sochi
A tropical nation has never won a medal in the Winter Olympics. But Jamaica’s bobsled team has become a legend for challenging snow and ice countries at their own sport.
"How is it possible that an area of about 400,000 people can be responsible for eight out of nine gold medals?" said Stig Arve Sæther, a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
Journalists covering the Sochi Olympics have taken to Twitter to air complaints over the state of their hotel rooms. For the past week, some reporters have been tweeting images describing what they say are appalling conditions in the media hotels.
"How is it possible that an area of about 400,000 people can be responsible for eight out of nine gold medals?" said Stig Arve Sæther, a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
He can still dunk like a butterfly, but in the personally tragic case of former basketball pro Dennis Rodman in North Korea, the embrace of Kim Jong Un and his policies sting like a bee. Rodman is the most recent example of sports diplomacy gone awry. With the Sochi Olympics starting, a new cadre of unpredictable athlete diplomats will likely take the stage.
The winter Olympics kick off in the Russian city of Sochi on Thursday, whether Russia is ready for them or not. And it increasingly appears that Sochi might not actually be all that ready. Here are 15 signs – some of them superficial, some legitimately alarming – that the Olympics could get off to a bumpy start.
Amid continued debate over whether or not Sochi is prepared to host the 2014 Olympics, which begins Thursday, reporters from around the world are starting to check into local hotels — to their apparent grief. Some journalists arriving in Sochi are describing appalling conditions in the housing there, where only six of nine media hotels are ready for guests.
Anyone who has watched an Olympics whose vision is sharp will notice that the logo for Sochi 2014—which appears in every stadium, on every ticket, and on tens of millions of dollars’ worth of Olympic merchandise—is remarkably different from those of previous Olympics. It contains no drawing and features only unassuming lowercase lettering, the five Olympic rings, and a Web address.