nineveh_uk

On 22–23 February 2014, the last night of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, in which the Russian state had run a systematic doping operation that saw it top the medal table, Putin convened a meeting with the security services, and kicked off the invasion of Ukraine and ultimate seizing of Crimea. Having received minimal sanction for either of these offences - the latter obviously more serious than the former, but the two of them in no way unconnected - it shouldn't be surprising that Putin and the Russian government decided to do the same thing again. Why change a winning formula?

So now everyone who ought to have seen this coming is talking about ooh, maybe this time around the sanctions might a little bit tougher, but are they going to be tough enough to really hurt Putin? Right now it seems unlikely. It's true that it takes time to pull such things together (start sooner then?) and it can be worth taking that time to make things work, but FFS! It's time for a lot more serious conversations doing things that will be painful for the UK, Europe, the US, and other states, but that need to be done. Because it would be a lot better to do them now than waffle for 6 months and then do it in October rather than March for e.g. stopping purchasing gas. Or have to fight a war in Estonia. And though we will never know, it could be hurting a lot less now if more had been done 8 years ago. Or earlier than that, or later than that, when Russia was invading other countries. One must give credit to Ukrainian's President Zelensky, who four years ago was scarcely a politician, and ironically in recent years probably one of the people who has had least power to do anything about being next door to a man with delusions of being the new Peter the Great, or whatever, and who seems to be doing a very decent job of not dashing off to exile.

But it is all such a depressing mess, and the more depressing because some at least of it was probably preventable, had a damn been given a lot time ago.

Sport, very good. Everything else, mixed. Heavy snow today at least gives a rather more attractive setting, and hopefully will improve the air quality that has been visibly declining over the alpine venue. It doesn't sound a huge amount of fun for the competitors for various reasons, particularly the ones who got Covid, who don't need locking in a hospital cell with entirely inadequate food, but something more akin to a student hall of residence room with room for an exercise bike for the asymptomatic, and food including such radical concepts as fruit and vegetables.

( Cut for thoughts on various events, and doping )

Nineveh's rules of men's figure skating costumes:

- wear all black-grey costume, docked 20 points
- wear black/white costume, docked 15 points
- black with black sequins/crystals, docked 10 points
- skaters with a polychrome history may apply for an exemption for no more than one monochrome costume every 3 years
- monochrome costume that is genuine cosplay (e.g. Keegan Messing Chaplin routine) may apply for an exemption, on condition that the routine contains appropriate mime/dance elements. Exemption available for short or free programme only.
- exceptions automatic for Star Wars cosplay with lightsaber choreography.

TL:DR I do not watch figure skating to watch people in school uniform. I'm all for men who prefer a style that does reflect traditional men's clothing if they want to - see Keegan Messing - as long as it is part of the performance and not there primarily aimed at conveying the message "I am the most masculine man, not at all gay". Look, I'm just not a big fan of Nathan Chen, in case you couldn't tell. Dressing as Jesus in order to perform a routine to 'Jesus Christ Superstar' complete with 40 lashes (thanks to antisoppist for telling me that's what the counting + whipcracks was) - bit weird, but at least distinctive.

All I ask for cross-country ski clothing, and it is a small enough request, is not to be able to see the colour and preferred style of their pants through it. I don't need to know that woman prefers a pink bikini brief, or that man something that otherwise went out of fashion in 1970s. (The most important part of men's pants/suits in cross-country is of course that they are windproof at the front.)

Now onto week 2!

Sometimes, there comes along a programme that seems almost literally made for you as a viewer, and in the run up to the 2022 Winter Olympics, The Olympic Draum (press release) is definitely the one for me. Having covered in recent years the Norwegian women's team, the Norwegian's men's team, and various individual famous Norwegians, NRK clearly felt the need for a fresh perspective in its run-up to the Olympics, and they found it. Seven 22-25 minute episodes following the UK cross-country ski team as they prepare for the Olympics, hampered only by their tiny budget*, wax technician being stuck in Sweden due to the pandemic, and of course the fact of being British. It looks like some lighthearted winter sporting fun.

