Winter’s pure gold

There are many things I will never understand: why Kristen Stewart always looks so sullen (being filthy rich and incredibly famous must be so hard, you guys!), why anybody voluntarily drinks Diet Coke, why “Two and a Half Men” is consistently the highest-rated comedy on TV. Chief among these head-scratchers, though, is how anybody can say with a straight face that the Summer Olympics are better than the Winter Olympics.

Sure, the summer games have a longer history than their snow-covered counterpart. (The 2012 games in London will be the 30th Summer Olympiad, while the current competition in Vancouver is only the 21st Winter Olympics ever). And yes, summer athletes certainly display their chiseled abs in skimpier outfits than those bobsledders and ski jumpers. But the winter games have more drama, more pizzazz, and—yeah, I’ll say it—more exciting events.

In my mind, it’s not even a contest. Everything summer does, winter does better. Competitors with awesome names? I see your Usain Bolt and raise you a Picabo Street. Shocking scandals? Those underage Chinese gymnasts have nothing on the epic Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding brouhaha of 1994. Ridiculous, how-can-this-seriously-be-considered-a-sport events? Beach volleyball is kind of amusing, but curling is so gloriously absurd that even though jokes about its inanity are kind of tired at this point, it’s still hilarious when someone like Stephen Colbert decides to go out for the U.S. curling team.

Come to think of it, their sheer absurdity may be precisely why I have such a soft spot for the winter games. The Summer Olympics are “Chariots of Fire”—the Winter Olympics are “Cool Runnings.” Last week, an NBC commentator actually said, “Imagine what the ski jump would have been like a thousand years ago, in the age of Vikings and dragons,” as he was pontificating during the event in question. Can you imagine an announcer making a similarly senseless comment during the summer games, which always seem to be drenched with a sort of forced pathos?

Would the Summer Olympics ever begin with an ill-conceived opening ceremony like the one that kicked off the Vancouver games, in which a solemn group of flag-bearing Mounties—always funny—gave way to a cringe-inducing parade of cheery indigenous Canadian tribes? The whole debacle was capped off with a botched torch lighting, featuring a fire pillar that just wouldn’t cooperate. The dignity and ferocity of Beijing’s opening ceremony was certainly impressive, but Vancouver’s kickoff was more charming because of its preposterousness and its imperfections. Plus, Mounties.

Can you think of a summer event that invites as much gleeful silliness as, say, ice dancing, a sport in which mixed-sex teams that are sometimes married and sometimes—ick—brother and sister perform a mixture of figure skating and ballroom dancing, all while dressed variously like cowboys, chorus members from a regional production of “Fiddler on the Roof,” or aboriginal tribesmen, as some of this year’s pairs were? I mean, come on—in ice dancing, there’s a move that’s called “the twizzle.” It just doesn’t get more ludicrous than that.

A flamboyant character like Johnny Weir is a million times more fun to watch than a monkey-faced automaton like Michael Phelps, regardless of which one might actually be the stronger athlete. Phelps’s stint hosting “SNL” was a total flop, but Weir deservedly stars in his own reality show on the Sundance Channel. If there’s ever a “Where Are They Now”-style special on VH1 in 2030 about former Olympic contenders, where Phelps is then definitely will not be as fabulous as wherever Weir ends up.

My Winter Olympics fever is nothing new. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been captivated by the games—and especially, as you can probably tell, by ice-skating. When I was 10, I even bought an Asian American Girl doll and named her Michelle, after the inimitable Michelle Kwan. Although the real Michelle failed to snag a gold medal in Nagano, my doll swept every figure-skating award at the 1998 Pittsburgh Olympics (held in the historic Hillary’s Room Arena).

And even though now I’m at a point where I’m older than many of the athletes competing for medals, my enthusiasm for the winter games has never wavered. It pains me to know that some misguided souls don’t appreciate Scott Hamilton’s goofy enthusiasm, or the oddity of events like the biathlon, the only sport to connect cross-country skiing with rifle shooting.

But then again, if the Winter Olympics were as popular as the Summer Olympics, maybe they’d lose some of their quirky allure. If that’s so, I’ll gladly accept winter’s status as the redheaded stepchild of the Olympiad. It adds a certain charm to the proceedings—and it doesn’t make the games’ triumphs any less thrilling.

Hillary Busis is a Columbia College senior majoring in English and history. She is the former managing arts editor of The Eye. And Another Thing runs alternate Thursdays. opinion@columbiaspectator.com