Today is the 70th anniversary of the death of King George VI and the accession of Elizabeth to the throne.

Her daughter Anne competed in the 1976 Olympics as part of the British equestrian team. This isn’t terribly surprising when one considers how elite of a sport equestrianism is. Maybe Prince Archie, with his mother’s Bantu genes, will be the first royal to compete in Olympic track and field. Regardless, when he’s going to have to take up some intensive sport for the sake of his mental health. Imagine being the child of Prince Harry AND Meghan Markle. Those children barely stand a chance in life.

Pretty sure Harry and Archie aren’t princes anymore.

Shouldn’t there be a campaign to include ice-fishing as an Olympic event? Or is that too downmarket? Can’t be any more boring to watch than curling.

The women are good looking reflecting their social background.

Why affluent families etc.?

Since I don’t see irony here, I can only say that the WO have been dominated, mostly, by “Northern” peoples in all areas- hockey, skiing, biathlon …

Most medals belong to a bunch of Scandinavians.

Having observed the demographics and overall level of attractiveness of the Winter Olympic athletes: imagine what the world would look like if a meteor shower hit Earth and killed everyone except the athletes inhabiting the Olympic village in Beijing — and then, like Noah, they had to repopulate Earth with their progeny. What a beautiful world that would be!

Off topic,

Infrequent commenter (every 2-3 years or so), but this really made me think:

https://www.foxnews.com/us/baltimore-patterson-high-school-reading-levels-elementary

77% of high school students (adults) reading at a kindergarten level?
These schools have millions of dollars, and no results.

Why are Americans so stupid? Why do we ignore the obvious?

The United States has a serious human capital problem. As we know, human capital is largely genetic. We can continue to deny this, and shout “We need to fix education! We need to fix health care!” until we are blue in the face, when the plain truth is we need more high functioning humans and less poorly functioning ones.

The United States has long been the home to a large “smart fraction” of highly competent leaders (I call this the “peak human capital” or “top 10 %”, but “smart fraction” works just as well) in business, science, etc. and this is a good thing, but we have neglected “average” human capital.

A large part of what makes society nice is having high average human capital, so that the average person isn’t very poor, unhealthy, stupid, aggressive, criminal, etc.

The failures we see now in crime, homelessness, drug addiction, illiteracy among schoolchildren, cities being unlivable, people being ungovernable, all stem from the same problem- the continual and accelerating decline in average human capital in the U.S.

I haven’t seen much policy from either republicans or democrats that would do the one thing that would save the united states – increase average human capital.

Simple policy measures:

-Close borders to countries with low IQ, low income, low standards of living, high crime, high disease burden, these are all indicators of low quality human beings you do NOT want in your country
-Implement some sort of social policy to disincentivize low quality citizens from having children (mandatory birth control, institutionalization, etc.)
-Incentivize high quality citizens to have children
-Exile all criminals to foreign countries or Alaska, or ensure they don’t have children, to remove future criminals from the gene pool (as we know, behavior is genetic in origin!)

By increasing average human capital, you make the USA a nice place to live. The countries that are nice to live in have high *average* human capital – if your car breaks down you want someone to pull over and help you fix it – that’s a good country – in a bad one you worry about wandering drug addict zombies seeing you vulnerable and robbing you – that’s california and the west coast (and the rest of the U.S. in a few short years).

This isn’t a prediction. This is the present. We are living it. The USA is a “developing” (just a euphemism for shithole with low average human capital) country with corrupt, stupid, criminal citizens. We let them in! We let them live here! We let them have children! We pay for them to bully us and make life worse in thousands of little ways every day – and we want MORE!

We need every sane person standing on the rooftop shouting, “THEY’RE LOOTING THE F***ING TRAINS!”

Cross country is a bit of an exception, since you literally just need a pair of skis and poles and a consistently sub-freezing winter climate (and during the warmer months you find an equivalent exercise). Here in Minnesota there’s not really affluent chic or privilege associated with cross country, whereas even hockey requires lots of parental investment in order to develop the skills required to play for a notable high school team/junior league team to get one’s career launched (“hockey moms”).

Figure skating is a joke, Broadway theater masquerading as an athletic competition. Summer gymnastics events generally require acrobatic agility, strength, and power, so they are more legit. Figure skaters however generally don’t even look that fit, which ought to tell you something.

One thing nice about the Winter Olympics is that the empashis on technical coordination and strategic refinement generally reduces the urge of athletes to use PEDs. Whereas the purely physical traits required to run fast, lift weights, etc. in the summer Olympics mean that athletes feel obligated to do drugs to gain an edge. There’s also something to be said for cold weather causing people to bundle up, so winter athletes are not constantly feeling body dysmorphia due to exposure to other athlete’s physiques.

It doesn’t stop certain big countries with none of the tradition or environment from crashing the party a bit though. For example, the UK decided to make a bobsleigh team and even went to the effort of looking at the biometric data of Royal Marines to find optimal pushers etc. This resulted in them recruiting a black guy. They did this a few times, actually recruiting people in the army or elsewhere to do certain sports without that person expressing the least interest before.

This is what people like too is that the facilities to train to the extent to become competitive often occur in odd places. So you don’t get just people from big cities but people from smaller towns and villages from all over these countries. This is somewhat similar to the Summer Olympics.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there haven’t been countless editorials complaining about how monolithically white Anglo-Scottish-French the Canadian delegation was. Partly because they looked so happy, relaxed and vibrant as they walked in, imagine if something that ‘looked like Toronto’ walked in. Almost like they were among people highly like themselves and it made them more relaxed and happy or something… And needless to say, everyone at home liked seeing ‘real Canadians’ too. The US too, lots of tall people of Northern European ancestry, like the great wave (Aside from Irish and Germans) didn’t happen.

It’s also just aesthetically nice to watch lots of different Northern Europeans. ‘European’ athletics and club sports have fewer and fewer of them as time goes by.

The other unspoken part is how all the female athletes are extremely girly and not at all butch.

Though I’d complain about how they show certain sports like the ski jump, why can’t they have a camera angle that shows the entire jump from one shot? Having a tracking shot just means I’m watching somebody in the air without being able to see the context of their progress or parabola. (Though this is a complaint I have for many sports where camera angles are too tight and obscure necessary context of the whole field)

Mrs. Prude turned on the Winter Olympics. It was unwatchable: All the beautiful Nordic faces wearing face diapers. The only un-diapered faces one could see were the ugly mongrels on display in the obnoxious commercials. Oh, and Vladimir Putin was in the stands without a diaper on. Good on him.

I had the good fortune to not have viewed any of the Summer games, so I avoided all the worship of the ugliest and worst and degenerate elements of society. Mrs. Prude’s attraction to figure skating make make for unpleasant evenings this February.

The emphasis on pain staking concentration, repetitious mastery of technique, and duh, cold weather, all select for Northern European/North Asian minds and bodies. A combination of hardiness and nerdiness, if you will. Austerity of the landscape and the mind.

And it should go without saying that post-industrial revolution, ice people have dominated to a greater degree than ever before and the Winter Olympics require and reveal the traits that make such success possible.

When I was a boy, I was amazed at the ski jumpers. It looked as though they were 70 or 80 feet above the ground mid-jump. When I actually visited an Olympic ski-jump I was floored to see that they were just 10-15 feet high while flying.

Mr Sailer had a terrific post on the Harry-Markle nuptials. The only one I’ve ever noticed him self-censor and delete. Cancelled!

Winter sports leave no room for a black man or woman to ‘spress deyselves as Peepuls o’ Kollah.

Multiculturalism has killed the Olympics.

I prefer Winter Olympics for the same reason. BTW, which is the most g-loaded among ice sports? Curling?

I certainly enjoy watching Curling more than any sport during the Olympics since I have to activate my brain more than when I watch speedskating or snowboarding.

Apart from the running events, the summer olympics are like that too. How many people outside the first world have a chance to discover their innate talent for swimming? Pole vault? Pommel Horse?

But I’ll grant you the winter games have more truly niche events. My favorite is the one that combines skiing with shooting.

When you think about it, pretty much every sport would be enhanced if you added guns.

Skiing used to be regarded as a posh sport in the UK, but in the 1980s it became a popular mass activity and cheap enough for almost everyone. It helps that we can get to the Alps on short-haul flights on budget airlines, or (at the time) charter flights. Eventually the Ski Club of Great Britain became the largest such club in the world. Resorts like Meribel and Verbier are greatly reliant on British custom.

My wife and I first skied at a small Austrian resort in 1981. We went on a package holiday and could easily afford it on our starter salaries. Our accommodation was relatively basic but it was in the middle of the village, so we could go back to our room for lunch rather than eat on the slopes. In those days you could get your salopettes, gloves, hat and so on at a very keen price at the now-defunct C&A department store.

We were the first people in our families to go skiing. Incidentally, I remember my grandfather referring to the sport as ‘shee-running’, using the older (Norwegian) pronunciation of ‘ski’.

I noticed that NBC is playing a commercial for their Olympics coverage that, among others, features a black woman skater (maybe speed skating). And her internal monologue is “I compete in a sport where no one looks like me”.

