The Egalitarian Olympics

As the Olympic flame is extinguished this evening, a record twenty-six different countries won a medal in the 2006 Torino Games, including Slovakia and Latvia, who earned their first ever Winter Olympic medals. Eleven different countries won medals in the double-digits, which is also a record. I'm starting to get the warm fuzzies. Let's hear it for international competition and brotherhood!

And just as they did in 2002 in Salt Lake City, Germany and the United States finished 1-2 in the medal count. I think this is a perfectly good reason to declare war on Germany, but if we don't, I hope the IOC at least adds another sport like snowboarding that's pretty much designed for the United States alone to win a bunch of medals.

But I think the legacy of these games, at least in America, will unfortunately be bitching and sniping. The headlines here were all about the Chad Hedrick/Shani Davis catfight, Bode Miller's inspirational failings, the failure and subsequent whining of our hockey team, and perhaps above all, the number of people in the media who went out of their way to say that the Winter Olympics suck.

Germany, U.S. Finish 1-2 in Medal Count [Yahoo! News]