an international community that refused to be bullied or bought off.

Did he consider it "lobbying" for the games when he shared a joke with Chavez, or a hug with Ortega, or as he bowed to King Abdullah? For a man so concerned with international opinion, he sure seemed deaf to it in Denmark. Did he think he'd wow the voters with visits from Chicago pals Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, and Valerie Jarrett? Is that the "trans-national" multicultural vision of America he wished to share?

If you listen closely, you can still hear the cries of disappointment ringing out from the White House and Millennium Park. Oh, perhaps it was racism that cost us the games! Could we blame Bush, somehow? If only the IOC had more Wise Latinas!

We can but now only imagine how the Chicago games would've played out. New events could've included 100-meter graft. A voter registration forgery relay race, perhaps? The shooting and running portion of the pentathlon wouldn't have to change too much, though we might replace "swimming" with "freestyle gangbanging" (unless you want to be the first one in that frigid "lake").

And those medal ceremonies? Not in Obama's America. There shouldn't be "winners" and "losers," after all. Those finding themselves in the unfortunate (but faultless!) position of "last place" shall be rewarded with gold of their own, from TARP. And if, perchance, the judges reward your dive with a perfect score? You'll be strongly encouraged to "share" some of those points with your neighbors.

At the last quarter, should our basketball Dream Team be down a score or two, well, Obama and Reggie Love just might fly themselves in to join the team and use some of that famed political capitol and rhetorical brilliance to persuade the Iranian team to miss an easy layup. If we're still in a point deficit at the buzzer, we can blame Republicans for misrepresenting the score. (The CBO estimates, after all, that should the game be projected to 2020, it'd end in a tie!)

We remember, of course, the heroic and miraculous Olympics of 1984, when a President named Reagan played host to most of the world (besides the Communist nations, making great games even greater) in Los Angeles (this was the California before Obama and Pelosi, of course, when the state still functioned). And we also remember the games of 1996, which Bubba couldn't protect from a devastating terrorist attack. Lord knows what might've transpired in Chicago after eight years of rolling back our national security apparatus, holding back our intelligence agencies, and reading terrorists their rights. The happily "reformed" and released Guantanamo prisoners could've built the arenas themselves, with money from the third (or fourth!) stimulus!

When Chicago hosted its famed World's Fair in 1893, the closing ceremonies had to be canceled and replaced with Mayor Carter Harrison's memorial service. He'd just been assassinated, you see. By an immigrant, no less. So perhaps, one inclined toward politically incorrect fantasias may find himself darkly imagining, the 2016 Chicago Olympics could've ended on a high note.

Alex Pareene is a syndicated columnist, the editor of The National Interest, and the author of Turnabout: Why America Betrays Israel At Its Own Risk and A Hike With Herbert Hoover, a novel.

There are many, many theories as to what went wrong and from where we sit, they are all equally plausible. Here's are the leading contenders for the big albatross.

Barack Obama: President Hopenchange thought he could he swoop in at the last minute, give a fancy speech and bring the Games back to his "adopted" city. Well, guess what? No one likes adopted kids—or grandstanding prima donnas who want to punch the ball in at the goal line after someone else carried it the first 99 yards. Who do you think you are? Mike Alstott?

George W. Bush: Apparently when you spend the better part of a decade lighting all your bridges on fire, the rest of the globe sort of frowns on that.

Foreigners: Hey, how about a little gratitude for burning all those bridges for you! Eh, they would have just snuck into the country illegally and taken all those construction jobs anyway.

Richard Daley: The poster child for nepotistic cronyism should have been a natural leader in the nepotistic crony-filled backrooms of the International Olympic Committee. "Maybe the 'machine' isn't working," said Sisay Abebe, 51, of Rogers Park.

Rod Blagojevich: How can the world ever take Illinois seriously after they elected that hairdo to govern them?

Roving gangs of murderous thugs: Man, if only those teenagers hadn't hit that kid in the head with a railroad tie and then stomped him to death, all of the city's problems could have magically been erased. Rio has all the luck!

Michael Jordan: Some citizens believed that the professional hoops star who came from North Carolina and ran back there as soon as his career ended could have saved the bid if only he had spoken up. Of if he hadn't insulted Juan Antonio Samaranch in his Hall Of Fame speech!

The Cubs: Some supporters at today's rally carried around signs with a blue "W" on them—the Cubs "victory symbol." "When have those signs ever brought victory?" Andrew Cooper of Chicago asked. "We didn't need that stupid curse on our bid."

Public congratulations, private introspection [Chicago Breaking News]
[Photo of the Chicago fire via the Tribune]

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Also ... Not Chicago. In a somewhat surprising turn, the Second City became the Fourth City after being eliminated in the very first round of IOC voting. Tokyo went next and Madrid came in second.

Jay Mariotti on SportsCenter (from Copenhagen!) about the vote: "I don't need to tell people that when it comes to big events, sports teams, Chicago tends to lose the big one."

