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Greeks and the Winter Olympics It's
a little known fact that yes, Greece and Cyprus do have athletes in the Winter
Olympics. This may not be as
unbelievable or funny as thoughts of the Jamaican Bobsled team, but you can't
forget that the eastern Mediterranean's two frontrunners in the sun and sea
categories, do actually see snow in the higher elevations.
Of course the Winter Olympics are a modern creation.
Generally mild temperatures and the preference for naked athletics
probably kept the Ancient Greeks off of snow and ice.
It's a shame that NBC's pro-American coverage and Greece's understandable
lack of skill on these surfaces makes it so that you'll never see any of these
athletes, but they are still out there in Salt Lake City competing for their
nations. Greece
and Cyprus' combined 11 athletes have found their way into some of the most
watched sports of these games. Greece
has a handful of skiers, including two biathletes. For those of you who aren't familiar with the event, biathlon
combines cross country skiing with precision rifle shooting.
The key to biathlon is for the understandably revved up cross country
skier to control his or her heart rate just enough to be able to fire off a few
shots at targets some 50 yards away. It's
a surprise that Greece could find not one, but two, patient and even-keeled
Greeks to participate. Given
the Greeks' risk-taking nature, it's not a surprise that Greece has a
snowboarder, a two-man bobsled team, and a participant in one of the Olympics
most talked about sports, Skeleton. To
clarify, the members of the two-man bobsled team and the Skeleton racer are
Greek-Americans who are racing under the Greek flag for these games.
(Question: If Bobsled is
called Bobsled in the U.S., and it's called Bobsleigh by the rest of the
English-speaking world, what would you call the sport in Greece, Haralambos-sled
or Haralambos-sleigh?) Skeleton is
a sport making its return to the Winter Olympics for the first time since the
1948 games. It's a lot like Luge
except for the fact that racers go down the track headfirst.
Now see, that's a Greek sport. When
have you not known a Greek to be headstrong and ready to meet a challenge
head-on? If
you notice there are no Greek figure skaters or ice dancers.
Is it due to the lack of ice in Greece?
Is it possible that all the ice in Greece is being used for one purpose
and one purpose only... to water down the drinks given to tourists in bars and
clubs on the Greek islands? Could
the lack of ice dancers be due to a country steeped in a line dance tradition
where the zembekiko and tsifteteli pass for couple's dancing?
We were able to steal the following footage from a Greek Ice Dancing
routine.
Welcome back to Salt Lake City, where we join the
final round of the Ice Dancing competition.
Next up is the pair representing Greece, Kostas and Eleni Pagomenis.
And they're off. Eleni is
skating beautifully, but why is Kostas just standing there snapping his fingers? Now wait, the dancers have switched positions.
Kostas is showing off and Eleni is now down on one knee clapping
approvingly. I haven't seen
anything like it in my 25 years of skating coverage.
And here come the scores. While
they are receiving poor technical marks, the high-strung judges of this year's
games seem to approve of Greece's completely tame national costumes, although
the Russian judge may have a problem with the length of Kostas' foustanela. No
matter what the event, we hope that Greece or Cyprus finally breaks through its
respective lifetime drought in Winter Olympic medals. These games will probably end with no Greeks tallying in the
medal column, but the end of these games will bring Greece and Cyprus that much
closer to the summer of 2004, where a huge home field advantage will look to
make the world recognize Greece and Cyprus as athletic powers in their own
right.
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