Gun Control Story of the Day

Two Australian swimmers pose with legal, unloaded weapons in a California gun store and their entire country gets a case of the vapors. Read the silly story here.

London Children Won't Get To See Olympic Shooting Events

In the twisted world of Mayor Boris Johnson, even the mere sight of a gun can drive a youth to a life of crime:

Children will be banned from watching shooting events under Boris Johnson’s Olympic ticket giveaway.

London schoolchildren are eligible for 125,000 Olympic tickets but these will not include any featuring guns, as Games organisers and City Hall fear a backlash from the anti-gun lobby.

Giving children tickets to the events, at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, could have appeared at odds with Mayor Boris Johnson’s bid to quell teenage gun and knife crime.

A source said: “We decided it would not be appropriate. It’s the only sport children will not be able to go to as part of the Ticketshare scheme.”

The youth ban will anger some elements of the British Olympic shooting establishment which already feels marginalised by Games organiser Locog.

Georgina Geikie, 26, a Commonwealth Games bronze medallist and Olympic pistol hopeful, said she was “horrified”, adding: “This is a chance for children to look at guns in a different way. They are taking away the opportunity for the sport to blossom. How do we educate people that it is a sport if they cannot watch it?”

David Penn, secretary of the British Shooting Sports Council, said: “There is no link between Olympic-level shooting and crime. It’s like saying that a thief would use a Formula One car as a getaway car.”

A few guns in the hands of London shopkeepers might have kept the youths from burning and looting so many businesses a couple of weeks ago.

Urine Trouble, Ski Boy...

Here's a quick guide in how to get kicked off the 2014 Olympic team:

PREVIOUSLY, 8/11: A drunk male passenger was caught peeing on a sleeping 11-year old girl on a JFK-bound JetBlue flight on Wednesday.

18-year old Robert Vietze of South Warren, Vermont was on a red eye flight from Portland, Oregon when he started peeing on a sleeping 11-year old girl who was traveling with her sister and father, the New York Post reports.

Vietze was drunk, having consumed eight drinks, and stumbled five rows behind him (presumably towards the bathroom?!) when he started peeing on the girl. The girl's family was using the bathroom at the time.

"I was drunk, and I did not realize I was pissing on her leg," the 6-foot-4, 195-pound Vietze told law enforcement.

UPDATE, 8/12, 1 p.m.: 18-year old Robert Vietze was a member of the U.S. Ski Team as it has been reported he was kicked off. He is (was) considered one of the most elite skiers in the nation.

The New York Post reports that Vietze was returning from a training camp at Oregon's Mount Hood when the incident occurred. Vietze was in the running for the 2014 Olympics, but is name was removed from the team's development roster on Thursday.

"We have no comment, nothing to say," Vietze's mother told reporters outside their Vermont home.

The kicker? Turns out the girl was with her father, a Stage 4 cancer patient, and sister on the way to visit her grandmother in Long Island for the first time since her father's diagnosis.

So, besides being a moron, he's also underaged to be drinking. Did he get on the plane in that condition, or was he served alcohol on the flight? Lots of questions still to be answered.

Iranians Are Seeing Things

Look closely - what do you see?

Iran says the logo for the London Olympics says "Zion":

Iran objects to the logo for the 2012 London Olympics, contending it is racist because it resembles the word "Zion" and warning of a possible boycott of the games.

The secretary general of Iran's National Olympic Committee said Iran sent a letter to International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge. The letter claims the 2012 logo spells out "Zion," a biblical term widely recognized to refer to the city of Jerusalem.

The Olympic organizers aren't buying it:

"Our response is as follows: The London 2012 logo represents the figure 2012, nothing else," the IOC said.

I guess we'll just have to get along without all those Iranian gold medal winners.

If This is Any Indicator, London is In Trouble

They revealed the official mascots for the London 2012 Olympic Games:

They call the big Ferris Wheel in London "The Eye". Now they've got one-eyed mascots.

They sort of remind me of the mascot from Blades of Glory, except the flaming mascot from that movie had more personality:

Just wait until they try to do the opening ceremony. After China's tribute to mindless socialism and crowd control, London will have their hands full coming up with something that doesn't bore people to death.

