Winter Olympics surprise; prove to be a learning experience for all

The end of the Olympics does not signal an end of sporting innocence. Unfortunately, that is because the Olympics corrupted itself long ago with its drug scandals, bribery and aristocracy.\nHaving said that, the Olympics never cease to amaze and the 2002 Salt Lake City Games were no exception.\nThey started with an Opening Ceremonies in which broadcasters Bob Costas and Katie Couric showed so little chemistry together that by the end of the evening Couric, who is dating new Boston Red Sox co-owner Tom Werner, was mocking Costas, probably our foremost baseball maven, for her ability to get better seats at Fenway.\nMeanwhile, we all learned much. The one-person delegation from Bermuda actually wore Bermuda shorts at the Opening Ceremonies. India, a nation of 1.1 billion people, had one person in its delegation. The cross-country skier from Cameroon trains in Milwaukee. Well, where the heck else is he going to train?\nAs the Games progressed, mawkish pity suffered a surprising defeat. Skeleton gold medalist Jim Shea is the grandson and son of Olympians, and while the three-generation aspect of the story was amazing enough, Jack Shea, Jim's grandfather and a double gold medalist in speedskating at the 1932 Lake Placid Olympics, tragically passed away in a car accident about two weeks before the Opening Ceremonies. Once Shea won gold, this begged for typical televised sappiness that's more overplayed than "The Humpty Dance" at a house party.\nYet while Shea was quick to pull out a picture of granddad he carried inside his helmet and show it to the cameras immediately after crossing the finish line, he didn't bite much more than that. When Steve "The Cipher" Cyphers tried repeatedly to get Shea to cry on SportsCenter that night, Shea shot him a look and then changed the subject about how it's not about the gold medal but the competition.\nI like Jim Shea.\nWhile the sliding sports of skeleton, luge and bobsled proved to be the fastest sports in a Winter Games that is defined by daredevil acts, curling, a game at least 100 times slower, proved to be more exciting than the sliding sports.\nWhen you watch the luge, the differences are imperceptible. Unless you have experience doing it, how can you tell the difference? After four bobsled runs down the course, competitors are still only separated by tenths of a second, if that.\nWhen you watch curling, you play along with the players. I had never seen curling in my life prior to two weeks ago, and now I am a big fan. It doesn't take long to figure out the rules, and it doesn't take much longer to second-guess the strategy.\nBy the end, I had even picked up the curling lingo much to my friends' dismay: "Did you see it? Oh man, it came down to last rock in the tenth end when the Norway skip stole it after the Canadian skip lacked draw weight to get it past the guard near the four-foot. You should've seen it!"\nThe curling commentators for NBC, Don Chevrier and Don Duguid, did a great job as I think even Duguid noticed he looked kind of silly with a telestrator pointing out how some shots might be made. Chevrier later called Duguid the "Rembrandt of the Rink," and Duguid later lashed out at anybody who had the gall to call it "shuffleboard on ice."\nWhile curling enthralled as the gentleman's game of the Games, figure skating continued to be the least gentlemanly. The pairs controversy that concluded with Canada's Jamie Sale and David Pelletier winning a gold medal turned the diva campiness of it all up a notch.\nAccording to Sports Illustrated, Marie-Reine Le Gougne, the French judge at the center of the French-Russian vote-swapping controversy, only admitted that she was pressured to vote a particular way. She did not admit she actually was in cahoots with anybody and later said that she voted in favor of the Russians despite being pressured to vote for the Canadians. Then, Le Gougne changed her story about ten more times.\nSo while giving Sale and Pelletier a gold medal was a rare example of a righteous use of power by an International Olympic Committee President -- kudos, Dr. Jacques Rogge -- it only opened up a large can of worms that spread to claims of officiating improperly in ice dancing, ladies figure skating, the U.S.-Russia men's ice hockey game (when Russian coach Slava Fetisov called the U.S.'s 3-2 win predetermined because of the North American referee) and that Glutton Bowl that they had on Fox last Thursday.\nAll in all, the 34 medals the U.S. won was the real standout and partially attributable to the U.S. Olympic Committee benefactor who was upset by the U.S. winning only six medals at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary and determined to see things change.\nHis name: George Steinbrenner. Now that's amazing.