The chances of this making it to UK media seem zero, so if you feel the urge to take a look, it is here, dialogue a mix of English and Norwegian.

*Here is the Norwegian team's world cup wax truck. The British have a multipurpose van.

Jiffygate continues unresolved, perhaps forever. Chris Froome rides on, while inquiring minds ponder just how Team Sky intends to show he got those adverse findings though legit medical use. Pyeongchang is behind us, and the Commonwealth Games don't involve Russia, so the Sochi doping saga rattles on.

So kindly stepping in to prevent boredom over the summer come the Austrian police, who yesterday raided the offices of the International Biathlon Union, and today are working with the Norwegian authorities in an investigation involving the IBU president, 72 year old Anders Besseberg* and secretary general Nicole Resch. TL:DR, it's a corruption probe into the concealing of doping results of Russian competitors. The IBU appears to have been covering stuff up for years. Info in English here.

Alas, at this point I can't find the relevant article, but I seem to recall that two members of the CAS panel that decided that there was insufficient evidence to strip Sochi competitors of their medals, despite clear evidence of tampering were associated with, you guessed it, the IBU.

*He's been president since 1992, apparently, which tells you a lot about how this sort of thing happens in a number of sports. Maximum 10 year terms, for goodness sake!

Sofia Goggia, women's downhill ski race gold medalist shows 'em how it's done! Not only does she know all the words and sing them loudly, but she also does the "pom pom pom" bit of every self-respecting national anthem. Fortunately for her it has a jollier tune and much cooler words than God Save the Queen*, not least that the shout of Si! appears to be official.

*Surely a dirge that ranks high in the list of the world's most terrible national anthems, both for music and lyrics.

...it turns out that I can get up and have washed my hair and dressed by 6:45am - not to get to work for an early meeting (although I did), but to sit down on the sofa and watch the women's 10km cross-country event from the Winter Olympics. And well worth it, too. Tomorrow is the men's 15km at 6am, though I can give it fifteen minutes for low-seeded starters.

I am enjoying the Olympics enormously. Some high points:

* All the cross-country races! I always like the skiathlon, and the tracks and conditions made for two nicely competitive races, even though the lack of crowds for the events rather dampens the atmosphere. The timing is surprisingly manageable for live viewing (at least if you work from home for the sprint... Alas despite decent UK chances in the team sprint I shall be in meetings).

* 7th place for Andrew Musgrave, by far the best result for a UK skier ever (his own previous best was 29th in the Sochi sprint, but this performance wasn't 22 places up, it was really incomparable) with a Norwegian clean sweep of the medals. I don't think he could have won a medal had he not fought so hard to follow the gold medallist - he would certainly have been swept over by the superb Norwegians so he might as well have tried for the top step.

* BBC coverage is overall proving very good (topped up occasionally by Eurosports), although I could live without seeing any more Elise Christie hagiography.

* I am vastly entertained by the Japanese skaters using the Yuri on Ice theme music. Twice. Perhaps a good idea not to do Stammi Vicino though, you might look a bit conceited. And speaking of ice skating, a triple axel in the women's competition again. And the happy Germans today!

* Commentator Rob Walker has a serious case of commentator's curse in the biathlon.

Less good:

* No gold yet for Marit Bjørgen! Come on, Marit! Silver and bronze is good, but let's see one more individual gold (the 30km* most likely, I think.)

* The weather. I don't blame the organisers, these things happen and an event held in the Alps could have equal problems with heavy snowfall. But given the area is known for wind they perhaps ought to have built temporary structures that could withstand it. My brother-in-law's company provides the power and apparently the engineers are finding the cold + wind incredibly challenging (and partly as a result, brother in law didn't get to go and bring me back a hat, boo!). Hopefully the better conditions of today will last.

* The crowds. Disappointing in pretty much everything outdoors, really. And Beijing will be worse.

* Mike Pence being an arrogant idiot. Look, we all know that you can't possibly trust that the North Korean government is genuinely interested in a bit of detente, but anyone with half a brain at this point would behave as if they were. It isn't about you.