So, the Winter Olympics is really about racism. And the competition is between races, not between countries.

And back to Sleepy Joe’s Judicial predilections.
People everywhere are surprised by black woman Judges.

https://www.bbc.com/pidgin/tori-60195093

Especially golf.

The Winter Olympics is a big deal in Minnesota which is usually near the top of the states with the most participants. It looks like Colorado is ahead of them this year though. Sometimes these are just kids who like playing outdoor sports. Lindsey Vonn grew up skiing on the hill you see right off I-35 south of the Twin Cities metro area.

The summer games also have plenty of niche sports that are included or occasionally pop up – archery, kayaking, BMX, skateboarding, etc.

Anyway, organizing complicated events seems to be something ice people seem to like to do, sun people not so much. Tangentially, I suspect a lot of the rhetoric in public education about needing the appropriate sprinkling of whites in schools is trying to strike the balance between getting enough white parents who will use their organizational skills to handle extracurricular events and raise money but not so many that they will dominate the PTA or demand curriculum changes that are too challenging for the rest of the kids.

You parallel my own experience, Learned to ski in Innsbruck in the late ’70’s while earning peanuts.
I only knew that the place existed because of the Winter Olympics 76?

I recall the line the Ski instructor used for the better looking women.
“Keep your knees together Fraulein, you are on ze ski slope, not in ze bedroom.”

I then got into the Private Banking business and it’s amazing the number of reasons there are for going to Switzerland.

Do rich people do curling? Ice fishing?

OK those aren’t sports. When I was a student only the rich kids went skiing. I admit I laughed when that Kennedy clown and Sonny Bono died.

Also when that actor killed himself in his Porsche with the five year old tires.

And Tiger Woods. That guy is a laugh riot.

On the other hand most ski instructors are middle class and a lot of professional skiers are the children of ski instructors who started when they were six years old and did little else their whole lives and they are not rich kids.

Looks like Joe Rogan is starting to cuck, and spotify is accepting his apology by removing his podcasts from their platform

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/rogan-apologizes-using-n-word-spotify-removes-113-jre-episodes-no-explanation

Negroes shout the word nigger countless times a day, in their music, their social media, when just going about their daily dysfunctional lives. Rogan speaks the word when merely discussing the word but now he himself says that is wrong and it shouldn’t be used (by whites.) Issues an embarrassing apology for saying it not yesterday, but years ago. I don’t care how many people he can beat up, he’s a another goddamned coward.

What kind of childish society are we that we literally ban words and ruin lives over them.

Figure skating is a joke, Broadway theater masquerading as an athletic competition. Summer gymnastics events generally require acrobatic agility, strength, and power, so they are more legit. Figure skaters however generally don’t even look that fit, which ought to tell you something.

As long as you aim low enough, you can’t destroy your credibility among your target audience.

Archery “niche”. It’s prehistorical.

The limiting factor with most these sports is the lack of facilities to learn and train in many parts of the world. This is true in the case of speed-skating, for instance: according to Wikipedia there are only 40 extant indoor speed skating rinks in the entire world, 7 of which are in Holland, where “schaatsen” is sort of the national Winter sport. The same could be said for ski jumping, although there are actually far more jumping hills around the world than speed skating ovals (interesting rural/urban divide here as well).

I feel kind of sad for the ones who don’t quite make it and end up gliding around in a furry suit in Muppets On Ice

The best part of the Winter Olympics is the teams from tropical countries which have never seen snow. Even hot countries have skating rinks now.

Here I thought sprinking Whites in schools was more along the lines of Kurt Vonnegut’s story “Harrison Bergeron”. That’s been my experiance.

http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html

“Gun fu” is pretty impressive but only works in movies.

I was very unhappy that all of the athletes in the Parade of Nations were forced to wear masks the whole time (shout-out to the one female Iranian athlete who pulled her mask down to show her face for an extended period of time); I like to use the Olympics as an opportunity to get a glimpse of the average phenotype of various countries and ethnic groups. I like seeing what the healthiest and most genetically-fit – the perfect specimens – of these places look like. Here in the US I have very few opportunities to run into Latvians or Macedonians or Slovaks, so getting to see the smiling happy faces of beautiful women from these countries is both pleasant and educational. Just ne more thing the COVID panic stole from us!

I also found it somewhat amusing to see how many countries sent athletes who are obviously ethnically Russian – i.e. Russian names, blond Russian phenotypes, etc. – rather than representatives of their own native ethnicities. Pretty much all of the Central Asian and Caucasian countries have been represented by members of their conquerors’ ethnicity. The situation was sort of similar with the South American countries who sent athletes; you look at the names and it’s all Germans and Italians.

That’s interesting, in the US skiing has become a rich people’s sport. Here in California a standard single day lift ticket at Mammoth Mountain costs $160 a day, Aspen in Colorado costs $200 a day. Almost no one lives near ski areas so there are lodging, food and transportation costs. Oligarchs fly in from the East Coast and Mexico and in high season the airport runs out of ramp space for parking private jets.
The only people who can ski for cheap are the local area kids who get training from the local resort in the hope they will become competitive skiers.
I wonder if Europe has gone the same route?

Organizing complicated events:

You should see the bridge tournament my son is competing in. It’s filled with engineer types, of course, but just the structure of the darn thing baffles me. I can’t imagine watching something so arcane. Needless to say it’s all Asian/White (and 20% female, according to him).

The Winter Olympics is almost entirely a northern hemisphere phenomenon for a simple reason; 98% of the seasonal snow cover on Earth occurs in the northern hemisphere.

As far as Ice People are concerned, the best ski resorts are in mountainous places that have 1) consistently cold temperatures that still average above 0° Fahrenheit during the day and 2) have consistent significant natural snowfall. (My grandparents used to visit San Moritz, Switzerland, which in January averages daytime 23° / night 5° and ten feet of snow every winter). There are only a couple of such places in the southern hemisphere.

The Beijing Olympics skiing events are being held in a region that meets condition 1, but fails completely to meet condition 2. The average monthly precipitation for December, January and February is about 0.1 inches. The fact that China has diverted entire rivers to meet the artificial snow requirements of the events being hosted has nothing to do with climate change.

It’s fascinating to see how the Chinese have invested at least forty billion dollars to try to encourage its people to understand European winter snow sports. It’s as if they think there is some cultural advantage that adheres to the practice of joyfully embracing winter and finding value in disciplined activity and competition.

It’s only going to get worse. It’s inevitable that The New York Times will eventually get around to writing a searing series on the white supremacy of ski culture. Blacks will be allowed to ski for free, so paying customers will have to bear the brunt of it.

Friend has a son who has been blessed to play with the Jr. NY Islanders squad, cousin has a son affiliated with the Jr. LA Kings. The investment in time and money is off the charts. Pretty much traveling 3 weekends a month to tournaments across North America. Hockey unlike baseball, basketball or football is more club team oriented than school; kids skip high school games to play for their club teams all the time. My cousin in SoCal, even worse because unlike the northeast, LA to anyplace is a plane ride. It can pay off; my friend’s cousin is Sonny Milano, who is now an Anheim Duck after being drafted in th 1st round by the Columbus Blue Jackets. But in that case, he had to move to Michigan to get in a high end Junior team. His dad worked for the Long Island Railroad, so it took a big chunk of his income.

It’s not even ice people. Almost every team sport in the world was invented by specifically the English, with honourable mentions to some Irish and Scots. There should be two or three exceptions but admittedly I haven’t checked.

https://www.thefencepost.com/news/cowboy-mounted-shooting-fastest-growing-equine-sport/

OT: Haven’t heard anything about this since Feb. 2nd. Hate hoax?

nbcnews.com, 02/02/22 – FBI identifies 6 juveniles as persons of interest in bomb threats at Black colleges

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/six-juveniles-identified-fbi-persons-interests-bomb-threats-historical-rcna14591

Six “tech savvy” juveniles have been identified as persons of interest by the FBI in threats to historically Black colleges and universities that appear to be racially motivated.

More than a dozen historically Black colleges and universities received bomb threats on Tuesday, the first day of Black History Month…

Most of the Canadian and American female hockey players are loud, outspoken butches. But I get your point…

That’s interesting, in the US skiing has become a rich people’s sport. Here in California a standard single day lift ticket at Mammoth Mountain costs $160 a day, Aspen in Colorado costs $200 a day.

Those prices are designed to take advantage of rich tourists and the well-off local who only goes once or twice a year, often when family comes to town. If you ski enough your average daily cost is substantially less with an annual pass.

That model is pretty standard for everything from your local aquarium or zoo to Disneyland. Disneyland charges well over $100 now for a single day, but their annual passes are cheaper, and the annual passes for locals are (or were) ridiculously cheap.

The cost of a year’s skiing isn’t much more than the cost of a quick vacation. The cost of a year’s skiing for a family isn’t much more than the cost of a trip to Disneyland. And the physical exercise can’t be beat. My son isn’t the most athletic of boys, but the impact on his fitness level from going once a week has been noticeable. It’s done far more for him than another trip to Disneyland could ever do.