2016 Olympics decision day [BBC Live Blog]
O NO!! CHICAGO LOSES 2016 OLYMPICS [CBS2]
Rio de Janeiro wins 2016 Olympic Games in landslide over Madrid [USA Today]

UPDATE: IOC President Jacques Rogge makes the announcement:

Politicians, wealthy businessmen, and other "civic leaders" love to brag about the jobs and income that hosting an Olympics creates. And it will create income—for politicians, wealthy businessmen, and civic leaders. For everyone else, it's mostly a giant headache. They get eminent domain lawsuits and obnoxious construction snafus and in exchange they get pop-up souvenir stores and sporting events they can't afford to tickets to. Yet, the city fathers will bend over backwards to bring it to them. Higher, faster, stronger, people!

So who will get the 2016 Summer Games? Who should get it? And what would they do with it if they got it? Let's take a look at the competitors, in reverse order of the likelihood that they will win.

Madrid: This would probably be the best of the four cities to hold an Olympics in. It's a beautiful old world town with a modern twist, easy access for most competitors and fans, and everyone loves sangria. Unfortunately, most voters will confuse it with Barcelona and think they already had an Olympics (plus 2012 is Europe, too) so they're out of luck. Sorry.

Tokyo: I hope their pitch includes the country's marvelous sporting stadium bathrooms, because that's the only thing that would convince anyone to hold the Games there again. Everything is new and fancy in Japan, but it's pretty much the most crowded place in the world and it's a 22-hour flight away no matter what spot on the planet you're coming from. (It's a fact!) The last thing this town needs is four million white guys trying to find a store that sells tentacle porn. Pass.

Chicago: The Windy City is the money-line favorite to win the Games and Chicagoans probably think that hosting an Olympics would lift them into the elite category of world class cities. They would be wrong. (Does Atlanta strike you as a cosmopolitanism world capital?) Plus, why would you want to be a world-class city? The only positive that could possibly come out of this is a fancy new subway system (even that's a big IF) and that only makes you a more attractive target for terrorist attacks. Actually, that's probably why our Muslim traitor president is pushing so hard for them. No thanks.

Rio de Janeiro: It's not going to happen for Chicago, however, because Rio is the upset special. Why? One: Everyone hates America. Two: There have been only two Olympics in the Southern Hemisphere and both were in Australia. Three: It would be the first Olympics in South America, a continent that is sadly overlooked by people who are not addicted to cocaine. Four: The future Olympic Stadium will make an excellent favela when the Games are over.

Yes, the hyper-violent gang wars and soul crushing poverty are definite PR obstacles, but that's what they said about South Africa and look how well the World Cup turned out! The only question is: Can the IOC grift more money from the corrupt rulers of a lawless third-world backwater ... or from Brazil.

The tipping point? Carnival! It's Rio in a squeaker. Not that any that of this matters since none of us will be around to see 2016 anyway. Thanks a lot, Mayans.

Hopefuls fire last salvos as 2016 Olympic vote nears [AFP]
Chicago favored, with Rio next, in 2016 vote [MSNBC]
Some Chicago residents hoping Olympics bid a bust [AP]
2016 Olympic vote at a glance [AP]
Olympics-Famous athletes boost Chicago bid on eve of vote [Reuters]
The fundamental question [Universal Sports Blogs]

The dirty Canucks have decided that since their country is 98% uninhabitable ice, that somehow entitles them to all the gold medals at the Winter Olympics. Their maple-soaked organizing committee wants HockeyWorld to not only claim the most medals in its history, they want to win more medals than any other nation next year. (A laughable notion, of course.) Their only hope for that to happen is to deny innocent, non-moose riding athletes much-needed training runs on the unique and dangerous courses for sports like bobsled and downhill skiing. Yes, even Americans have not been allowed unfettered access to the luge track, which is crazy, because don't they have to do what we say?

Who you gettin' crazy with, Pucky? Do you really want to bring a luge war down on your heads?

Also, unlike every Olympic city ever, Vancouver actually finished its venues on schedule, so those Molson-swilling seal jockeys have already enjoyed hundreds of hours of unrestricted practice time on the slopes of Whistler and whatever it is you take bobsleds down. "Oh, Canada! We stand on guard against Norwegian biathletes ... who we will probably shoot in the back of the head after we trick them into taking a wrong turn on some hellish Yukon death trail!"

Don't think we haven't forgotten about that loonie in Salt Lake, you French-talking syrup suckers. A hard snow is a-gonna fall.

As Host of the Winter Olympics, Canada Acts More Like a Guard [New York Times]
Luge federations spar over Whistler training time [CTV]

The South African sprinter—who runs very fast on his Tigger-esque prosthetics—was arrested this weekend after allegedly assaulting a 19-year-old woman who he had thrown out of his house during a party. When the woman tried to return to the party, Pistorius slammed the door ... on her leg. So that's how it's going to be, huh? Someone gets drunk and starts acting like an idiot at your house party and you immediately go for the legs? Seen "The Karate Kid" a few too many times, haven't we?

Oscar, your dream of destroying all human tibia bones so that you can create a race of carbon-fiber based super beings is never going to happen, so just let it go.

'Blade runner' in S Africa court [BBC News]