The Olympic Gulag

Before the Olympics the Russian leadership challenged their teams to earn at least 30 medals. Didn't happen:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called for the resignation of the nation's top Olympic officials Monday after the country's worst performance in a Winter Olympics in nearly a hundred years.

Speaking on state television from his residence outside Moscow, Medvedev put the main blame for Team Russia's failures on sports bureaucrats, whom he called "fat cats," and said the country's sports pyramid should be turned upside down.

Despite infusions of cash, patriotic pep talks and bravado, the Russian team suffered a humiliating blow at the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Canada, coming in 11th with three gold, five silver and seven bronze medals. It was Russia's poorest showing since it began competing in the Winter Olympics in 1912.

"Unprecedented investments are being made in sports in Russia, but money is not everything," Medvedev said.

"We need to think about how we change our training methods. The new training system should focus on athletes who should be put at its cornerstone, not sports federations and their executives -- and not even the trainers, with all our great respect to them. Athletes are those who bring victories, and they should become the focus of our attention."

Medvedev said he will thank the few athletes who won medals at the Olympics and give them government awards.

The rest will find new jobs in the Siberian salt mines.

Olympic Email of the Day

From one of my regular readers:

USA Olympic gold medal winning down hill racer Lindsey Vonn has been stripped of her recently won Olympic gold medal by President Barack Obama.

President Obama is claiming the gold medal for himself by saying "nobody has gone downhill faster than I have!"

USA Wins First Bobsled Gold Since 1948

Night Train whips them all:

W.H. Auden wrote a poem called Night Train about a train crossing the border and delivering mail. Driving the bobsled nicknamed Night Train, USA-1 pilot Steven Holcomb crossed the border and delivered a long-awaited gift: a U.S. Olympic gold in four-man bobsled Saturday for the first time since 1948.

USA-1's performance — with Holcomb driving near perfect and Justin Olsen, Steve Mesler and Curt Tomasevicz pushing the sled at the start — was poetry in high-speed motion.

Starting at 3,044 feet above sea level and dropping 472 vertical feet with speeds reaching 95 mph in less than minute on one of the fastest, most demanding and treacherous tracks in the world, USA-1 was the best sled over the course of four heats in two days at the Whistler Sliding Centre.

I had a piece the other day about the involvement of former NASCAR driver Geoff Bodine in the design of the US sleds. You can read that here, and the article about the win has this:

It hasn't exactly been bobsled futility since the 1948 Olympics when Francis Tyler won gold in St. Moritz, Switzerland. But close. The USA won silver in 1952 and bronze in 1956 and didn't win another four-man medal until 2002 in Salt Lake City.

"We were the dominant power in the sport, then nothing in the '60s, '70s, '80s and '90s," NBC analyst and former U.S. bobsledder John Morgan said.

That resurgence in 2002 coincides with former NASCAR driver and Daytona 500 winner Geoff Bodine's involvement starting before the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. At first, Bodine wanted to build sleds that were made in America instead of buying them from European builders. He enlisted the help auto racing chassis designer Bob Cuneo and started the Bo-Dyn Project.

But after Lillehammer, Bodine conceded what he knew from his NASCAR days: "Once we built the sleds and put them in competition, then we figured, 'Hey, this is no fun unless you win,' " Bodine said.

When Night Train hit the track for the 2008-09 season, Holcomb and his team had a sled that could compete with other top bobsledding nations, namely Germany and Switzerland.

The USA also had a driver who could compete with Lange and push athletes who could compete with Germany's linebacker-sized pushers.

"When you've got great talent and great support like the Bo-Dyn Project and the coaching staff that's been there the last four years, that's where it starts," U.S. bobsled coach Brian Shimer said. "The U.S. bobsled federation has done it right. It's made our job pretty easy and made us look good. Steve is just a phenomenal talent on the hill."

Congrats to the team and the designers!