Feryl: “Figure skaters however generally don’t even look that fit…”

Examples, please.

Feryl, not going to argue with you but NHL hockey players skate for a living, I doubt there are any who could execute a double axle or a toe loop or a death spiral. Figure skaters most definetly are athletes. And if you ever get a chance, sans skates, try to pick up a 100 pound girl and twirl around with her over your head. Stay safe.

IJ, coming soon to an inner city near you. Ski by shootings.

Alfa, here in WNY, south of Buffalo, is Ellicottville, NY, once laughably called “The Aspen of the East.” All hype aside, it is home to Holiday Valley and some really nice skiing. I just looked it up and 14-day passes, for an adult is less than $100. Nearby Kissing Bridge also has affordable skiing. And before anyone pooh poohs skiing near here, Ellicottville provides the ski slopes for Pennsylvannia,Ohio and Southern Ontario. Lots of million dollar plus houses and decent rental properties and restaurants. I have been to Aspen, Vail and Breckenridge, so yeah, different level of slopes, but here you get reasonable rates and easy access. My daughters joined the Ski Club when they were in Middle school and HS. Couple hundred bucks each with buses from the schools to the slopes and rental equipment and lessons. Stay safe buddy.

Fun fact: Princess Anne was the only female athlete at the 1976 Games to have exempted from a sex test.

Figure skating is a joke

Figure skating is one of the pinnacles of body creativity & virtuosity.

When non-woke historians gather to write about the collapse of the American empire, you can be sure that Topic A will be, “Failure to Control Its Negro Population.”

Biathlon is not niche unless you live in some truly shithole third-world country.

In the US what are the four biggest (i.e. lucrative) sports below the Big Four, not including soccer.

Asking for a friend.

The only people who can ski for cheap are the local area kids who get training from the local resort in the hope they will become competitive skiers.

Skiing in Colorado was, I guess, fairly affordable when my family moved there when I was age 12. My father, an old, Sierra Nevada skier from the cable bindings and leather boots days (who had even broken a leg way back then before modern equipment) immediately signed me up for ski lessons at A-Basin, a 45 minute drive from our house.

I distantly remember Dad paying $6 each for our lift tickets. I don’t know how much my lessons cost. Inflation of course changes numbers, but still, I know in my bones that skiing in some of the best snow in the world then was fairly affordable to any American who happened to live there.

I have continued to ski ever since, and I have felt the increasing cost and the increasing sense that people and the markets treat skiing as some sort of affluent person’s privilege. It shouldn’t be.

I’ll tell you an ice people sport. The Canadian Trucker’s Convoy.

Feryl is totally wrong about figure skating per se.

The judging has had some scandalous and subjective aspects but then, so has officiating and umpiring.

A few years ago I made the mistake of making fun of Brian Boitano to a friend who ran a skate shop. I got an earful. Figure skaters, he said, are way better skaters than hockey players.

Stay well.

Since you’ve seen fit to insert Woke Ginger and the Mulatress into a perfectly nice discussion, I’ll just note photos indicate that kid’s as white as rice with, maybe, one-eighth of the blessed ancestry. God help us if and when their barely offwhite spawn grow up peddling their African ancestry. I almost want to see it.
But it’s ironic that Meghan did what dark colored men have been doing for centuries: she married up–skin tone wise. Her children could and would pass as wholly white back in the day.

But no, there isn’t a one drop rule for sprinting ability.

That’s interesting, in the US skiing has become a rich people’s sport. Here in California a standard single day lift ticket at Mammoth Mountain costs $160 a day, Aspen in Colorado costs $200 a day.

It’s crazy what’s happened. Even in the 90s, I can remember $10 Monday tickets at Steven’s Pass (US 2 east of Seattle). Lift tickets have seen about a 10x runup since 1980. (And well above inflation these last couple Fauci years have been crazy as people want to get outside.)

Contrast with air travel which has a higher labor input per customer (a couple high skill, well paid), higher energy input and higher capital cost per customer. That have in that time frame put in the high speed lifts, but that gets amortized over a long period. My guess is basically, there’s a lack of competition. A lot of geographic “lock in”. (If i drilled into it, i’d probably argue the FS leases are too cheap relative to lift prices, and resorts themselves are collecting some of the available land rent.) And there’s been tremendous consolidation. There are now only a few actual owners–Aspen, Vail, then i think Powdr probably a couple mid-sized others i’ve never heard of.

Empowered wimmin.

https://archive.is/Qp0dK

They are also having those enjoyable, gimmicky mixed gender competitions. Swimming, no, sorry,

The 2022 Games will also feature seven new events, four of which are mixed-gender competitions. Events like “mixed team snowboard cross” are dismantling long-standing silos that segregated Olympians by gender and are giving women more chances to win gold.

To give ladies, sorry, women, more chances to win gold.

LFMAO.

I for one think we should desegregate silos!

Maybe the Olympic games should be re-categorized as the Subarctic Olympics and the Equatorial Olympics. It’s not entirely accurate, but “winter” and “summer” seem even less so.

I can’t watch the Olympics…and it’s due entirely to the commercials. Nauseating. I think that’s where wokeness in the corporate world started. Olympics commercials.

Figure skating is a joke, Broadway theater masquerading as an athletic competition. Summer gymnastics events generally require acrobatic agility, strength, and power, so they are more legit. Figure skaters however generally don’t even look that fit, which ought to tell you something.

Man are you wrong! Can you do what they do? No, of course you can’t.

Besides, women figure skaters are some of the sexiest athletic creatures on the planet.

It’s appropriate that nobody boycotted considering that the most popular sport of our ruling class is selling us out to China.

I skied Mammoth in the early 90s and remember thinking how cheap it was compared to the Alps. Shame.

It’s also just aesthetically nice to watch lots of different Northern Europeans.

Spot on Altai.

Normal white people–well the normally fit ones, fats and tats need not apply–being normal is just … pleasant to see.

I wasn’t even particularly persnickety up about this. My own friends are a variety of hues. (I appreciate folks for who they are, how they behave, what ideas they hold, what sort of person they are–there for me when I need them?)

But after the last few years of having blacks–and black dysfunction!–jammed in my face as normative, I’m developing a high antibody response. And I really appreciate not having my face rubbed in it and being able to see my normality.

Figure skaters however generally don’t even look that fit …

I enjoy watching the girls skate backward.

I think part of the attraction of taking part in the ice sports is that no one has ever gotten punched in the face at a ski resort or a curling match.

I totally agree with you Buzz. To say that figure skaters “do not look fit” is completely absurd. It seems as if no figure skater, male or female, weighs more than 125 pounds, which is really saying something. Not a gut to be found on anyone. If anything, figure skaters are the epitome of fitness.

Who cares about that grifting TRASH?

Indeed, Dad, they are very, very fit, and that is why you enjoy looking at them. I posit the thought that “the girls” in figure skating are actually participating in a sporting competition that even we old White creeps here would agree is appropriate athletic competition for young women. It is a beautiful thing, and it requires real fitness and endless hours, days and months of practice. The result is athletic, female art.

Real ice people sports:

Figure skating is a form of dancing. Not a sport. Why doesn’t the Summer Olympics have dancing contests too (well, rythmic gymnastics is close to that I suppose)? Just because some physical talent is required to do something, that doesn’t make it a sport (what’s next, juggling, competitive eating, body building, or sex?).

As a die-hard old skier who believes you should use both feet on the mountain, I would gladly remove all of snowboarding if you would let me keep my women figure skaters.

The lack of tattoos fits with Steve’s point that most of the competitors are of an upper class background.

Oh, and ironically an ad played during the Olympic broadcast showing a dumpy black girl with an under the septum piercing. Ludicrous, as if such untermensch give a Rat’s arse about the winter Olympics.

Other than Snow cross (which is a race), snowboarding should be jettisoned. As should skateboarding in the Summer Olympics. “Trick” oriented events for Snowboarding and Skateboarding are tedious, unless you do this stuff as a hobby or something (which 99.9% of people older than 25 don’t). I don’t really understand why they don’t try a skateboard race which would be a lot more exciting and have a rubber necker factor like snow cross and many of the cyclist and skiing events.

In the US what are the four biggest (i.e. lucrative) sports below the Big Four, not including soccer.

Golf, NASCAR and tennis definitely are three. I’m not so certain about the fourth, maybe the UFC?

There are tennis courts galore on a high school campus a couple of blocks away. Gates were always open. I used to play on them regularly. The school board locked them down due to supposed gang activity. This isn’t in a bad neighborhood. There are no occupying gangs here. The school district just wants to be on the safe side. So ten courts are locked down, empty, every day. Two blocks away, you can get on a waiting list so you can pay the city courts $850 an hour. This city has nothing but democrats running it.

I mentioned to the shop pro that at that price, there weren’t going to be helping to produce the next Selena Williams, or any other poor minority. Out of the question.

He said, “that’s exactly what I’ve been telling all the big brains here, but they don’t seem to give a shit.”

Unfortunately, the place doesn’t accept EBT cards.

