XXI Winter Olympics: Pleshenko's Round the Bend, Korea Blew It & What is Up with Japan?!

It seems that the modern world has forgotten the purpose and soul of the Olympic Games.

I had commented in my last post, "Round Three of the XXI Winter Olympics" (http://traislinge.blogspot.com/2010/02/round-three-of-xxi-olympic-madness.html) that Yevgeny was in the top place, with Evan Lysacek behind for silver. That night had been the Mens' Short Program and it was wonderful. It was a good show all around. Many skaters were brand-new to the Olympic skating experience and fell or flubbed landings but still did a good job - I should think them worthy of applause just to get up and continue their routines after such a fall. And the senior skaters even had their issues, but let's look at the bigger/biggest picture - they are all in the OLYMPICS! The highest standard of Olympic sportsmanship ever to grace the world!

Yevgeny Plushenko did a techinically adept performance but was not emotionally there for this short program. Any robot could have done this and been marked well, but Yevgeny did not really earn the 90.86 that he had in the Mens Short Program. The rest came in through the 70s and then Even Lysacek blew him out of the water! It was staggering.

So ever the sore loser, Yevgeny griped about it in a newscast. But, wait, there's more... This came out:

"In Plushenko's mind (and website), he's the platinum medal winner

By Maggie Hendricks

Evgeni Plushenko's long, delusional journey continues. Just days after the silver medalist for men's figure skating denied that Evan Lysacek is the true champion of men's figure skating, he has apparently awarded himself a platinum medal. From his official website:

It reads, "Silver of Salt Lake, Gold of Torino, Platinum of Vancouver." What's impressive here is that not only has Plushenko's website team fabricated an Olympic medal, it designed a platinum medal, too. Bravo. That's commitment to a delusion.

Previously, Plushenko ripped gold medalist Evan Lysacek for not attempting a quad jump, and even Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin weighed in on the controversy, saying Plushenko "performed the most accomplished program on the Vancouver ice." Lysacek responded to the criticism with class, but Plushenko clearly hasn't come to grips with the fact that the gold medal eluded him in Vancouver."

From Another Article:

"Adding fuel to the fire that Yevgeny Plushenko has been a sore loser in his defeat to America's Evan Lysacek, on the morning of Tuesday February 23, the Russian skater's official website featured a brand new accomplishment.

The "platinum" medal from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

Widely regarded as better than gold, the element platinum hasn't officially made its way into the Winter Games as a medal yet. Although there are English and Russian versions of his website, it didn't appear to be a translation issue. The text above his Salt Lake City Olympic medal read "Silver of Salt Lake" while his Vancouver medal read "Platinum of Vancouver".

Plushenko's agent responded

to the story by saying the Olympic silver medalist isn't awarding himself a new color of medal and just wants to put the furor over the men's final behind him. Ari Zakarian says whoever did the "stupid thing" had no authority, and the figure skater isn't even aware of it. There were no labels below the medals as of Tuesday afternoon. "It's absolutely a mistake. Yevgeny has absolutely no idea about this. Absolutely no idea," Zakarian said. "Nobody from our team is awarding a platinum medal."

As for Plushenko's unhappiness with the final results, Zakarian says the three-time world champion has moved on and is looking forward to competing again. Plushenko, the 2006 Olympic champion, barely lost out on the gold medal in Vancouver to Lysacek. After the competition, Plushenko complained that Lysacek's program didn't feature a quadruple jump, and so the U.S. skater didn't deserve to win.

It was an upset the likes of which figure skating rarely sees. Plushenko, who ended a three-year retirement with the sole goal of winning gold, hadn't finished anywhere but first since the 2004 European championships. He was the defending Olympic gold medalist and silver medalist in 2002, and a three-time world champion. And Plushenko had the all-important quad, the four-revolution jump that's been a must-have for every Olympic men's champion since Ilia Kulik in 1998. "Quad is quad. If the Olympic champion doesn't know how to jump the quad, I don't know," Plushenko sniffed afterward. "Now it's not men's figure skating, it's dancing. That's my point."

"All I know is he's been really positive to me and been a really consistent skater through the years, and I've tried to learn from that," Lysacek said Friday morning, still basking in the glow of his Olympic gold medal. "I guess I'm a little disappointed someone who I saw as my role model would take a hit at me in one of the most special moments of my life.

"It's tough to lose. It's not easy, especially when you think, no matter what, you're going to win. It's a really tough pill to swallow," he added. "We'll just try not to take it out of context and give him the benefit of the doubt. And congratulations to him on his third Olympic medal."

Whatever color that medal may be."(It will be interesting to see if this is really a hoax...)

Well, this year, all b ets are off and the ugliest of all - disgruntled, poor, sore-loser idiots have suddenly come out of the woodwork to malign their fellow Olympiads. Openly, using the press to do it. It is disgusting.

The Koreans were the first to display what I would consider egregious unsporting behaviour. LEE Jung-Su made this statement after the 1500 meter mens race on Saturday (13 February):

"South Koreans are possessive and prickly about short-track speed skating, until now the country's best Winter Olympics event. The Asian nation of 49 million routinely churns out Olympic medalists in the short track, and two coaches on the U.S. short-track speed skating team were born and raised in South Korea.

At these games, the South Koreans have emerged as a surprise force not only on the short track but also on the long track. South Korea has five medals so far, one of them a gold to Ohno's silver.

The traditional rivalry between Ohno and the South Koreans flared up again in that race, the 1,500 meters. Three South Koreans were in the lead as they rounded the last turn, but two crashed out, allowing Ohno to slip across the finish line in second.

Incensed gold medalist Lee Jung-su criticized Ohno as "too aggressive" in a post-race news conference. "Ohno didn't deserve to stand on the same medal platform as me," he told Yonhap. "I was so enraged that it was hard for me to contain myself during the victory ceremony." South Korean broadcaster SBS posted a clip online from the semifinal with a caption saying it shows Ohno "pushing" Lee.

"I understand that in sports, you naturally want to win. But sports competitions should be won through fair play," Jung Kyung Kim, a 21-year-old college student, said in central Seoul on Friday.

Ohno called the final a "crazy race" full of bumping and grabbing. He also admitted he had been hoping to capitalize on a South Korean mistake. "At the end of the race, I was hoping for another disqualification, kind of like what happened in Salt Lake City," Ohno said. Still, Ohno later offered his congratulations to Lee in a Twitter post. "Wow Koreans are strong as always," he added.

The rivals will have a chance to put their trash-talking to the test this weekend. Ohno, Lee and the two who crashed in the 1,500, Lee Ho-suk and Sung Si-bak, will compete Saturday in Canada to qualify for the 1,000-meter final. If he wins, Ohno will become the most decorated American in Winter Olympics history.

But at least one blogger hopes to see him fall flat on his face: "He should fall down on the ice and have (figure skater) Kim Yu-na land on his disgusting face after she performs a triple axel."

This is beneath them, to take a loss that they caused so poorly. I saw that race - they were SO tightly packed that this accident was truly inevitable. Ohno was yards behind them and had the Koreans not all been knotted together in a tiny square of ice, they all would have won. No one would have cried foul then. For them to so when they were in the wrong is the worst kind of sportsmanship. Ever.

But welcome Yevgeny Plechenko to the stand. If the Koreans are unreasonable, Yevgeny is insane. As in, completely unstable insane. He was unhappy that he won silver to Evan's gold (and I would clearly agree that Evan was the better skater), so not only did he put out a statement showing open disdain for Evan's getting the gold, he now has his own Web site... and he awarded himself a platinum award. Welcome to Crazy-Ville.