Four weeks today to the Olympics! Technically it's four weeks tomorrow, as the opening ceremony is on Friday 9th Feb, however there are qualifying events on the 8th Feb and indeed on the 9th before the evening ceremony. You can see the daily schedule here. It must be pretty galling to be picked for your country's team, travel to the Olympics, compete - and then fail to qualify before the event even officially gets started.

So with winter sport in mind, it's time for some warm-up recs.

(1) Yuri on Ice

In the trackless wastes of A/B/O and AUs of every stripe that you can imagine that have taken over the Yuri on Ice tag on AO3 there are nonetheless still oases to be found. Or at least whatever the winter sport equivalent of an oasis is.*

nothing gold can stay by Naraht
Chapters: 10/10
Fandom: Yuri!!! on Ice
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Yuri Plisetsky & Victor Nikiforov, Yuri Plisetsky & Yakov Feltsman, Lilia Baranovskaya/Yakov Feltsman, Yuri Plisetsky & Lilia Baranovskaya, Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, Otabek Altin & Yuri Plisetsky
Characters: Yuri Plisetsky, Victor Nikiforov, Yakov Feltsman, Lilia Baranovskaya, Katsuki Yuuri, Otabek Altin
Additional Tags: Rivals, Post-Canon, Growing Up, Coming of Age, growth spurt, Injury, 2018 Winter Olympics, Aging, Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Boston, London, Ballet, Wedding, Russian Orthodoxy
Summary:

Yuri Plisetsky will never step out of Victor's shadow. Not if Victor has anything to do with it.

Or, the epic Nikiforov-Plisetsky rivalry in the run-up to the 2018 Olympic Games.

This is a rare fic that is sport-focused and gets the feeling of competition right. Much as I enjoy the comedy and the characters, the fact that the anime is about figure skating is also critical to my enjoyment. The sport isn't a random setting, it's a plot driver, and the characters' roles as international level sportsmen is critical to their characterisation.** And the same could be said of the fic: it's long, it's got great settings, and it's very funny, but most of all it matters that they are skaters.

The random and the ridiculous

The new year began with the Tour de Ski, which was nice of it since it also began for me with a viral infection and lying on the sofa watching people zip round the snow was just what was needed. Alas, the fourth race had to be cancelled due to terrible weather. But that was a small price to play for the glories of the fifth race, which thanks to pouring rain and a shortened course due to the fact that the rest of it was covered in the trees that had blown down was absolute carnage. Normally I like to watch people skiing, but every so often it's great to watch them falling over. A lot. (Especially when the UK's entrant didn't - spot him in the blue at the front in the vid.) And so I give you Chuck Norris shooting skiers.



*Untracked powder on avalanche-safe slopes, probably. Not that is much use for ice skaters.

**When I was off sick from work at some point earlier this year I finally caught up with Verdens Beste Skijenter, a series about the Norwegian women's ski team as they were preparing for the 2015 World Championships. Two things stick in my mind from this: firstly, how much if you want to succeed at the top level in an endurance sport you have to enjoy all the associated training as well as the fun parts, because there is a lot more training than anything else, and secondly a serious of responses to a question along the lines of 'who do you race for?' Parents, partners, siblings, grandmother were mentioned, but Marit Bjørgen, the most successful cross-country skier of all time answered in the way that a champion does: Me. Bjørgen appears to be a very warm and friendly person, but you don't get to the top without a ruthless streak.

I have spent much of the weekend watching the Olympics and sewing a top. I haven't finished the top*, but I've seen quite a bit of sport. Some time ago frankie_ecap asked me (in a nicer way than this is about to sound!) what the interest is in skiing in watching a bunch of people go down the same course one after the other. Which is a fair point, even if your favourite sort of skiing is the one where people go along the same course one after the other. Sometimes for 50km.**

It is the Olympics. I like the Olympics. I mostly like the athletics, but in a dull moment I will watch pretty much anything. In the Winter Olympics I endeavour to watch absolutely everything bar curling and short-track speed skating.