Since unqualified immigrants too often don’t raise their offspring as Americans,
unchecked diversity is poison:

https://nypost.com/2022/02/06/us-born-figure-skater-zhu-yi-slammed-for-poor-showing/

Women’s Professional Drinking, as in the Housewife shows my wife watches.

“In those days you could get your salopettes, gloves, hat and so on at a very keen price at the now-defunct C&A department store.”

I first put on skis (also 81 in Italy) with no ski gear at all – old black Adidas tracksuit with long-johns/thermal vests beneath, my hat and gloves were Damart thermals, mirror biker shades from some cheap shop. If you have enough layers you can ski fine in a tracksuit. Could only just afford the holiday, couldn’t afford kit as well!

The good news is that Aldi and Lidl continue the fine C&A tradition – we kitted out a daughter last week at Aldi – £5 for gloves, I think £19 for salopettes.

When the kids were small we would ski a lot in Scotland* – rent a house for a week and drive up – and usually took a day off to go curling. That is great fun – like lawn bowls on ice with added “scrubbing”.

* It was at Nevis Range that we saw Alison Hargreaves’ 2 small children, one of whom was to also die in the Himalayas.

Although I enjoy watching the sweet young things skating hither and yon, I’ve long contended that if your sports is set to music, requires a costume, and requires an hour in the make up chair prior to competition, it’s something…just not an athletic competition. (Also if an animal is involved!!)

“14-day passes, for an adult is less than $100”

Good grief – that is an unbelieveable price. In “ordinary” European resorts i.e. not St Anton or Meribel – a 6 day adult pass in high season is about 190 euros.

Mind, I’ve just looked for a six day pass at Heavenly Valley (Tahoe), where I went 20 years ago – 800 dollars!

Personally, I like the idea that there are all these weird niche sports that get passed down thru family lineages:

If it requires anything more than some kind of ball, some kind of stick, and some kind of surface with lines on it, then it isn’t a sport anymore, it’s an “activity.”

Activities are fine and dandy, but real sports must have the quality that the essence of the game can be grasped by children and can be played by children even of meager means. That’s what it’s all about.

I think one contributing factor is that ski areas are a limited resource in much of the US. In the alpine areas of Europe ski areas are quite extensive because they are in relatively developed terrain. When I have driven through those areas I noticed there were extensive lifts on hillsides, passing over highways etc. I was never there in winter, but supposedly you can ski between towns by selecting lifts.
Here in the western US ski areas are in carefully selected areas of wilderness and environmental groups fought tooth and nail for decades, finally ending any further development. It became an issue of supply and demand. Most people have the added expenses of long drives and accommodations.
I used to ski a lot at Mammoth and participated in ski club amateur races. I have to give them credit for making the season passes cheap enough that the number of days you have to use it to break even compared to buying weekend or day tickets, has gone down. Today a season pass is $1500, whereas back in my day of $25 day tickets, you had to ski over 30 days per season to break even. Nevertheless it gets harder to get in enough days when the frequency of November to June operating seasons at Mammoth seems to be declining.

Racism and the Winter Olympics are just the tip of a white privilege iceberg: excerpts from Chandran Nair’s ‘Dismantling Global White Privilege’

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3165408/racism-and-winter-olympics-are-just-tip-white-privilege-iceberg

Dismantling Global White Privilege: EQUITY FOR A POST-WESTERN WORLD
By Chandran Nair

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/678193/dismantling-global-white-privilege-by-chandran-nair/

Mr. Nair(-do-well) is the founder and CEO of the “Global Institute for Tomorrow.”

even we old White creeps here

LOL Buzz. If I ever have a Wikipedia page, I will make that the first sentence. As I recall, it was Dad who kindly invited us to join him for kayaking on the Banana River; kayaking there sounds really pleasant, plus, we would all have something in common. Well, gotta go, I think the figure skating is on.

Hockey is an interesting ice people sport.

Canadians are mad for it, but most traditional Canadians trace their lineage to the British Isles, which didn’t have a lot of pond hockey or ice sports or even ice (the Little Ice Age being an exception to the rule) for many hundreds of years.

I mean, if Canada had been settled by Swedes or Russians, I would’ve expected to hockey to take off once invented. But amongst the Scots, Irish, and English who settled Canada (excepting the French) , its a bit like the weirdness that seals are really good and have a lot of fun with beach balls, despite nothing like it being in their natural habitat.

“You just finished a marathon? Good. Now take this shotgun and hit a clay pigeon.”

OT: Any isteve readers speak mandarin? I can’t figure out what The Rock said, but it seemed to be about an urgent matter of import:

Someone send this to Dwayne Johnson pic.twitter.com/iY7mVMeajt

— Damon Imani (@damonimani) February 5, 2022

To give ladies, sorry, women, more chances to win gold.

The only sport at which women are superior to men is endurance swimming.
The women can keep warm as they have extra layers of fat, rather than muscle. (It’s down to the baby thing.) Presumably, that’s why girls can bear wearing skimpy outfits on a winter’s evening.
The lack of muscle is also why you don’t see many female jockeys, despite the male riders being lightweights themselves.

God help us if and when their barely offwhite spawn grow up peddling their African ancestry.

They’d better do it in Australia. Where the attitude on this is antipodal to ours.

It’s about time the Winter Olympics were held in the Southern Hemisphere, in July or August. This would be quite appealing to boreal audiences experiencing 90s in both Fahrenheit and humidity.

Launceston, Tasmania once considered making a bid for the Winters, but mounting bids can be as strenuous as hosting the Games themselves. New Zealand, Patagonia, and Lesotho are other options.

Canadians are mad for it, but most traditional Canadians trace their lineage to the British Isles, which didn’t have a lot of pond hockey or ice sports or even ice (the Little Ice Age being an exception to the rule) for many hundreds of years.

Unlike gridiron football and basketball, ice hockey was not invented by Canadians, but by British soldiers. Britain was colder in the 18th and 19th centuries, and bandy was played. That may look like a hybrid of hockey and soccer, but it antedates both.

Curling originated in Scotland.

But I’ll grant you the winter games have more truly niche events. My favorite is the one that combines skiing with shooting.

I remember he said that “someone” had asked him to edit his post. We may never know who “someone” was

And it’s part of the Commonwealth, so they can start their shadow monarchy there. Somebody get me Ginger’s number. Not the girl. She’s scary
.

Maybe Prince Archie, with his mother’s Bantu genes, will be the first royal to compete in Olympic track and field

Javelin?

I wonder if Mr Nair recognizes that if Whites find a way to withdraw from his world into their own the future may not be what he thinks?

Meanwhile, someone recognizes the problem

El Salvador President Asks if the Destruction of United States is Done Intentionally

https://humansarefree.com/2022/02/destruction-of-usa-done-intentionally.html

my friend’s cousin is Sonny Milano, who is now an Anheim Duck after being drafted in th 1st round by the Columbus Blue Jackets. But in that case, he had to move to Michigan to get in a high end Junior team. His dad worked for the Long Island Railroad, so it took a big chunk of his income.

More like a microscopic part of Dad’s income. LIRR union salaries are insanely off the charts; always in six figures, the leftmost number of which is frequently not 1.

There’s nothing like losing two disastrous wars and viscous starvation in the occupation after the last one for focusing the mind.

The two richest families in Germany got that way by selling discount food and basics,
God bless the Albrecht’s and Schwarz’s,

I don’t watch the Olympics. (I hate everything about the blue-blooded, socialist aristocrats who make-up the inter/national committees.)

I always felt that [American] Blacks should dominate those speed skating events; and summer cycling. Obviously, there aren’t enough Blacks living in places like Minnesota (i.e. close to lakes that freeze) who might want to try the sport. Also, they cannot afford to pay for the ice time at public rinks [in temperate zones], nor for high-performance racing bikes (plus city roads are a mess and their neighborhoods are prone to theft). So yeah, many Olympic sports are the embodiment of privileged.

Have you looked at the prices for ski lift tickets, and mountain condos, lately? Equestrian: a medal reserved for the British Royal Family. Yachting: now there’s a democratic sport. One Silicon Valley billionaire, a hockey fanatic, famously had a full-size ice rink built on to his McMansion. But I think his sons were more interested in playing golf (his other, sports passion). I’ll bet he has a family membership at every exclusive, private club in California.

How many people outside the first world have a chance to discover their innate talent for swimming?

Only those fortunate few who happen to live next to the ocean, a sea, a lake, a pond, a river, or a swimming pool.

I haven’t watched the winter Olympics in a while, but we were having dinner with friends and the wife is a mad figure skating fan. I’ve read about this 15-year old Russian girl that they’re already calling the greatest of all time. We were drinking Belgian quads, so we were agreeable!

https://nypost.com/2022/02/06/russian-figure-skater-kamila-valieva-15-wows-rivals-and-teammates-in-winter-olympics-debut/

https://www.nbcolympics.com/videos/skate-canada-15-year-old-russian-first-short-program

Not hyperbole. I don’t recall ever seeing a skater so obviously on a much higher level than her rivals. I like that they have a little scoring box now so you can keep track of the judging in real time.

The girlfriend noticed that it seemed the skaters were now all of the same body type: taller, more slender, and no thunder thighs. It seems that only the more squat Asian skaters have the big legs now.

