We here in Fug Nation love to discuss figure skating — and in fact, on that tip, check out the drama-packed newsletter The General Anxieties of M; she’s done some JUICY primers on the skaters coming into this Olympics and you will devour them. But there are so many other sports, and accordingly, must be loads of other sporting drama. Are you a fan of a semi-obscure winter sport that’s about to step into the limelight? What should we watch for? Whom should we want to see? I am deep into Canadian curling right now, but the best I’ve got is just one anecdotal story from someone who’s worked with a variety of professional curlers and said some of them have egos as big as the NBA players do (this delights me, and also I think I would freak out if I saw one of the curlers out and about more than I would if I bumped into Lebron, so this may track). Oh, and one of the iciest of ice queens, Rachel Homan — she curled last year’s championships while 8 months pregnant and has an intense gaze that I never want to fall upon me — once accused her fellow Ontario curlers of bullying after they got mad that they think she’s flouting residency requirements and protested by… giving her a sportsmanship award. (Rachel is competing in mixed doubles in Beijing with the very cute firefighter John Morris, who also coached the Australian mixed doubles team into the Olympics and… presumably they had to appoint an alternate?)
But that’s not very juicy. Where are the frothing rivalries? What’s the gossip going in here? What are the biathlon vendettas and skeleton soap operas and luge love affairs? Or, what are the sports you think don’t get the love they deserve, and why? We love nuance and logistics, so please, make me a cross-country skiing fan. I am FOR SALE.
