If this were a food blog, I’d be telling you about the wings we made for dinner last night while we watched the Opening Ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics.\u00a0 Luckily for you, it’s not, and I won’t, save to say they were awesome, if not actually historic.<\/p>\n
History and awesomeness, though, were on our minds as we watched the people, pageantry, and parades at PyeongChang last night.\u00a0 Athletes from Russia, without the Russian flag.\u00a0 History.\u00a0 Athletes from North Korea, marching side-by-side with their South Korean teammates, under a unified Korean flag.\u00a0 History.\u00a0 And, to the delight of the entire world, a well-oiled skier from Tonga, carrying a Tongan flag, shirtless despite the 28-degree weather.\u00a0 Awesome.<\/p>\n
Pita Taufatofua, a Tongan martial artist turned skier, will be only the 72nd person to compete in back-to-back summer and winter Olympics.\u00a0 Mind you, 5 of those people have done that multiple times – Japan’s Seiko Hashimoto seems to hold the record for back-to-back Olympic games at 7, starting with the winter games in 1984 and participating in every subsequent summer and winter Olympics through 1996.\u00a0 Terry McHugh of Ireland did it four times, from 1996-2002, as did Jaqueline Mour\u00e3o of Brazil, from 2004-2010.<\/p>\n
If the World’s Favorite Oiled Tongan makes it to Tokyo in 2020, as he’s said he hopes to, he will be one of only 15 people to have participated in 3 Olympics in a row.\u00a0 He seems to be a bit of a nut, but I suspect you might have to be to compete at that level.\u00a0 This is a guy who understands that he doesn’t need a medal at these games – he’s already won.<\/p>\n
Speaking of winning, I am considering setting my sights on the Olympics as well.\u00a0 Since I really don’t look that good in coconut oil, I’m researching curling – and I think I may have found my people!\u00a0 They are – mostly – slow-moving, overweight, white people.\u00a0 I could do this!\u00a0 Some of the athletes at PyeongChang this year are older than I am.\u00a0 Mind you, they’re setting records for it, but still – my dreams of\u00a0Olympic glory needn’t fade yet.<\/p>\n
Speaking of well-oiled machines, the dizzying, dazzling drone display was pretty damned impressive.\u00a0 That was probably the best commercial for Intel that I’ve ever seen.\u00a0 Between that and the fireworks, this Opening Ceremony was a clear and solid answer to the theatrical and technical masterpiece that was Beijing ten years ago.<\/p>\n
On with the games!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If this were a food blog, I’d be telling you about the wings we made for dinner last night while we watched the Opening Ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics.\u00a0 Luckily for you, it’s not, and I won’t, save to say they were awesome, if not actually historic. History and awesomeness, though, were on our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4120"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4120"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4130,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4120\/revisions\/4130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}