Oh No

Although it won't be shown on my TV for another three hours, I've already seen the results in Apolo Ohno's attempt to repeat as champion of the 500-meter short track speedskating event:

Apolo Anton Ohno was disqualified in the 500-meter short track speedskating final Friday night, apparently for causing a crash in the final turn.

Ohno crossed the finish line second behind Canada’s Charles Hamelin, whose momentum spun him into the middle of the ice as the race ended.

Ohno was in last place when he tried to go inside of Canadian Francois-Louis Tremblay to move up on the final turn. The American’s right leg appeared to hit Tremblay and sent him crashing into the padding.

South Korea’s Sung Si-bak also went down, although it appeared he lost his balance.

After several minutes of discussion, during which Ohno skated calmly around the ice, the referees DQ’d him. He threw up his arms as if to say, “What can you do?” and smiled before leaving.

He still has one more team relay race to run, but no matter what he'll leave Vancouver as the American who has won the most Winter Olympic medals in history.

UPDATE: Ohno picked up his eighth medal, a bronze, in the relay event later in the evening.

The Don't Call Them "Games" For Nothing

There's a shortage of important sporting equipment at the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games:

Rowdy curling crowds; spontaneous street parties; public drunkeness. You don't have to look far for evidence that the crowds at Winter Games in Vancouver know how to have a good time.

And, as if anymore proof is needed that a wild Olympic atmosphere permeates B.C.'s largest city, now there's an apparent condom shortage.

That's right. As you read this, an emergency shipment of condoms is desperately making its way across Canada to the West Coast city.

Health officials in Vancouver have already provided 100,000 free condoms to the roughly 7,000 ahtletes and officials at the Games. That's about 14 condoms per person. But as of Wednesday, those supplies started running dangerously low.

So naturally, the Canadian Foundation for AIDS research decided to step and make sure there were no hitches in Olympic action.

"When we heard about the condom shortage in Vancouver, we felt it important to respond immediately," said Kerry Whiteside, CANFAR's Executive Director. The organization assembled three large boxes of about 8,500 condoms, much to the relief of libidos at the Olympic Village. They're expected to arrive on Thursday.

That might not even be enough for the Canadian women's hockey team.

Canadian Women Hockey Players Gone Wild

The Canadian women won the gold medal in hockey yesterday and that set off a team celebration that's raised a few eyebrows:

The women of the Canadian hockey team politely accepted their gold medals and waved to an adoring crowd. And then the real celebration began.

More than half an hour after they beat the United States 2-0 on Thursday, the players came back from the locker room and staged a party on ice — swigging from bottles of champagne, guzzling beer and smoking cigars.

In a sport that Canada invented, there was never an option besides gold, and with it finally in hand, the home team let loose.

Meghan Agosta and Marie-Philip Poulin posed wearing goofy grins. Rebecca Johnston actually tried to drive the ice-resurfacing machine. Haley Irwin poured champagne into the mouth of Tessa Bonhomme, gold medals swinging from both their necks.

The celebration raised eyebrows at the IOC, which said it would look into the matter. Informed of the antics by The Associated Press, Gilbert Felli, the IOC’s executive director of the Olympic Games, said it was “not what we want to see.”

Well, it's not exactly the black power salute that cost two Americans their medals in Mexico City in 1968. I doubt the ladies will suffer any consequences.

A Moment of Olympic Courage

UPDATED and BUMPED: Joannie Rochette wins the bronze. Her mom would have been proud.

I hope this young figure skater ends up with a medal:

But what we witnessed a young Canadian figure skater named Joannie Rochette do late Tuesday night in a packed arena at the Vancouver Games was gut-wrenching on another level.

Here was a woman who on Sunday learned that her mother Therese died quite suddenly and extremely unexpectedly. She was just 55. But young Joannie hit the Olympic ice at the Pacific Coliseum nonetheless and proceeded to skate what turned out to be her best short performance of the season. She then melted into tears upon receiving a standing ovation from the crowd.

It must have felt to her like 50,000 hugs, and probably still not enough.

But Rochette, being a figure skater, most remarkably soldiered on by herself. She didn't have 50 some other teammates to lean on. She didn't have an offensive line and running backs and receivers to support her effort. She didn't even have a doubles partner.