Thanks Bill.

Here’s a thought experiment (which someone may have already described in a science fiction novel):

Consider Europe, and later combined with the Anglosphere, from the Enlightenment until, say, the middle of the 20th Century. Consider how much more advanced Western civilization was than the rest of the world.

What justifies the complaints and endless whining of those of non-European ancestry to this advanced state of Western civilization?

Imagine if after WWII some advanced civilization arrived on planet Earth from outer space, and just imagine if it brought art, literature, science, and technology that was as far advanced compared to Western Civilization as what had been achieved by Western Civilization compared to the rest of the world?

Would those who valued Western Civilization complain and whine about being blessed with the arrival of the fruits of such a new civilization, one that was so much more advanced than our own?

I have continued to ski ever since, and I have felt the increasing cost and the increasing sense that people and the markets treat skiing as some sort of affluent person’s privilege. It shouldn’t be.

There are actually a couple of interesting books about this trend in the ski industry.

I’d say golden age of skiing in the US was from the late ’40s until the late ’80s/early ’90s or so.

WO = winter olympics, or … world order!

even we old White creeps here

These days we prefer the phrase, “Men of culture.”

I’ll see ladies’ figure skating and raise by European womens’ track:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUxiFtpKXG-scfjvnGi9NFg

In “ordinary” European resorts i.e. not St Anton or Meribel – a 6 day adult pass in high season is about 190 euros.

You can still get say, a 4 day pass at somewhere like Les 2 Alpes for 210 euros. That’s not bad for 2268 meters of vertical. Day tickets are still 54 euro, up a few euro since I was there 7 years ago.

Of course, in the present day, the Covid Commies are empowered to ask for your papers at anytime.

I don’t get the biathlon. I’ve never gone hunting in the winter on skis.

So Steve, speaking of “Ice People” sports, I am recovering from some manner of cold and watching NASCAR at the LA Memorial Stadium.

There’s a “Half Time” show with Ice-T rappin’ and boppin’. They actually stopped the race, had a halftime show, and are going to restart the second half.

Dale Earnhardt Sr. is rolling in his grave. 🤦🏻‍♂️

You didn’t even pick the priciest. I just looked at Big Sky’s website. You can pay $227 for a single day ticket, and that doesn’t even allow you to ride the tram, which is the easy+convenient way to get from base to the top. I’m not sure which of those two things annoys me more. This is my local resort, but it a separate world.

What about rap and drug-dealing?

I’m trying to think of sports like lacrosse that are good for kids to play, not too dangerous, and which may have scholarship potential. Golf and tennis are ideal. Golf, I think, is the best. You don’t die unless you get hit in the head by a freak accident. Surprisingly number of scholarships. Loads of spinoff potential – getting to know the men in your neck of the woods who control the economy. Think of the real estate sales.

Poor Joe Rogan. That $100m paycheck from Spotify got in his head, and he decided to grovel and apologize. Now he’s finished. Even if his program stays on the air, he’s lost his independence, the reason that people tuned in.

Speaking of rubber necker events, why don’t they just make the Winter Olympics the same events as the Summer Olympics? Cycling… on icy roads. Kayaking… by pushing yourself across frozen rivers. Long jump… onto frozen sand.

Sorry, OT…but how many thousands of dollars would I have to contribute to SS for him to address Ron Unz’s claim that “COVID-19 Was an ‘Anti-Economy’ Bioweapon by the U.S. Against China?”

I would seriously like to know what he thinks about that claim.

But I’m also quite sure that I will never find out.

Harry was born a prince and will die a prince. That title cannot be taken away. It’s a blood genetic thing. And he looks a lot more like his father prince Charles than does his brother William. Archie is not a prince.

Prince of the United Kingdom Andrew Herbert is also a genetic blood prince. But only from his mother Elizabeth. Not from his mother’s husband Philip of the Royal house of Denmark. A royal house stationed temporarily in Greece for a couple decades.

Prince Andrew Herbert and his one night stand with a 17 year old prostitute is the least of his doings since he got out of the navy more than 20 years ago. Try blackmail extortion soliciting and accepting bribes gun running. That’s why Prince Charles and other PTB insisted his job as UK trade envoy be taken away. Jeff Epstein was respectable compared to some of his friends.

Another cubicle coolie who thinks it outrageous that anyone other than a cubicle coolie should earn a living wage.

One of the numerous reasons why I’m not a conservative.

Anyone who works for another person and gets paid by another person is a worker or working class no matter what the title or how many degrees he has.

One could be the top ice fisherperson in their local ecosystem, but if the fish ain’t biting, they catch zilch.

PETA would have a field day at that Olympics.

I was happy to note that Beverly Zu the natural born American citizen who defected to the Chinese skating team has had much hate heaped on her by the Chinese because she came in last.

Ha ha witch go back to China and stay there.

Internet archived?

Must of been a good read to get that attention.

Launceston, Tasmania once considered making a bid for the Winters, but mounting bids can be as strenuous as hosting the Games themselves. New Zealand, Patagonia, and Lesotho are other options.

With the highest lowest elevation of any country, Lesotho gets snow in winter and has a small ski resort, but as far as I know its snowfalls aren’t heavy or consistent enough to be suitable for all Winter Olympics events and it probably doesn’t have the resources to create huge amounts of artificial snow like China has done. Nor would it be able to handle all the other enormous hosting costs.

I’m trying to think of sports like lacrosse that are good for kids to play, not too dangerous, and which may have scholarship potential. Golf and tennis are ideal. Golf, I think, is the best.

Rowing (crew) is another possibility. Tremendous physical conditioning and it’s not the sort of sport that one has to start practicing as a small child in order to succeed.

Ah, the mighty Anaheim Ducks hockey team.
Anybody remember the hockey Long Island Ducks?
No?
Sorry for asking.

Archie is not a prince.

Yet. He will be soon.

Matt Baker can explain it in two minutes:

I would actually watch the Winter Olympics if this were the case.

As someone from the subtropics the Winter Olympics are not relatable or entertaining. Speed skating and the biathlon are interesting, that’s about it.

Cross-country running.

Please, oh please, where can I find this?

The people with the power to change this look on and smile. Everything is going to plan.

LIRR union salaries are insanely off the charts; always in six figures, the leftmost number of which is frequently not 1.

Another cubicle coolie who thinks it outrageous that anyone other than a cubicle coolie should earn a living wage.

Are you willing to make the same argument for the MTA that you do for the LIRR?

More than 40% of transit workers are black…

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kadiagoba/coronavirus-new-york-brooklyn-essential-workers-black-poc

“Living wage” is often a dog whistle for affirmative action. And who on this forum is most opposed to that?

Maybe Prince Archie, with his mother’s Bantu genes,

In our wonderful future of viral panics and negrophilia, the one drop rule will work in reverse. The trick will be to have as little actual Bantu as you can while still claiming the royal privilege of negritude. Archie’s descendants with their diminishing Bantu genes will have it made.

Archie might turn out like a previous Black Archibald… Archibald the Grim:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Douglas,_3rd_Earl_of_Douglas

Buzz, two words…Katarina Witt. Someone please post her photo.

The Long Island RR is a commuter line and part of New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority. It is a government agency; public employee unions are an inherent contradiction and should not exist. Sorry iSteve, but this means the cops and firefighter unions too.

Yes sir.

They ran the first half, stopped the race, pulled the cars in the pits, did two songs with Ice-T, and restarted the second half.

Couldn’t believe it either.

Thank goodness I’m an IndyCar fan. 😏

Never apologize. It’s a sign of weakness.
– John Wayne

prosa, men’s lacrosse, at all college levels, is dangerous. A rock hard ball at 100 plus mph can do some serious damage. Full contact and only light weight shoulder pads, elbow pads and gloves,helmet, goalie gets a chest protector, no one wears leg pads (field lax not box lax.) Some years ago the team captain at Cornell took a shot to the chest and died on the field. There is scholarship money but the good players play year round, indoor, travel and scholastic. Golf and tennis you can play forever. Rowing, crew is big around here, requires tall rowers with long arms. Can’t coach height. Stay safe.

I don’t get the biathlon. I’ve never gone hunting in the winter on skis.

The modern biathlon is a civilian variant of the old military combined exercise.[2] In Norway, the biathlon was until 1984 a branch of Det frivillige Skyttervesen, an organization set up by the government to promote civilian marksmanship in support of national defence. In Norwegian, the biathlon is called skiskyting (literally ski shooting).[3] In Norway there are still separate contests in skifeltskyting, a cross-country race at 12 km with large-caliber rifle shooting at various targets with unknown range.[4]

Called military patrol, the combination of skiing and shooting was contested at the Winter Olympic Games in 1924, and then demonstrated in 1928, 1936, and 1948, during which time Norway and Finland were strong competitors. In 1948, the sport was reorganized under the Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne et Biathlon and became re-accepted as an Olympic sport in 1955,[5] with widespread popularity within the Soviet and Swedish winter sport circuits.[6][7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biathlon

So, not civilian but military roots.

Finnish shooting match fun.

