Perhaps that’s because the games inevitably breed suspicion, envy, and even anger. In a Gallup poll taken just as the Sochi games began, Americans’s favorability rating of Russia fell to its lowest level in 15 years. Surely, Russia's hospitality toward Edward Snowden and support for the Syrian regime played into that—but just as surely, so did our Olympic competitiveness with the host nation. Then came the U.S.-Russia hockey game on Saturday, in which a Russian go-ahead goal with five minutes remaining was disallowed by the American referee. The U.S. went on to win in a shootout, and prominent Russians reacted with vitriol, even accusing NBC of buying a favorable ruling. It’s safe to say U.S.-Russia relations won’t be thawing anytime soon.
What's more, the medal count explicitly violates the IOC’s own rules. The Olympic charter explicitly states that “The IOC and the [Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games] shall not draw up any global ranking per country, instead honoring individual medal winners." After all, as the Charter makes clear, “the Olympic Games are competitions between athletes in individual or team events and not between countries.†Despite this, the official Sochi 2014 website prominently features a medal count, as did the websites for London, Vancouver, Beijing, and Turin. (By the way, is there anything sadder than an eight-year-old Olympic homepage?)
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