All Rochette had for a few minutes was herself. She faced the music alone.

Her selection of music was utterly appropriate. It was the Uruguayan tango La Cumparsita. The lyrics begin: "The little parade of endless miseries ..."

Rochette stood alone on the brightest and biggest stage she'd ever been on in her life, and with the weight of losing the foundation of her life pressing on her, she skated like she'd never skated before.

"Words cannot describe it," Rochette said afterward in quotes relayed through Skate Canada's high performance director Mike Slipchuk. "It's hard to be precise. I have no regrets. It was a very nice, warm welcome. Hard to handle, but I appreciate the support. I will remember this forever."

Everyone who witnessed it will remember her performance forever too.

I can't imagine how tough it must be for her to continue to compete. She ended up in third position after the short program. Tonight she could end up with a bronze, and wouldn't that be something?

The Olympic Games' NASCAR Connection

The other night I noted that Snowboard Cross was about as close as you could come to NASCAR in the Olympics - side-by-side racing, high banks, speed, wrecks - it has it all. However, there is another connection between the Olympics and NASCAR that you may not know. Our bobsleighs are built by Geoff Bodine, former NASCAR driver and car owner:

Standing near Whistler’s Thunderbird corner as American pilot John Napier roared into view, former NASCAR great Geoff Bodine neatly summed up the difference between bobsleigh racing and motorsport.

“A driver controls his speed, can shut the engine off if he don’t want to go,” Bodine told Reuters at the Winter Olympics.

“Here the engine is Mother Nature. You don’t turn her off until you get to the bottom.”

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Bodine, winner of the 1986 Daytona 500, NASCAR’s showpiece race, is well qualified to talk about the two high-speed sports, one all growling V8 engines and concrete and the other requiring brute strength, polished runners, ice and gravity.

Always fascinated by speeding machines, Bodine was sitting at home watching the 1992 Winter Olympics and observing how the American sledders were struggling to match their German and Swiss rivals.

It wrankled with Bodine, one of NASCAR’s great innovators, and stirred his patriotic instincts. After a chat with close friend and stock car chassis builder Bob Cuneo he decided bobsleigh could use a little NASCAR technology.

The Bo-Dyn (Bo for Bodine, Dyn for Chassis Dynamics) Bobsled Project was born.

‘GROUND ZERO’

Eighteen years later and Bodine, who once reached 197mph in a NASCAR race in Atlanta, is as passionate as ever about bobsleigh racing and nobody would be prouder on Saturday if Steve Holcomb’s gleaming black sled known as the Night Train ends the 62-year wait for an American men’s bobsleigh gold.

“The whole basis for this project was to provide American made equipment for American athletes,” Bodine said.

“When I first started I was ignorant about the sport.

“Bobby had never seen a bobsleigh before and I had never seen a bobsleigh before apart from on television. We started from ground zero.”

A change in the Olympic cycle meant Bodine and Cuneo had just two years to design, test and build the first sleds for the American team at the 1994 Lillehammer Games.

“I was watching the Lillehammer Games at home and when the first sled went down the run, that was my proudest moment,” he said.

“I’m proud of what these guys do every time they go down a run, but that first sled in Lillehammer, that was something.”

Well done, Geoff.

Team USA Hockey to be Tape-Delayed to the West Coast

UPDATE: NBC agrees to broadcast the gold medal game live to all time zones.

This is really irritating for West Coasters who also happen to be fans of Team USA Olympic Hockey. Sunday's critical game against Canada was shown live on MSNBC (I think that was the first time I ever watched anything on MSNBC), but the medal round games coming up will be shown three hours late out here:

If you somehow get to play hooky from work or simply want to catch the U.S.-Switzerland quarterfinal men’s hockey game during part of your lunch hour Wednesday, grab a snack and settle in for …

The Ellen DeGeneres Show, followed by Days Of Our Lives and The Martha Stewart Show.

The U.S. will drop the puck at noon PST, but NBC is airing the aforementioned programs at that time in Southern California and showing the hockey game on tape delay at 3 p.m.

