Welcome to an all-Olympic Edition of Hero/Hack. The Olympics embody everything that humanity has to offer: competition (pointless and not-so-pointless), corruption (French judges anyone?), national pride, and crappy television coverage. All kidding aside, I do love the Olympics (the winter ones especially) and I thought I would highlight some of the big players on the Hero and Hack side of Turin.


My hero is John Ligety. Here's his story:

First Olympics, first event, first gold medal. "Ligety Split" indeed. Downhill skier Ted Ligety lived up to his nickname and then some by winning the Olympic combined on Tuesday night, choosing a floodlit hillside in the Italian Alps for his first major triumph.

Ligety was not the favorite going into the event, but showed strength and poise, becoming only "the fourth American man to win an Alpine Olympic gold." "I never expected to be here right now," Ligety said. "A medal wasn't something I could have foreseen."

Unfortunately I have two hacks this week. The first is Johnny Weir. It is not for failing to medal, but for not showing national pride by wearing a Soviet jacket:
Disgracefull. That brings me to the other hack for this week, Bryant Gumbel. On his show, HBO's Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel, he made some rather uncouth remarks about the racial makeup of the Olympic athletes:

"Finally, tonight, the Winter Games. Count me among those who don’t like them and won’t watch them ... Because they’re so trying, maybe over the next three weeks we should all try too. Like, try not to be incredulous when someone attempts to link these games to those of the ancient Greeks who never heard of skating or skiing. So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world’s greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention. Try not to point out that something’s not really a sport if a pseudo-athlete waits in what’s called a kiss-and-cry area, while some panel of subjective judges decides who won ... So if only to hasten the arrival of the day they’re done, when we can move on to March Madness — for God’s sake, let the games begin." (Emphasis Added)

Newsbusters has the full story with video.

Hero/Hack appears every Friday at Jokers to the Right.com

Posted by Ryan S. on Friday, February 17, 2006 at 12:00 AM | Permalink |