Good point, Buffalo. Also pro lacrosse pays shit.

Golf & tennis are the way to go. Look at this:

http://www.protennislive.com/posting/ramr/career_prize.pdf

Do you remember Paul Annacone? I vaguely do. He’s #489 and made $1.6M career. Not bad. Coaches now.

I’m sure golf is more lucrative.

BTW, the Russian figure skating ladies are now doing quad jumps. Wow.

But after the last few years of having blacks–and black dysfunction!–jammed in my face as normative, I’m developing a high antibody response. And I really appreciate not having my face rubbed in it and being able to see my normality.

Yes, exactly. I’ve been reduced to watching educational TV which has a lot of British imports. This has been mentioned repeatedly but again: why must there be a black character is every story, including the ones that take place in the 19th century? Those used to be the most entertaining British imports because they really did up the costumes and rubbed your face in white dysfunction, which the British make, in their gift for theatricality, entertaining – Cockneys and upper class gents, etc. The contrast. Now everything has a black character. I’m not exaggerating. I just turn off in disgust. When will it end?

As that great wit Mark Knopfler once said: A-look at them yo-yos…

Harry Markle, formerly known as Prince…

Aldi and Lidl, huh?

They’re both big in the UK, but I have to say I’m disappointed with Germans for eating the poor-quality food on offer. You can’t even get decent Kartoffelsalat mit Bockwurst.

Germans should concentrate on engineering products, like U-boats. Their Type 212 with air-independent propulsion is state of the art. Vorsprung durch Technik.

Anybody remember the hockey Long Island Ducks?

Yes. I was disappointed at the time that the brand-new Islanders didn’t carry on that name. Shameful, but at least “Islanders” has some class.

Other misnamed teams are

The New York Yankees. Wrong state; evidently a WWI-Cohan thing

The Minnesota Wild. They thought the rest of the state wouldn’t have accepted a “St Paul” team, but the whole world would have had they used the city’s original name, Pig’s Eye

The Anaheim Mighty Ducks. What would have been– indeed, already had been– a beloved mascot for Long Island was a cynical one for Orange County. Why not just call them the Disney Ducks?

The Seattle Kracken. Besides adding to the awful 1970s fad of singular names, this outfit will do almost anything to trade on the city’s 1917 Stanley Cup–America’s first– except the most respectable, as well as the most obvious, thing– carry on that team’s name.

Figure skating is a joke, Broadway theater masquerading as an athletic competition.

Wow. I didn’t think there was anybody left who missed the school figures.

That mean old Janet Lynn ruined everything! But, even when bombing the schools, boy was she pretty:

The school board locked [tennis courts] down due to supposed gang activity.

At the public school closest to me, the athletic facilities are fenced in. They’re off-limits during business hours, and locked down at all other times. The self-entitled schoolies insist that since taxpayers aren’t paying for extra maintenance, they shouldn’t be privileged to use the fields. (That’s gratitude for you.)

It’s also ridiculous how sports facilities, at public (tax funded) parks, get reserved for the exclusive use of school teams and PE classes during prime times. We pay (special assessments), they play. (More spending on education that gets hidden within non-school, budget accounts.)

“Most medals belong to a bunch of Scandinavians.”
Incorrect. Of the 3174 Winter Olympic Medals, only 527 medals have been Scandinavian. So only 16.6% of medals have been Scandinavian, far far less than 50%, meaning that nowhere near most medals belong to Scandinavians.

“tech savvy”? – Possibly Asian?

Boo hoo. Confederates and Ex Confederates were looting the fucking trains in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s, and they were heroes! You are a weak pathetic modern man who eats soy and has no sense of adventure, you are a far greater genetic loser and cuckold than those great men back then, and you are precisely what’s wrong with our country today. Fortunately most people in our great country are of far greater moral caliber and intelligence than you.

Two more words: boob job.

Obviously, there aren’t enough Blacks living in places like Minnesota

There have been far too many blacks living in Minnesota for far too long. Sure there were a lot of white antifa participating in the George Floyd riots of 2020, but they wouldn’t have been anything w/out the black underclass of Minneapolis doing most of the burning and looting.

He said something like: white girls are good for marriage, black girls are good as servants and mulattas are good for… fun

Harry will always be a prince but he and the vampire aren’t supposed to publicly identify as HRH now that she has convinced him to disown his family.

Archie is not technically a prince but I think he will automatically become one when/if Charles takes the throne, as the son of the monarch’s son. If Charles dies before his mom and William takes the throne then Archie would not be entitled to princehood.

Duck or Crow?

On the dog, nobody knows you’re the Internet.

Lacrosse Has Highest Death Rate From Ill-Timed Blows To Chest

How many people outside the first world have a chance to discover their innate talent for swimming?

Only those fortunate few who happen to live next to the ocean, a sea, a lake, a pond, a river, or a swimming pool.

Bed-Stuy fits most of those. How are they doing?

Still, many of these “fortunate few” face obstacles such as mosquitoes, leeches, crocodiles, or sharks.

Why Do So Many Africans Drown?

…[Lake] Victoria is “arguably the most dangerous stretch of water in the world in terms of fatalities per square kilometer.”

The traditional form of lynx hunting can be a very demanding skiing excercise. They might climb a tree so you need a firearm. I guess in the right conditions you can catch wolves too.

Moose are somewhat easy to catch in deep crusty snow and open terrain.

I was going to say something like “the NFL term ‘roughing the passer’ is about to take a macabre turn,” but “ski-by shootings” is better. Good one.

Today is the 70th anniversary of the death of King George VI and the accession of Elizabeth to the throne.

It’s also Ronald Reagan’s birthday.

…the first royal to compete in Olympic track and field.

11 Royals Who Have Competed in the Olympics

The biggest story in these Winter Olympics, thus far, is the 15 year old figure skater, Kamila Valieva, who is absolutely dominating women’s figure skating right now.

She is a Volga Tatar. There’s plenty of diversity among Ice People.

I think you might be mixing up Launceston with Queenstown in New Zealand . There is some low key club skiing in Tasmania but nothing like a serious ski resort
Australian mountains are too small for events such as the Downhill although New Zealand could do so
The only Southern Hemisphere places that could perhaps realistically hold the Winter Games are in Chile and Argentina ( Australia lacks the big mountains and New Zealand lacks the people and large winter sports development )
But the South American countries lack winter sport expertise and interest not to mention money.
These days the Winter Games are shared between a largish city ( for the ice events ) and a (hopefully ) nearby well developed ski resort .
Rather doubt any Southern Hemisphere venue would qualify

Just what the Olympics needs– two ROCs!

Exile all criminals to foreign countries or Alaska, or ensure they don’t have children, to remove future criminals from the gene pool (as we know, behavior is genetic in origin!)

If we had done that consistently in the 19th and 20th centuries, there would far, far fewer Italian, Irish and Jewish Americans in the US today.

Here in the US I have very few opportunities to run into Latvians or Macedonians or Slovaks

Just take a trip to Pittsburgh. You can’t throw a rock without hitting someone descended from immigrants from those countries.

You are quite right about the ethnic Russians playing for the Stans. The Italian team is somewhat similar – there is always a high proportion of ethnic Germans from South Tyrol.

They do make bikes tricked out for the winter, so outdoor races in the elements wouldn’t be that far fetched. But my hunch is that the IOC wants to keep distinction betweent the two seasonal Olympics. On foot Marathoning in cold weather would be interesting, how much faster would people be with overheating and dehydration significantly reduced (unless the Olympics are held on the West Coast or in NW Europe the summer heat is usually pretty nasty for runners)?

In Europe, well in Austria at least, skiing is still relatively affordable. You can still ski for a day at ritzy Kitzbühel for about $70 US, (and the food is much cheaper and better. ) There are still dozens of cheaper excellent areas where you can ski for under $50, especially if you get a block of tickets. The large number of Polish and Czech skiiers I see on the slopes suggests that people with middle class US incomes are still able to afford a ski vacation. Despite that, Austrians bitch all the time about how expensive skiing has become, and they aren’t wrong relative to lower Austrian wages.

Baseball also has lots of nasty head injuries. In fact, the highest rate of bad head injuries in youth sports, really making it the most dangerous youth sport (football is certainly rough but not that many kids get spinal paralysis or what have you). Hockey players often end up with missing teeth and for the goons there’s definitely CTE risk, and naturally you can be pile driven into the ice or boards causing brain trauma and spinal damage. Fun fact: Jack Lambert got his front teeth knocked out from an elbow to the mouth during a pick-up basketball game. All sports carry physical risks to some degree.

The Bobsleigh was invented by Englishmen…
How can you crash your own party?

Tukhtamysheva famously endeavoured to combine it with stripping but
despite greatly increased popularity it didn´t catch on 😀

The Finnish Army certainly did. During the Winter War and the Continuation War.

I was told once that the only two sporting events that couldn’t be bet in Vegas were Professional wrestling and Nascar. Seems about right to me. One of those stories that’s too good to check.

I cannot stand that guy from Forgotten Weapons. Total soy boy running around in army clothes LARPing. He’s knowledgeable, I’ll give him that, I just can’t abide his affectations.