Those on the East Coast will see the game live.

So why are West Coast viewers getting the short end of the hockey stick?

Almost all of the men’s hockey preliminary games were shown mostly without delay on NBC sister channels MSNBC, CNBC or USA. But because Olympics programming on mothership NBC doesn’t broadcast live on the West Coast, viewers will get tape delays of hockey that’s shown there.

So if the U.S. advances to Friday’s semifinals, that game will be tape delayed by three hours on the West Coast.

Sunday’s gold medal game?

That is scheduled to shown on NBC at 3 p.m. on the West Coast – three hours after the game is played.

If you want to know what's going on in the game you better get a Twitter account. There's always lots of East Coasters tweeting along with the proceedings. By the time it's shown on the West Coast we'll all know how it ended and few of us will probably watch it.

NBC Isn't Doing Itself Any Favors

NBC's coverage of the Winter Games isn't drawing the accolades they might have hoped for:

...NBC has little hope of recouping its losses on the Olympics. The network paid $820 million for broadcast rights to the Vancouver Games, a 37% jump over the cost of the last Winter Games. (And, as FanHouse wrote recently, NBC paid all that money for the rights and isn't even broadcasting the game in high-definition.) Even apart from the licensing fees, the cost of covering the Olympics is astronomical, requiring an army of reporters, cameramen, and producers. The network expects to lose $250 million.

If the Olympics doesn't make economic sense, why is NBC shelling out so much to broadcast it? Some analysts believe the network benefits from the "halo effect" of millions of viewers who tune in for the Games but stay for the network's other programming. NBC is ranked last of the big four networks, but an Olympic halo could help pull it out of that hole.

Yet NBC's stingy coverage is tarnishing the halo. An estimated 138 million viewers are struggling to watch their favorite events in the face of restrictions and time delays. The network's coverage seems more likely to taint its image than enhance it.

To me the most disappointing thing about the Vancouver Olympics is that those of us on the West Coast, located in the same time zone as Vancouver, cannot watch many of the key events in real time. All of the prime time events are broadcast to us three hours later, long after I've already read the results on Twitter or on a news feed. There isn't much suspense, or for that reason much reason to watch, when you already know what's going to happen.

For instance, my wife enjoys the figure skating events, but we have yet to stay up until midnight to watch the coverage because by 9pm we already know who won and it's not worth the loss of sleep to watch the event. I don't even TiVO them.

The most exciting broadcast that we've had so far was the USA/Canada hockey game on Sunday afternoon. That one was broadcast live on MSNBC and it was fun to watch and at the same time read along with the comments from others around the country on Twitter or Facebook. I think the West Coast audience would have been much greater had they broadcast the evening events in real time as well.

What other live sporting event broadcasts to a major part of the country on a tape-delayed basis? Doesn't happen.

30 Years Since the Miracle on Ice

While some people are calling last night's USA win over Canada as a modern day version of the "Miracle on Ice", it's not really a good comparison. In 1980 Olympic rules banned professional athletes from Olympic teams, so the group we had in Lake Placid consisted of a bunch of college players who had limited experience playing with each other and certainly weren't the pros that played yesterday in the USA v. Canada game. That game might as well have been an NHL All Star Game.

Don't get me wrong, it was a great game but it wasn't 1980.

In 1980 the Soviets, on the other hand, fielded their Red Army Team which played together all the time as was as close as you could get to professional athletes. They were considered the best team in the world. The West routinely found themselves putting amateurs up against Eastern Bloc pros in various team sports. While I'm not sure allowing pro athletes into the Games was a good idea, it did serve to level the playing field for the West.

I remember February 22, 1980 very well. It was a Friday and after finishing a week of work in San Diego I was headed to my folks house in Huntington Beach for the weekend. The US team had already played better than anyone had hoped in the early rounds of the tournament. They had tied powerful Sweden, easily defeated the Czechs who were thought to be the second best team, and finished group play with three more wins. It was now time to face the awesome Soviets in the medal round.