You see, the thing about sport is that while it adds extra interest to have a technical understanding of what is going on, it isn't actually necessary. It's fairly easy in a lot of events (not sailing) to tell who is doing better, even if you can't really tell why. Tennis idiots like me could see this year that though the Wimbledon final was going with serve, Murray was winning his games more easily and so was going to win. It's like ballet: I'm sure that it adds to the experience of watching Swan Lake to grasp the technical finesse with which the prima ballerina executes those jumps, whatever they are, but personally I just enjoy the music and the spectacle. I can tell that that series of jumps was incredibly difficult and visually spectacular and harder than the jumps the chorus did. That suffices, as long as there's a plot. And the great thing about sport is there is always a plot. It may be a plot I don't give a damn about (most football*** and golf), but there's usually a plot, and it's a plot that you can follow.

Sometimes the plot is a simple one: how far can I throw this discus? But within even that simple plot there is strategy and risk and human outcome**** and a narrative that can be gripping. Take last night's men's 10,000m. There's an argument that with Mo Farah as favourite to win and retain his 2012 title, plus two World Championships in between, this would be a dull race, but that would be to mistake the outcome for the sole interest. For as well as the outcome what matters is how the race was won. In this case, the question of how the rest of the field can attempt to beat the unbeatable. What must they do? Knowing what they must do, can they do it? Often no, when the slim chance of victory comes with the high risk of sacrifice.

As a fan of cross-country skiing, how to beat the unbeatable is great. You get to see the superb performer perform. You get to see the competition trying to win, and sometimes even succeeding, albeit not at the moment against Farah. They can only win by going early, but to go early risks all. How much do you need to understand the theory and tactics of distance running to appreciate the magnificence when Farah unleashes those spindleshank legs with such power? And that's only the plot of one race, within a season, within a decade, within the history of the sport, within a life, and each of those has a narrative - and that's before you get to the human interest element.****** I have to admit that when it comes down to it what I like about sport is the atavistic element of the hunt, the person ahead who is mercilessly hunted down. 100m is exciting, but it's short. 5000m, or multiple rounds, and you can chase and pursue and destroy. Absolutely it's fascinating and courageous when Etenesh Diro in the steeplechase heats runs the second half without a shoe, but the really exciting bit to me is someone who has got behind and has only one shoe and then has to run to overtake as many people as possible. The hunt is on again.

I can't throw, I can't jump, though once I could run a little, but I really like watching other people doing it.

*The free Sorbetto pattern. It would have been quick had I not decided to add sleeves (additional pattern on the internet), and then chosen to add cuffs to the sleeves. With the hem, neck, and setting-in one sleeve to go I decided that I would like to do a few other things this weekend. It will look good eventually.

**You can get an amazing amount of ironing done to a 50km time trial. There's a reason I haven't had an empty ironing basket since April.

***Even so I can acknowledge the epic quality of Leicester City's Premier League victory this year, with bonus 'second time farce' Gary Linekar's pants story.

****I never thought I gave a damn about the discus until I was watching yesterday, when it was won by surprisingly dapper German Christoph Harting, whose brother won in 2012, as the penultimate competitor in the final round. And then the silver medalist (Piotr Małachowski, a man who looks like a proper old-fashioned discus thrower), who must surely have thought he'd won, gave an impressive display of dealing with unexpectedly not winning with great dignity.*****

*****Unlike the US women's football goalie, whose comments on losing to Sweden were hilarious.

******For a supreme example of this, Jörgen Brink's infamous collapse in the 2003 cross-country skiing world championships men's relay. Vindicated a decade later when it turned out that he had a heart condition.

This rant is brought to you by the sort of temper occasioned by being off sick with a cold in August...

So the 2022 Winter Olympics has gone to Beijing rather than Almaty. Or to be precise, rather than to Almaty, Oslo, Stockholm, Krakow, Lviv (the other formal candidate cities), or Sarajevo, Tyrol/Trentino, Nice, Quebec City, Graubünden (Switzerland), Helsinki, Santiago, and the various other places that showed an initial interest.

