Olympics

[Lexxi]

Had to be a planet to qualify, sorry

Why? It's the Olympics, not the World Games.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Soooo. Winter Games are on! This year we're in Italy, with the official hosts being "Milano/Cortina", with Milan hosting all of the ice events and the rest being hosted at various locations across Cisalpine Gaul.

The opening ceremony was today. Prior to it, IOC president Kirsty Coventry kindly implored fans not to boo US vice-president JD Vance. Different segments of the OC were held in four different towns which was interesting, Mariah Carey sang, and the crowd at the stadium in Milan resoundingly booed JD Vance. It was a pretty nice OC, if a bit long.

 

[Noodles]

I had the opening ceremony on earlier. Boy that was looooong.

 

[Isabeau]

I enjoyed it. I may have purchased a certain puffer wrap I fell in love with

Mariah Carey? Why?

 

[Sid]

I had the opening ceremony on earlier. Boy that was looooong.

The Olympics should be about the sports.
I always skip the opening and closure ceremonies and during the wintergames a lot of sports too.

 

[Isabeau]

Italy says railways hit by 'serious sabotage' as Winter Olympics begin

Police say they are investigating three incidents targeting rail infrastructure that caused travel delays.

www.bbc.com

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Day 1 sees the US with zilch in the men's skiing events, lol.

So far there's a 3-way tie for 1st between Norway, Japan, and hosts Italy, with 3 medals - one of each color! - apiece.

 

[Casey Pelous]

Wow. Lindsey Vonn. The woman is TOUGH!

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2026/02/07/lindsey-vonn-downhill-competition-start-list/88566631007/

If you have never skied at a reasonably high level, you really cannot imagine the sheer violence of downhill skiing. It is not done on snow. It looks like snow, but it is snow that they have been dumping tons of rock salt on for a week or more to get it to melt during the day and freeze solid at night. You know those 5-pound ice blocks they sell? It's that sort of ice. As a friend of mine said, "You can see an old pack of Marlboros down there from three seasons ago." It is ungodly fast and ungodly difficult to ski properly, even at a moderate pace, because your edges MUST claw into that ice or your skis just slide out from under you and now you find yourself sliding down the hill in an undignified fashion. That hill, remember, is solid ice.

Everyone knows Formula 1 cars go fast. You just can't appreciate how incredibly fast until you stand next to the course. I got to be a course marshall at a US Formula 1 race run on a street course. (Basically, you stand there and watch the race. It helps to be in The Media to get the gig.) At one point a motorcycle cop pulled up next to me to watch. As the first cars went by at full speed and still hadn't hit the brakes at about 200 meters before a hard, flat right turn, he involuntarily shouted, with considerable alarm, "Holy shit!" which was precisely the same reaction I had had the day before.

Downhill ski racing is the Formula 1 of skiing. When the downhill ski racers go by, you can hear their skis ripping through the surface of that ice, and they make a "fwoomp" sound like a projectile going by.

The first few skiers down -- not racers, but "forerunners" -- leave deep ruts around the flags that mark the course. The idea for the racers is to keep your ski right in that rut -- at over 80 mph -- because otherwise it wants to launch you like a jet off a carrier, in which case you get to experience an 80-mph car wreck without the car. If you manage to stay in the rut, it wants to reduce your knee to kit form. As the race goes on, the ruts get deeper and deeper and it gets harder and harder to get a good time.

Lindsey is skiing hurt -- I think she just blew up her ACL a week ago. Having had that injury, I can tell you just walking hurts like hell. Skiing a downhill course at Olympic qualifying speeds? At 41 years old?? Good lord -- she's awesome and insane and a little terrifying.

"I will stand in the starting gate tomorrow and know I am strong. Know that I believe in myself. Know that the odds are stacked against me with my age, no ACL and a titanium knee — but know that I still believe," Vonn wrote on Instagram. "And usually, when the odds are stacked against me the most, I pull the best of what’s inside me out."

These are the stories that make the Olympics for me. I hope she kicks ass and takes names.

 

[Free]

Using -gate for scandal naming has reached a new low. Or high, as the case may be. The writer behind this piece takes advantage of it (not the -gate, but the other part).

Penisgate erupts at Olympics; scandal exposes risks of bulking your bulge

Claims of penis injections in ski jumpers has fillers spewing into the news.

arstechnica.com

As the 2026 Olympic Winter Games begin today, news articles are swelling with juicy claims that male ski jumpers have injected their penises with fillers to gain a flight advantage.

As the rumor goes, having a bigger bulge on a required 3D body scan taken in the pre-season could earn jumpers extra centimeters of material in their jumpsuits—and a suit’s larger nether regions provide more surface area to glide to the gold. Even a small increase can make a satisfying difference in this sport. A 2025 simulation-based study published in the journal Frontiers in Sports and Active Living suggested that every 2 cm of extra fabric in a ski jumpsuit could increase drag by about 4 percent and increase lift by about 5 percent. On a jump, that extra 2 cm of fabric amounts to an extra 5.8 meters, the simulations found.

