The Russian Revolution

To fully enjoy this commentary, you really need to check out the links that I dutifully added.

When I saw this commercial, I knew I was going to have fun cheering for the Australian winter Olympic team (all 60 of them). The news coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics, via an Aussie lens, has been interesting and amusing. To say their is a hint of Aussie nationalism would be an understatement. Yes, I know the US also focuses on it's own athletes, but to give them credit, they have a lot of athletes across multipl sports that have a high probability of winning. Even winning gold. Australia is a sporting nation no doubt. They have a total of 468 medals at the Summer Olympics, with a total of 138 gold medals. However, it doesn't really snow in Australia. Or get below freezing. Australia didn't win it's first winter medal until 1994 and it's first gold in 2002. It has a total of 5 gold medals and 12 total.

And who knew the ultimate Australian food could make it's way to the Olympics?

That's Chumpy carrying the flag.

 

The personal biography backstories were great. I learned all about the Australian Olympic team surfing on waves and skiing down sand dunes (and moving to Austria and Switzerland). There's the snowboarding queen, Torah Bright, speed skater Daniel Grieg (who tripped in the first 3 seconds of his race), Greta Small (the 18 year old alpine skiier competing in all 5 events and DNF from the one I watched), Jana Pitmann (the first Australian woman to compete in both the winter and summer games), and the snowboarding "power" trio of Chumpy, Cam Bolton, and Kent Callister (none of which came home with a medal. Watching these bios, I wsa sure they were all going to win gold!

My favorite coverage of the Olympics was Roy and HG. They are Australian sports commentators, with their own unique humor, who took on Sochi in their "Russian Revolution". (They are the reason this blog is coming after the Olympics have finished, because I was hoping a few more of their clips would show up.)

This clip is poor quality, but it will give you a little taste of the boys talking about the winter sports.

And here's a little gist of their commentary previewing the closing ceremony.

And because these clips don't accurately represent the ridiculousness, here's a clip from the the first ever Australian to win a winter Olympic gold medal at the Salt Lake Olympics that you have to watch :) I think it perfectly represents the Australian attitude towards the winter Olympics.

I don't know if I'll still be here when the summer Olympics hit Rio, but I'm know the Aussies will be much more successful there. And that if I'm here, I will be watching a lot of swimming. Because, hey, Australians are decent swimmers.There's actually water here they can train in.