On the Cougar Sports Den, a weekly radio show (Thursdays 4 p.m.-6 p.m. on WXAV 88.3 FM) in which I am involved, we do a segment at the end called “Hate Olympics.”
Basically, one of the other guys on the show and I each pick a person in sports who’s bad to varying degrees and the third guy chooses a “winner,” the guy who came up with the worst person.
For instance, the first time we did it I chose Javaris Crittenton, a former basketball player who’s on trial for murder and drug trafficking. My competitor chose Robert Griffin III, so naturally I won.
This past week, however, I chose a guy I think may be even worse than Crittenton, but for significantly different reasons.
He’s so bad, in fact, that I feel the need to outline why I dislike him in another forum—this one.
I chose Vladimir Putin, the current president of Russia. To give you the full idea of why I dislike him, let’s go ahead and start from the beginning.
In 1991, when the KGB (Committee for State Security; read: Secret Police) was in the midst of a coup d’état attempt against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, Putin resigned from his post as lieutenant colonel in the KGB.
Whatever points he gets for not being in on the coup he loses for being a KGB member in the first place.
In national politics, Putin served as prime minister and president for two terms each. Then, in 2012, after he had already served each of those four terms, he was elected to a third term as president.
This is technically constitutional because his second and third terms were not consecutive.
“One person may not hold the position of Russian president for more than two terms in a row,” the Russian constitution reads, according to the Brookings Institution.
And since his inauguration, Putin’s administration has been responsible for out-of-date and morally reprehensible laws targeting the LGBT community. Specifically, a law against “homosexual propaganda” prohibits display of symbols such as the rainbow flag.
Now, here’s the sports connection.
Since the beginning of his third term, Putin has been the de facto czar of the 2014 Winter Olympics, to be held in Sochi, Russia.
America, to its collective credit, has elected openly gay former athletes as delegates to the 2014 Games such as Billie Jean King and Brian Boitano. But the anti-gay politics are not the only bad thing Putin has done in relation to the Olympics.
Alexei Nalvany, a critic of Putin who published data about the expenses Russia incurred in order to get ready for the Olympics, claims an astounding amount has been spent for the Games.
“Russia’s overall expenses have already reached $50 billion, which makes the Russian Olympics five times more expensive than the Vancouver Olympics (in 2010),” said Nalvany, according to Reuters.
Putin has negated this claim, though, saying last month that Russia has spent a mere $6.5 billion on the upcoming Games.
Nalvany and others have also accused Putin of awarding contracts to build the Olympic venues and infrastructure exclusively to friends, helping to add to their personal wealth.
That’s all bad, sure, but not worthy of hate. This is:
I don’t have $50 billion and I have never been in charge of setting up the Olympics, but if I did you better believe I’d spend a very large portion of that money on security for athletes, diplomats and attendees.
Yet, Putin has apparently not done this. Maybe he was too busy handing out lucrative contracts to his buddies.
But the security surrounding Sochi is so underwhelming that the United States government feels its people are unsafe. The U.S. military plans to be fully prepared in the event that the terrorists who say they plan to attack the Games make good on their threat.
There will be two U.S. warships in the Black Sea, helicopters that can deploy from there and C-17 aircraft stationed in Germany, according to cnn.com.
Despite a $50 billion budget, how is it at all possible that the United States feels the need to have military equipment and personnel on hand to defend and/or evacuate citizens?
In light of this news, people have suggested that the United States not attend the Sochi Olympics.
But since the point of terrorism is to scare people, the only way to negate its effects is to attend and, with reasonable protections in place, just enjoy the Games.
If there was any legitimate reason not to attend the Olympics this year, it would be to boycott the anti-gay legislation.
The legitimate reason for the U.S. to attend the Olympics is out of spite, first for the terrorists and second for Putin.
Tim Carroll
Senior Sports Editor