China '22, Week 1: More Scandals, Less Snow.

 The Winter Olympics in Beijing continued on its dreary pace with restrictions sucking the life out of it.  And that's without China doing all it can to try and eradicate the COVID-19 virus and its Omicron variant from within its borders.  In other news from the week:

• Reacting to worldwide disgust over their alleged treatment of Uyghurs, the Chinese cynically used an Uyghur skier to carry the Olympic flame for the opening ceremonies.
• What looked like silos from an abandoned nuclear power plant (which the Chinese tell us aren't really) were hard to miss during the freestyle skiing competition.  If this were Springfield, USA (hometown of "The Simpsons") instead of Beijing, plant owner Montgomery Burns would be in his office rubbing his hands and saying "Excellent!".  Nonetheless, it looks weird.
• What snow there is, by the way, is 100 percent man-made.  Just like your local ski slope.
• The scandals keep coming.  Kamila Valieva, a 15-year old figure skater from Russia (known as the Russian Olympic Committee for these Games), is currently allowed to compete in spite of testing positive for a banned substance.  It's the reason why the final results for Team Figure Skating have been delayed, and why her place in the Women's Figure Skating competition is in doubt.

We need to talk about Mikaela Shiffrin, the heir apparent to now-retired Lindsey Vonn as America's alpine skiing queen.  Pegged to win several medals in Beijing, she flamed out in her first two races by missing early gates.  After the second slipup, NBC cameras caught Shiffrin rolled up in a ball of misery out of bounds for several minutes while other skiers whizzed past her.  The question became:  Are we witnessing the next Simone Biles, whose legendary withdrawal from several gymnastic events at the Tokyo Olympics, put athletes and mental health front and center?  Turns out, no. Shiffrin completed her Super G run the following day without incident and without medals.  We'll see what happens next.

The medal count as of 2/13/ 22 reads like this (from ESPN.com):

NORWAY  Nine gold, five silver, seven bronze= 21

ROC           Four gold, five silver, eight bronze=17

GERMANY  Eight gold, five silver, one bronze=14

AUSTRIA  Four gold, six silver, four bronze=14

CANADA   One gold, four silver, nine bronze=14

U.S.              Six gold, five silver, one bronze=12 (tied for sixth with Netherlands)

NBC is, predictably, getting hammered in the TV ratings.  But they don't seem to be too concerned about it, because the numbers on streaming service Peacock and social media are trending upwards so far.  So in the end, this may not be the most watched Olympics ever.  Instead, this might be the most viewed ever.  We shall see.

Another week to go.  Who knows, maybe a war might start.