Insurance is a big factor in ticket prices in the US – liability risk is much lower in Europe.

Skiing has also been damaged by global warming – the massive investment in snowmaking infrastructure and shorter seasons have increased costs and reduced profitability.

Otoh, investments in infrastructure have dramatically improved the experience. When I was a kid in New England the lift tickets were cheap, but waiting 25 minutes to ride a slow creaky lift was part of the experience. Now most decent areas have high speed lifts, long waits are very uncommon and the trails tend to be better groomed. So in terms of minutes actually spent physically skiing/dollar spent I suspect prices have not risen as high as they seem on their face.

Lest we forget, she did pose for Playboy. NSFW–does that mean anything anymore?

Back during the 1994 Olympics, my ex and I had a party the night of the ladies figure skating finals (the Kerrigan-Harding Olympics). My single friend Danny almost got himself banned for life by the wives when Witt, the final skater of the night for the last performance of her career, came to center ice. “Sorry, she should get 2/10 of a point just for lugging those breasts through the whole routine!”

Google the “Katarina Rule”. Which is why her competition used to call her “Honaker’s Whore”.

https://www.foxbet.com/NASCAR/?no_redirect=1

Is that how one avoids moderation on this blog?

I like the weird sports in the Winter Olympics, too — at roughly the frequency that we get them. The only part I hate is where we pretend that these are world-class athletes, rather than good athletes that happen to have intensively practiced an obscure game.

There’s nothing wrong with that, so why do we lie about it? Well, we lie about everything, so I guess why not.

One problem is that little kids might not know it’s fake. I had no idea the damage I would do by breaking a dining room chair over my little brother’s coconut. Turns out they don’t have stores for odd chairs like they do for odd pieces of wedding china.

Alina Zagitova, who won figure skating gold for Russia four years ago, is also of Tatar descent.

You’ll also find the occasional Dutch name amongst speed skaters from other countries.

I simply enjoy watching events where I don’t need to see any 3rd-worlders. The European womens skiiers and skaters are lovely.

Moose are somewhat easy to catch in deep crusty snow and open terrain.

And just do you do with it when you’ve easily caught a moose?

Sometimes things are not always what they seem in professional wrestling. One example is the Montreal Screw Job, which occurred in 1997. Bret “The Hitman” Hart was getting ready to leave the WWF for WCW but he was still the WWF champ. This presented a problem for Vince McMahon because he didn’t want to have Bret Hart take his WWF title belt to WCW and possibly defile the belt on national TV. McMahon was hoping that he could have Shawn Michaels win the title from Hart at the 1997 Survivor Series, which took place in Montreal. However that scenario didn’t work for Hart because 1) he’s Canadian and 2) he HATED Shawn Michaels and refused to lose the title to him.

McMahon compromised and decided that Michaels would win via disqualification i.e. the title wouldn’t change hands, and that Hart would turn in the title before leaving for WCW. Fast forward through a lot of other details, but Shawn Michaels puts Bret Hart in a submission move; Vince McMahon yells at someone to ring the bell; everyone seems completely shocked at what had happened. In the locker room following the match, Bret Hart demanded to know whether Shawn Michaels knew what would happen, and Michaels vehemently denied several times. Bret Hart also confronted McMahon and actually punched and injured him.

I’m not sure exactly who all knew about this outcome beforehand, but it could have been a little spontaneity from McMahon.

Calling someone “savvy” is rather aggrandizing. So, probably not Asian and definitely not European.

I stopped watching TV entirely because of the commercials. The kind of woke crap that they shoehorn into commercials is as off-putting as sitting through a Scientology lecture.

Why affluent families etc.?

Because winter sports like skiing are very expensive and only affluent families can afford the time and monetary investment.

“But after the last few years of having blacks … –jammed in my face as normative, I’m developing a high antibody response”.
.
For the last 2 or 3 months, whenever I connect to my brokerage web page, the screen shows a picture of a black. Probably 0.5% of the brokerage clients are black. Hey brokerage, stop shoving this crap in my face. I’ve started to move the window halfway of the screen so that I don’t have to see the ugly mug.

It’s nice to watch a sporting event where we are not forced by NBC to worship Black gods and goddesses with attitudes.

And I love that Russia is now dominating figure skating. Their male skaters — even the ice dancers — actually look like males, unlike the emaciated, effeminate male skaters of the West and Asia. And how about those Russian female skaters? Whipping out quad-triples like they’re yesterday’s triple-doubles, and they are artistic and gorgeous. Meanwhile the Americans and Asians could barely eke out a triple-double. Here’s hoping Russia sweeps the women’s podium.
https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/334571-meet-russian-figure-skaters-of-2022-winter-olympics

That is such B.S. that they still can’t compete as Russian athletes under the Russian flag.

Go Russia!

I think female skateboard downhill racing would be a viewer draw, as long as their professional attire required shorts:

I was commenting on that last night with my family! The Swedish guy who won gold and set a speed skating record was named “Nils van der Poel”, and the Canadian guy was “Ted-Jan Bloemen”. The ethnically Dutch really are to speed skating what that one Kenyan/Burundian tribe is to marathon running.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/bill-murray-viral-no-look-putt-pebble-beach-pro-am-1235087811/

Bill Murray Goes Viral With No-Look Putt at Pebble Beach Pro-Am https://t.co/Mt6vutG9Ll

— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) February 6, 2022

Ladies and gentlemen, Bill Murray. 🙈 pic.twitter.com/o5CVvxJRJp

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 5, 2022

Calling Buck Hill “skiing” is funny to those of us that live in real ski areas. Racing is dominated by those that grow up with awful ski conditions and obsessive parents.

If you live where the snow is good you just ski.

NSFW–does that mean anything anymore?

By the standards of the Current Year your final image of Katarina is basically fine art B&W photography.

“The only people who can ski for cheap are the local area kids who get training from the local resort in the hope they will become competitive skiers.”

Would be nice but not true. Resorts could not care less if good skiers come from their areas and are actively hostile to locals. Local ski programs exist but they are, without exception, strictly babysitting. The kids barely ski.

I suspect that all fighting contests eventually come to be rigged. It’s to everybody’s advantage:

Most ‘real’ fights are over in seconds. Not entertaining. Bad for business.

Real fights are dangerous. Serious career-ending injury is always a possibility. Bad for the fighter, bad for whoever invested in the fighter’s training.

The fighters, the promoters, the venue owners, the broadcasters, all have an interest in rigging fights.

When all the principals have an interest in committing fraud, you should expect fraud.

Remember Bryant Gumbel snarking that the Winter Olympics athletes couldn’t be the best in the world, because there were no blacks?

It may be expensive to play at Pebble Beach but at least it’s possible. So many of the top courses are private clubs

Make sure it’s dead before you strap it onto your car’s fender and drive back home. (Thanks, Woody.)

My favorite:

• Winter “Olympic moment” was when Kerrigan got kneecapped. Wahhhh!

• Summer OM was Smith & Carlos in ’68. If only Roseanne had been there to sing the NA.

When the Olympics moves to Palestine, the added sport of Blowing Up People will guarantee a medal for the Arabs. When it returns to the US, our trannies are going to dominate the women’s events; that I’ll watch.

The comments about the high cost of ski lift tickets reminded me that the government needs to sell off its (enormous) holdings of [mountain] lands. Break the skiing cartel; and the natural resources cartels, etc. Also, no more of these [ski area] liability suits (ski at your own risk). Break the legal cartel. (The last I heard, European ski areas don’t infantilize their customers. Trail map? There’s the mountain. Point your skis in the downhill direction. Al vita zein.)

Most families can’t afford that “quick vacation” and can’t even consider annual passes for disneyland and other SoCal attractions. They’re just not families that you may personally know or socialize with.

Those attractions’ annual passes are NOT at all affordable for most people, nor are annual ski passes. Millions of people just in CA are having trouble affording decent housing and vehicle and now groceries.

Living in a bubble detached from the reality of most Americans’ lives. The great bargain that supposedly are annual passes would elicit bitter laughter from people worried about being evicted, foreclosed, and/or losing their vehicles. That is a large and growing proportion of the population, and not just here in SoCal.

Are you still paying the corporations who push this garbage? If so, please, cancel the TV “Service” already. They don’t care if you “turn it off” when you’re still giving them your money every month.

Bed-Stuy fits most of those. How are they doing?

You’re conflating lack of desire with lack of opportunity.

Why Do So Many Africans Drown?

In the U.S., black boys often fear swimming because it’s harder for them than it is for other groups. The same density of muscle tissue that helps them run fast makes them sink fast too. Black girls don’t like to get in the water because it messes up their hair. No, I’m not joking, there is a scientific study on this but I don’t care enough to take the time to relocate it.

[Lake] Victoria is “arguably the most dangerous stretch of water in the world in terms of fatalities per square kilometer

If you work on a boat and won’t learn to swim then Darwin despises you and wants you dead. I concur with his opinion.

Wow, despite a very large denominator, I mean that’s a big lake.