 

[Casey Pelous]

Welp, that didn't work out. Here's how Lindsey's day ended. She's the horizontal dot being hoisted into the rescue copter.

Her arm clipped a pole 13 seconds into her run. No definitive word on her injuries yet, except she's in stable condition.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Lindsey is skiing hurt -- I think she just blew up her ACL a week ago. Having had that injury, I can tell you just walking hurts like hell. Skiing a downhill course at Olympic qualifying speeds? At 41 years old?? Good lord -- she's awesome and insane and a little terrifying.

Another article about that:

https://people.com/lindsey-vonn-acl-injury-skier-shuts-down-doctors-speculation-11902051

“Just because it seems impossible to you doesn’t mean it’s not possible,” she continued. “And yes, my ACL is 100% ruptured. Not 80% or 50%. It’s 100% gone.”

She IS tough... that much is certain. Tough and strong willed. ...but maybe a bit brash...

I know shit about skiing, but have a lot of experience with powerlifting. There is such a long history of good lifters ignoring injuries like this only for them to just get worse.

 

[Casey Pelous]

Another article about that:

https://people.com/lindsey-vonn-acl-injury-skier-shuts-down-doctors-speculation-11902051

She IS tough... that much is certain. Tough and strong willed. ...but maybe a bit brash...

I know shit about skiing, but have a lot of experience with powerlifting. There is such a long history of good lifters ignoring injuries like this only for them to just get worse.

If one could somehow just tear the ACL, then, yes, it would be unwise to keep going. Truth is, in a ski accident, such as the one that tore her ACL, you have five-foot-long boards mounted quite firmly to your legs, and you're moving fast, so basically everything in the knee gets mangled, anyway. My "ACL" injury was actually the Anterior Cruciate Ligament, the Posterior Cruciate Ligament (so, both of the ligaments that cross inside the knee joint and sort of rubber-band the whole thing together) as well as the LCL, the lateral collateral ligament, that runs on the outside of the knee from the top bone to the bottom bone. Oh, and the cartilage in between the bones was shredded. That's pretty typical of these injuries, so her knee was toast, anyway. She obviously is about as well "pre-habbed" as she could be, and it is legal for her to wear a custom-made brace to hold the knee in alignment.

It sounds like she ended up with a fracture.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Welp, that didn't work out. Here's how Lindsey's day ended. She's the horizontal dot being hoisted into the rescue copter.

Her arm clipped a pole 13 seconds into her run. No definitive word on her injuries yet, except she's in stable condition.

That is a real shame, but she definitely finished her Olympic career on her own terms, so kudos to her all the same!

 

[Veritable Quandry]

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

RaiSport is the Italian channel that is contracted to provide Olympics coverage for host nation Italy. Its programming director, a guy named Paolo Petrecca, assigned himself to commentate the opening ceremony, and apparently made a total dog's breakfast of the job. His opening comment misidentified the name of the stadium he was reporting from, and things just went downhill from there.

Before long, Petrecca told viewers, "The show continues with Mariah Carey," as the cameras focused on Matilda de Angelis, a famous Italian actress more than 20 years younger than the US vocalist.

When International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry walked into the stadium with Italian President Sergio Matarella, Petrecca announced "Matarella ... and his daughter."

He also reportedly did not recognize some of Italy's own teams and athletes, talked over the performances and speeches, and made borderline-racist remarks about some athletes from other nations.

His commentary was so embarrassing that RaiSport's journalists as a union have announced they will be omitting their bylines from their reporting for the rest of the Games and after the Olympics are over they intend to hold a three-day strike, just to protest the travesty.

The network has stated that Petrecca has been removed from the team that will commentate the closing ceremony.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Ben Phillips (@benphillips76.bsky.social)

Plans to invade Greenland have just been cancelled after this

bsky.app

 

[Isabeau]

That wasn’t at the Olympics, but no matter.

 

[Free]

Oops.

Winter Olympic medals are breaking

After making the podium at the Olympics, some athletes have found that their hard-earned medals are falling off their ribbons.

www.youtube.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Love in a cold climate: Winter Olympic village runs out of condoms after three days

Free condoms for competitors at the Winter Olympics have run out within a record-breaking three days, according to La Stampa.
“The supplies ran out in just three days,” an anonymous athlete told the Italian newspaper. “They promised us more will arrive, but who knows when.”

 

[Casey Pelous]

Love in a cold climate: Winter Olympic village runs out of condoms after three days

"Citius, Altius, Fortius -- Communiter!"