Thursday , March 28 2024
Our publisher looks back at Carly Patterson's Olympic victory and some Russian sour grapes...

From the Blogcritics Vault: Russian Gymnast Tarnishes Gold

    The Athens Olympics were in full swing one year ago today, with Carly Patterson (how soon they forget) dramatically winning the Gold Medal in the women’s all-around gymnastics. Favored Russian Svetlana Khorkina fumed and preened simultaneously.

    Shark called her ass on it:

    16 year-old Carly Patterson won the Gold Medal in the women’s all-around gymnastics last night in Athens. She became only the second American woman to win an all-around Olympic gold, joining Mary Lou Retton (of the asterisk 1984 Olympics, ie. *no Russians).

Speaking of Russians, the chain-smoking bitch they call the Russian **Diva, who was performing in her final Olympics before retiring, let Carly enjoy her victory for about 15 seconds before she tried to tarnish the gold by complaining about the judging.

**(Remember when “diva” meant “an arrogant bitch with a great opera voice”? Now it can mean a bitch of any sort, thanks to its status as the #1 most abused cliche in contemporary media. Who ISN’T a friggin’ ‘diva’ these days? If Helen Keller were alive, she’d probably show up in People Magazine as the ‘Diva of the Deaf’ among these ignorant parrots — also known as “journalists”.)

Relegated to a second place Silver medal after Patterson’s near-perfect floor exercise, Svetlana Khorkina lashed out at the judges — which has become standard fare for sore losers at the Olympics. (Did the Russians blame the judges when they lost the Cold War?)

That cute little cuddly Carly Patterson took the Gold Medal in dramatic fashion: she needed a high score in her final event, the floor exercise. She answered with a great performance, beautiful, powerful — and almost flawless.

She was rightfully awarded the highest score of the night on floor exercise, a 9.712, to finish at 38.387 points with Khorkina, three-time world all-around champion, second at 38.211 points and China’s Zhang Nan third at 37.948 points.

“I don’t know what to say. I’m so excited and happy,” Patterson said. “You dream about this your whole life and you win the gold medal and it’s amazing.”

Khorkina, who beat Patterson for the World Championships all-around crown last year, told the press:

“I’m still Olympic champion. …If the judges were Greek I would have no difficulty winning the gold medal. They are the ones who are going to have to live with their conscience.”

When it was pointed out that she almost fell off the balance beam — and looked like a drunk ostrich at times, she replied:

“I believe it was a minor mistake. It was barely noticeable. I don’t think it was worth one point.”

Asked what made the difference in her duel with Patterson, Khorkina replied: “I’m from Russia. She’s from USA,” then she stuck out her tongue and blew a raspberry. No, I’m not making this up. She actually stuck out her tongue and made a fart sound. And she couldn’t stop there; she tried to bail her miserable, unclassy ass out of the deep public pile of shit she’d just done a near-perfect 9.9 landing in — so she added, “Just a joke. Carly is very good.”

In the floor exercise, the spoiled-sport Russian did her usual conservative routine; she always relies on the crowd clapping in time to the music (a cheap attempt at wooing the audience that was perfected in various scenes from “Fiddler on the Roof”), and her idea of artistry is to wave her gangly arms around like a couple of cobras jousting with limp pickles.




Her peformance was given a 9.562 mark from judges, leaving her in First Place, but vulnerable to Patterson. The fact that she showed periodic signs of vertigo didn’t help her performance.

Overall, Khorkina’s long, distinguished Olympic career was tarnished by her final act as an athlete: a bitter, whining attack on the new Olympic champion.

Somebody blow her a raspberry.

===========

PS: A couple of miscellaneous observations on Friday Night In Athens.

1) One aside relative to the American Women’s Gym Team: What’s with those outfits? Whose idea was it to make their crotches look like they glow in the dark? I don’t mean to sound like a pederast freak, but sometimes I just couldn’t take me eyes off of that, um… area.

Even my wife mentioned it, so it ain’t just me drawn to tiny little shiny vulvas.

2) Bob Costas — who as he ages, is starting to look more and more like a monkey — interviewed Carly Patterson in the studio after her victory. They were seated in chairs facing each other, eye to eye, and in a wide camera shot, the 3 foot tall American Gold Medallist was THE EXACT SAME SIZE as Bob Costas! So apparently Costas is not only coloring his hair jet-black and starting to have a primate look about him, but he’s also shrinking. He needs to call Dick Clark for some advice!

About Eric Olsen

Career media professional and serial entrepreneur Eric Olsen flung himself into the paranormal world in 2012, creating the America's Most Haunted brand and co-authoring the award-winning America's Most Haunted book, published by Berkley/Penguin in Sept, 2014. Olsen is co-host of the nationally syndicated broadcast and Internet radio talk show After Hours AM; his entertaining and informative America's Most Haunted website and social media outlets are must-reads: Twitter@amhaunted, Facebook.com/amhaunted, Pinterest America's Most Haunted. Olsen is also guitarist/singer for popular and wildly eclectic Cleveland cover band The Props.

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