Out of all of which, the bid has gone to probably the worst possible option except the one in a war zone. Because the only reason, seriously, the only reason the Olympics are going to be in Beijing is because no democratic country could get the ridiculously bloated demands of the IOC past its population.* Norway was the last one in the ring, and Norway withdrew after, among other things, the IOC demanded specific cocktail parties with the king, and total control over all advertising in Oslo for the duration of the event. At which point, and not being prepared to pay for ever-ballooning venue demands, Norway said "Fuck off" to the IOC and the IOC put out some rather juvenile press releases about how Norwegian politicians just didn't understand.

Let's be clear, this was a spectacular own goal on the part of the IOC. Had Oslo been prepared to meet its demands, there was no way the Norwegian bid wouldn't have won. Norway has the weather, mountains, popular enthusiasm for the sports, and the money to make it work. Even the IOC couldn't be sufficiently bribed not to choose it. There was public support, as long as it didn't cost too much and made use of the already existing (fantastic) facilities. It would have been the best Winter Olympics since Lillehammer.** Anyone with half a brain in the IOC ought to have done anything they possibly could for the chance of running the Olympic cross-country skiing events at Holmenkollen, which would have provided the sort of crowds and atmosphere that even they can't buy. Instead, they are going to China, where there will be no snow and no spectators.

And so here we are, with the 2022 Winter Olympics to be held in a place where there is no snow. Seriously. There is less than 1m a year, and they will have to rely entirely on artificial snow-making in a semi-arid area that receives about 15" of rain per year. You don't get a lot of rain out of what's left over when you've used that for such trivialities as drinking, washing, and agriculture.

This is a decision so utterly shit that you would be making a more sensible decision to award the Winter Olympics to any of the following: Beirut, Tehran, Glasgow or Aberdeen. I am not joking. Would it be a good idea to have the Winter Olympics in Beirut? Of course not - but it has more reliable snow and a more developed skiing infrastructure in the vicinity than Beijing does. Tehran has amazing snow just 40 miles away, but it might be a bit short on ice hockey stadia. So, of course, is Beijing. The Scottish mountains have more snow, a great deal more rain for emergency snow-making, are closer to the host cities, and already have the curling rinks. The howling gales might be a problem, but we could put up really big wind-breaks.

I truly cannot convey how absolutely ridiculous this decision is. Even with the European countries gone there was still a reasonable alternative to Beijing. Almaty wouldn't have been perfect (those pesky human rights again), but it was actually a credible bid. Kazakhstan has the (real) snow, the mountains, a winter sports culture, existing facilities, and has been running itself in through hosting the Asian Winter Games and the 2017 Winter Universiade. It might even have cleaned up the smog. It also has the sort of government that could just spend what it took to provide the latest Galaxy tablet for ever IOC official, or whatever they want. This factor obviously being the most important. It's just that the tablets Bejing provides will be even shinier.

Farewell, the Olympic movement! It was nice knowing you.

*And the shopping is better than in Kazakhstan

**Yes, I have a vested interest, because I would definitely have gone.

(1) Golden retriever very, very young puppy cam. Mother Narnia and her eight pups or, as we should call them in solidarity with Norway, whelps.

(2) I am now older than all the English cricket team. I am older than almost anyone in professional sport (though not, of course, Ryan Giggs*). But I am not older than Noriaki Kasai, who is a ski jumper and at 41 years old won the silver medal in the men's large hill competition earlier this week, in his seventh olympics. It's not just that he's older than the average ski jumper that's impressive - it's that he first won an olympic medal in Lillehammer in 1994, when a good number of the competition hadn't even been born. I can't now find on the internet the stat the BBC gave the other day about the number of competitors who hadn't been born when Kasai first competed on the World Cup circuit in 1989. It was large.

(3) Guardian photos of really exhausted cross-country skiers.

*There are probably people in sailing, dressage, clay pigeon shooting, and archery, too.