I didn't get to watch the game, or even listen to it on the radio as I headed north up the I-5. I remember I was somewhere in the neighborhood of the San Onofre Nuclear Plant when I heard a breaking news bulletin on the radio that the US had defeated the Soviets. It was one of those moments that you'll always remember where you were when you heard the news.

That game also featured a memorable call from a young play-by-play broadcaster named Al Michaels who probably never imagined that his assignment at the hockey venue would make him famous:

Eleven seconds, you've got ten seconds, the countdown going on right now! Morrow, up to Silk. Five seconds left in the game. Do you believe in miracles? YES!

And thus, "Miracle on Ice" was born. For the first time in its history Sports Illustrated ran a cover without any caption or headline as shown above. Nobody had to be told what had happened.

The US went on to win the gold in the final game against Finland. That one I watched live on Sunday afternoon and I still remember the thrill of watching our team on the medal podium celebrating their unlikely win.

Unfortunately, shortly after the 1980 Winter Games Jimmy Carter decided to screw up the Olympics for a couple of cycles by withdrawing our team from the 1980 Moscow Summer Games, which resulted in the Soviets pulling out of the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games. Nothing of substance was accomplished by either boycott. Sort of like Carter's entire presidency.

In 1980 America desperately needed some good news. We had hostages being held in Iran, the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, interest rates were going through the roof, and nothing seemed to be going our way. Coming out of the fiasco of Vietnam and Watergate, America's self confidence was at an all time low. This one hockey game didn't fix all of that, but it did give America a much needed shot of confidence that helped lead us out of the mess that Carter and Nixon had left us. It was indeed a "Miracle on Ice".

Blades of Fury

Remember the old days when the figure skaters would get their individual scores from judges from various countries? Inevitably the American skaters would get 5.7-5.9 (out of 6.0) from judges in the Western Bloc and 5.2 from Eastern Bloc judges, especially the Russians. When a Russian skated a decent program he'd get 5.5, maybe 5.6 from the West and 5.9 from the Russians. That was standard fare for many a Winter Olympics

Well, the scoring systems have changed but the old East/West grumpiness lingers:

The International Skating Union changed the scoring system after Salt Lake, mandating specific points and guidelines for each element. It made the judges more anonymous, and threw out two scores randomly.

Still, there is the outrage.

There is always the outrage in figure skating, whether it is a 6.0 or a 257.67 in dispute. And so Friday, on the morning after Evan Lysacek won gold, much of Russia was aflame about his tight victory over Evgeny Plushenko in the men's figure skating on Thursday night.

Plushenko told a Russian news outlet, RIA-Novosti, this was supposed to be "men's figure skating, not ice dancing." His wife, Yana Rudkovskaya, called for a thorough investigation. An official declaration of sorts sprung from the office of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who sent a telegram to Plushenko that his silver was "worth a gold medal."

Which left poor Lysacek Friday to defend the gold medal that hung around his neck, even before he had a chance to get some sleep.

"Every event here has been so accurate, this event has been exceptionally judged, that anyone who argues doesn't understand the scores," Lysacek said. "(Plushenko) has been a real positive role model. I guess it was a little disappointing that someone who was a role model would take a hit at me in the most special moment of my life."

What goes around, comes around, and probably never ends. Suddenly, this was the pairs scandal of 2002 all over again - only it was the Russians screaming this time, and the North Americans playing defense. The East vs. West thing may no longer drive global politics, but it remains very much the engine and the divisive wedge in figure skating.

It was all a shame, really, because Lysacek had skated well enough to win that medal on Thursday night, in an Olympic year when there was no emerging star. The American did not attempt a quad jump, yet he was steady on all but a triple axel, landing neatly enough to avoid kicking up any snow.

He was precise and swift on his spins and footwork.

"I don't know why a coach would put into a routine something that you're not 100% sure of," Lysacek said about the decision to avoid a quad, "because you're probably going to go down under that pressure."

Plushenko landed a quad in combination, and afterward scolded the other skaters: "One needs to learn another quad." But he spent a significant middle stretch of his program mugging at the crowd, then blew a flying sit spin and became positively sloth-like by the end, showing every bit of his 27 years.