People who live near rivers, lakes and oceans may learn the basic skills to avoid getting swept by the current or drown when their canoe flips. Maybe a few will really have a need to swim far or fast (pearl divers?) But none of that will translate to swimming fast in a pool. The four competitive strokes have been optimized for the still water of a pool lane. They’re impractical in open water so a guy who swims in rivers or oceans won’t train at those strokes. On open water you look around to orient yourself and avoid hazards, you adjust to currents and waves that lift and rotate you. Maybe an open-water swimmer will learn a decent breast stroke, but crawl (“freestyle”) and backstroke don’t afford the visibility he needs and butterfly is too energy-inefficient.

I thought twice about posting a nude, but had the same thought. This photo reminded me of the quote from the coroner in the True Blood series when he was bagging and tagging a pulchritudinous lass dead before her time: Great job, God!

Body by God, but she did a Hell of a job maintaining it.

I

wouldn’t be surprised if there haven’t been countless editorials complaining about how monolithically white Anglo-Scottish-French the Canadian delegation was. Partly because they looked so happy, relaxed and vibrant as they walked in, imagine if something that ‘looked like Toronto’ walked in. Almost like they were among people highly like themselves and it made them more relaxed and happy or something… And needless to say, everyone at home liked seeing ‘real Canadians’ too

I was living in Vancouver in 2010. I had been there over a decade and never felt like I was living in Canada, more like an Asian colony. I certainly realized this during the Olympics with all the focus on on Canadian athletes. This is Canada I grew up in.

I think I can Trump your story ( with or without Donald )
In the 1970s, I played a James Braid designed course, as a junior. It is and was a very unusual inland and upland links course. ( Maestro Steve, you know James Braid ) It cost me 15p ! ( £1.34 at today’s prices )

Kamila Valieva is Turkish from southern Russia

Friend has a son who has been blessed to play with the Jr. NY Islanders squad, cousin has a son affiliated with the Jr. LA Kings. The investment in time and money is off the charts. Pretty much traveling 3 weekends a month to tournaments across North America. Hockey unlike baseball, basketball or football is more club team oriented than school; kids skip high school games to play for their club teams all the time. My cousin in SoCal, even worse because unlike the northeast, LA to anyplace is a plane ride. It can pay off; my friend’s cousin is Sonny Milano, who is now an Anheim Duck after being drafted in th 1st round by the Columbus Blue Jackets. But in that case, he had to move to Michigan to get in a high end Junior team. His dad worked for the Long Island Railroad, so it took a big chunk of his income.

This is more of an American phenomenon however if you and your kid are living in a few areas (Boston Metro, Minnesota, Detroit Metro) you can get away with staying close to home. My younger brother played Canadian Junior “A” hockey in the 1990s into the 2000s, (we are not from the aforementioned areas) so he was resident in Toronto area in his late teens. Back in my day, the split was between kids whose dream path was to be D1 college hockey (in which case they wanted to be recruited by a New England Prep School which fed D1 programs, or Junior hockey (major junior back then was considered professional and if you played in that system you lost your NCAA amateur eligibility). Generally speaking more physical players gravitated towards Junior hockey over the Prep School to college route. I went to the summer hockey camps at Phillips Exeter as a kid, so you could see the advantages of that system if you were maybe smart enough to get recruited by Princeton or Harvard. Canadian Junior teams play a lot more games than the Prep Schools and NCAA teams (including seven game playoff series) so that’s also a factor to account for as well.

Gone are the days when the NHL was full of tough as nails Canadian farm boys who grew up playing pond hockey and used it as a vehicle to get out of 1500 person towns on the tundra. Now, on either side of the border it is a much more suburban sport for children of families of above average incomes.

Yes, exactly. I’ve been reduced to watching educational TV which has a lot of British imports. This has been mentioned repeatedly but again: why must there be a black character is every story, including the ones that take place in the 19th century? Those used to be the most entertaining British imports because they really did up the costumes and rubbed your face in white dysfunction, which the British make, in their gift for theatricality, entertaining – Cockneys and upper class gents, etc. The contrast. Now everything has a black character. I’m not exaggerating. I just turn off in disgust. When will it end?

I’ve been watching the 2020 redux of All Creatures Great and Small, which is a story about a greenhorn Scottish veterinarian who moves to a small village in Yorkshire to cure the County’s horses, cows, pigs and dogs.

True to form in the first season, there is an older black woman married to a white man who has a soliloquy about her husband accepting her when they knew that the village wouldn’t. She is a device which convinces the young Scot’s lover interest to call off her wedding to the Lord of the big house and pursue her affections for our protagonist. I do not know whether the black female character exists in Herriot’s source material but I doubt it. Maybe London, but rural Yorkshire?

As far as these things go, it’s not too obtrusive yet. I very well may be corrected in episodes to come.

I must say that this is quite the improvement over my recollection of the typical East German “female” athlete.

A few years ago there was a documentary on the doping of the East German women – as you would expect many were drugged (evidently unwittingly) from their youths with anabolic steroids. One such female shot putter later “became” a man and married an East German female swimmer.

tough as nails Canadian farm boys who grew up playing pond hockey

Loved the movie Youngblood.

She is an ethnic Volga Tatar from Kazan, which is about 1,500 miles north of Istanbul, and 500 miles east of Moscow.

“Figure skating is a joke, Broadway theater masquerading as an athletic competition”

More like artistic poetry in motion with lithe and limber bodies showcasing technical prowess.

In the U.S., black boys often fear swimming because it’s harder for them than it is for other groups. The same density of muscle tissue that helps them run fast makes them sink fast too.

I have the same problem, even though I’m 100% NW European according to the DNA test. (Disappointing; I was hoping for a trace of aboriginal or maybe Sephardic. But the Mrs has a drop or two of Finn, so the kids are multiracial.)

Coast Guard basic requires a swim test to complete. At the beginning, I could only do half the length, and was put into remedial class. Blacks were 5% or maybe 10% of the entire service, but an overwhelming majority of the class, many of whom didn’t know the first thing. Our first liberty came after a month, but the remedials couldn’t go. I got up to speed in time, but most of the brothas didn’t, and didn’t seem to care. It was a social event for them, and they weren’t in any hurry to go to the piers at Wildwood, a smaller, cleaner, whiter Atlantic City. (I sure was.)

The Coast Guard made sure every recruit’s teeth were up to snuff before graduation. Perhaps these guys were in it for the free dental care, and expected to be released shortly thereafter.

I don’t like any “sport” where judges determine the winner; or points get awarded (or not) for costume.

Speed/figure skating good/bad.
Swimming/diving good/bad.

Shot Put good. Vault bad.

I wrote:

“I’ve been reduced to watching educational TV.”

I thought that was self-explanatory: no I do not pay for cable. Nor do I watch network TV. Educational TV has a lot of British imports.

What about this is unclear?

True to form in the first season, there is an older black woman married to a white man who has a soliloquy about her husband accepting her when they knew that the village wouldn’t.

I saw that & it disgusted me.

It’s not from the original. It’s a “reimagining”:

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/all-creatures-christmas-special-anne-chapman-cleo-sylvestre/

Look: sometimes black characters in period dramas are good. If they fit into the story line, go for it. There were a few blacks in Victorian England.

But here’s my beef, as a writer: write your own damn stuff. Don’t adapt someone else’s ideas and distort them.

Don’t give us A Christmas Carol with a black Jacob Marley (I’m positive it’s coming).

But this travesty of sticking black characters in everything has so traumatized me that I’m allergic and probably overreacting.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/why-david-oyelowo-wanted-to-bring-diversity-to-les-miserables/VCAR6HRVSHXP5VTK6DD7GSNMOE/

There were 8 books and 90 episodes of the original 1975 series, so there might have been a black person sheep in one of them.

I don’t buy the muscle density theory. Dense muscles should help them power through the water. Compensation.

She hasn’t done badly:

https://usopm.org/simone-manuel-became-the-first-black-female-swimmer-to-win-individual-olympic-gold/

That is, until she and her kind take over.

https://pennathletics.com/sports/womens-swimming-and-diving/roster/lia-thomas/19456

This has been mentioned repeatedly but again: why must there be a black character is every story, including the ones that take place in the 19th century?

A new Kwik Trip commercial is preceding our informational videos. It’s long, and features a thin white mother and her four mulatto children, with a late cameo appearance by her black husband. It’s not short, either.

Kwik Trip, based in La Crosse, operates stores only in Wisconsin and Minnesota and, as Kwik Star, in Iowa. And not in every corner of those states; they deliver fresh meals daily to every store and thus keep to a tight radius from their HQ. (Basically the gas station equivalent of Culver’s, before the latter’s recent expansion.)

The demographics of this area outside the Twin Cities metro– and they avoid the inner cities– is as white or whiter than England, and “non-white” will mean Hmong as much as anything else.

This commercial is so alien to their core market that it must be from some new, urban agency. Perhaps the one who did the Cheerios ad that irked people back in 2013? Their previous ads feature real people, but these folks are way to professional and choreographed for that.

These news reports would work better as spots; they are certainly more representative:

Brutus, thank you. Katarina is how I picture some of our lady commentors here at iSteve. Stay safe.