Russia gives 203%

Imagine you are a bird. Your nest is a little ragged and a little low on the tree, but it is your nest. The Joneses have a nicer one down the way. Maybe you should go over, peck the crap out of them and take the place. Or maybe not. You could get hurt or dead, and would lose what you have here. On the other hand, if a rival bird came over to take your nest, you would defend it to your last breath. It isn't a great nest, but it is your nest. And it will be defended.

Evolution has encoded this strategy into physical characteristics measurable in nature. Humans have it too, by way of increased testosterone primarily. Putting aside life and death, we see it it in the way we play. Home teams win 54% of MLB baseball games. NHL 56%. NFL 58%. NBA 61%.

In the Olympics, the past 5 winter Olympic home teams have scored 144% Poolmaster pools in the year they host the Olympics relative to away years. Here are the data:

Over that time, Russia averaged 63. So coming into Sochi, Russia should have had 91 points to keep the typical home advantage. They had 129, more than double their average winter performance.

The Russian athletes came into Sochi almost on the uphill: crazy high expectations and a crazy leader who wrestles bears and bends frying pans while watching over you with those steely dead eyes.

Cross country skier Alexander Legkov raced 1 time early in the games and then was benched apparently for internal political reasons. How did he respond when his name was finally called for the 4x10k relay? He skied the fastest split of anyone in the field by 25 seconds! In a 20 minute race, that's like winning the Boston Marathon by 2 1/2 minutes, or winning the Indy 500 by lapping the whole field 4 times. As an encore he cranked up the final hill in the premier event, the 50k to lead Russia in a sweep of the podium. Legkov after the race: "It's more valuable than my life, I can't express how I feel. For 15 years I've been trying for this result."

They have a crazy leader, a cold challenging climate, and tap water that apparently can burn your face off. But it is home, and it will be defended.

Some called this Putin's Olympics, but it wasn't. It was Alexander's, and Viktor's, and Adenlina's, and all of the 13 gold medal winners for Russia. Their home performance should be a reminder to Putin that our evolution was not the one of the apes in 2001 A Space Odyssey, rather one of the birds. Societies thrive when they are physically predisposed to coexist.

Imagine you are a bird. You defend home ferociously so that you don't have to.

Not your grandfather's Olympics

Freestyle skiing and snowboarding events have been around since Nagano, so only the most curmudgeonly old-timer would shake their head at events with tricks called the McTwist or the YOLO or the fakey. Slopestyle is new, but it's not new, you know? I'm fine with new events. I'd watch speed skate team laser tag if they put it together. The Poolmaster (besides referring to himself in the third person nickname style) is not interested in the half-baked nostalgia that forgets the downside to hockey without helmets or opening ceremonies without LED. Forward progress!

However, Sochi has issues. Oh yes. Not talking about the baby journalists who can't take a joke with the falling doorknobs and no-flush toilet paper. The issue is that it is not a winter town. It is not cold. Today, of the 22 cities that have hosted the SUMMER Olympics, Sochi was warmer than 15 of them. Sochi at night was warmer than mid-afternoon Atlanta. Don't believe me? Here's the chart:




What do the fine locals of Sochi do for fun? Relax under their palm trees, play a little tennis, and get in some sailing. No ski jumping. No curling. Ever.

The men's normal hill ski jump was earlier this week. Here's a shot of the crowd:

Now, here's a photo of the same event in Oslo 1952:

Look at that. Imagine the people in the far upper left of the photo: Mr. and Mrs. Otto Oslo. It's a cold day in their hometown. They put on their best black coat and some sensible shoes and went to stand for hours to watch tiny specks launch themselves into the air. They couldn't even see them land, relying instead on the crowd noise to tell them if it was a good landing, a bad one, or a reallly bad one.

For Mr. and Mrs. Oslo, this was a world event, but a local one too. The atmosphere was certainly great because the excitement of the tourists was surpassed only by the locals who are just bananas for their event and are glad you came. How many of those exist anymore? Boston Marathon, Kentucky Derby, and that bizarro tomato fight day in some Spanish town. That's about it. We'll mourn the loss of those days, dulling the pain with great camera angles in HD and twitter updates about pinkeye (these Bob Costas jokes are getting cornea and cornea). And we'll embrace the fact that a Slovenian pop star can tie for gold in women's downhill with an old-school racer from a skiing family in a town of 4000 in the Swiss Alps. A place with no palm trees and where they don't go sailing. Ever.