Lysacek's routine was better tailored to the new scoring system, which rewards every step sequence along the way. Yet the U.S. skater insisted Friday it was Plushenko who had tried so very hard to engineer his program for points.

"Unlike him, each step wasn't plotted out to get a gold medal," Lysacek said. "The goal was to skate the way I skated."

Before the Games Putin had challenged his team to bring home something like 40 medals, a feat they won't come close to reaching (as of today they have 5, the U.S. has 20). He's just like the communist leaders of old - get medals or get to Siberia.

I saw Lysacek's interview on NBC last night and I thought he was very gracious in how he's handling the noise from the Russkies. He did what he had to do to win, and that's that. He's a good role model for men's figure skating, and thankfully, he didn't dress up as a swan.

The Most Hated Man in South Korea

You'd think it would be the little communist dictator to the north Kim Jong "Mentally" Il, but it's actually an American short track speed skater:

Apolo Anton Ohno may be feted at home for his Olympic feats, but he's better known in South Korea as the "king of fouls."

The American short-track speedskater, who goes up against the South Koreans again when he races for a historic seventh Winter Olympics medal on Saturday, may well be the athlete South Koreans hate the most.

One company once sold toilet paper emblazoned with Ohno's face: Ohno joyfully winning the gold, Ohno kissing his medal, Ohno laughing. One video game features an Ohno character you can shoot in the head, and to call something "Ohnolike" is to deride it as a dirty trick.

The bad blood goes back eight years to the Salt Lake City Olympics, where South Koreans believe Ohno stole the gold from Kim Dong-sung, who finished first in the 1,500-meter race but was disqualified for blocking. Ohno, then a teenager competing in his first Olympics, threw up his arms as he tried to pass Kim, as though to cry foul.

As Ohno stepped up to claim his gold, his joy only sealed South Koreans' disgust for an athlete lambasted as ungracious and unsportsmanlike. Thousands of angry anti-Ohno e-mails shut down the U.S. Olympic Committee server for nine hours.

Hatred of Ohno is said to have fueled anti-American sentiment back then, and it doesn't help that his father, Yuki, was born in Japan, the nation that colonized Korea from 1910 to 1945. South Koreans try to trounce Japan as often as possible on the playing field, and Ohno is not exempt.

The animosity toward Ohno grew so heated that the entire American short-track team withdrew from a World Cup event held in South Korea in 2003, citing death threats against Ohno. In 2005, the athlete traveled in South Korea, reportedly under the guard of police.

Last year, with tensions appearing to simmer down, Ohno chose to make the trip for a World Cup event and was roundly booed by the crowd in the coastal city of Gangneung. And when a South Korean won gold and Ohno was disqualified, the audience roared and cheered with approval.

Ohno, older and wiser, shrugged off the booing. And he managed to earn the crowd's grudging respect with a clean skate later in the competition, drawing applause for an undisputed gold medal finish.

I'm guessing he's going to tick them off again in some of his remaining events.

Olympic Headline of the Day

From Fox News:

Olympics Slip-Up Lets Man Near Biden

Oops, I misread that. I thought it said:

Olympic Slip-Up Lets Mic Near Biden

If Mitt Romney Can't Be President Maybe He Can Be a Flight Attendant

An unruly passenger picked a fight with the wrong guy:

Former Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney was physically threatened by a passenger on an Air Canada flight leaving Vancouver, Monday morning, his spokesman told Fox News.

The incident was apparently sparked when a man sitting in front of Romney's wife, Ann, in the economy section of the plane dropped his seat back prior to take-off.

The passenger became "physically violent" when Romney asked the man to move his seat upright for take-off, apparently trying to hit the 62-year-old.

Romney's spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said: "Governor Romney did not retaliate."

After hearing of the incident, the pilot returned the plane to the gate and had the passenger and his bags removed.

No one appeared to be injured in the incident.

The former governor and his wife were in Vancouver for the opening of the Olympic Winter Games.

I'll bet Romney can't wait until he gets Secret Service protection...and his own airplane.