An Olympic Update: The Great, The Gross, and the Weird

Well, the Winter Olympics have been in full swing for five days (or is it four? five with the time zone difference? six? somebody ask a Time Lord to sort this out for us) and it’s about time somebody over there did something impressive, or awkward, or threw some serious shade on their own television network.

For example, Stephen Amell, star of the CW’s Arrow, who in this message on his Facebook page on Thursday, seems pretty annoyed that the CW is yielding to NBC’s Olympics dominance:

For everyone asking, we’re taking a mini hiatus so people can grit their teeth and suffer through an Olympic games marred by homophobia and mediocre levels of public interest. Back February 26th… Follow up point — Good luck to all the athletes who have worked so hard for so many years and essentially geared their entire life around this opportunity. Hopefully, a lot of them will use their success and a public platform to remind everybody this isn’t the stone age.

We hope so too.

Only a few days into the competition we can point out some impressive victories for female athletes: snowboarder Jamie Anderson has earned the very first Gold medal in the women’s Slopestyle snowboarding competition. You can watch a bit of .gif-fage of the run that pushed her from 5th to 1st place here.

Last week we told you that you might want to listen for news of the three Dufour-Lapointe sisters, who stood a chance of being the only female siblings to sweep all three spots on the Olympic podium in a single event. They didn’t quite manage it, but instead grabbed both the Gold and Silver medals for Canada in Freestyle Moguls, which is pretty impressive in and of itself.

But maybe you’re looking less for news of athletic achievement and more for news of internet achievement. In that case, you might appreciate this explanation of the newest viral female athlete face since McKayla Maroney‘s “Not Impressed” expression made it all the way to the white house. Ashley Wagner‘s shocked and angry reaction upon finishing just shy of the podium is already being photoshopped next to screenshots of the Red Wedding.

The opening ceremonies also had their ups and downs. Good idea: letting Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, carry the olympic torch. Obviously, should have thought about this beforehand, bad, bad idea: NBC editing the International Olympic Committee president’s speech to completely and awkwardly omit an emphatic statement supporting diversity, equality, and acceptance in the Olympics. NBC, everybody is already watching to see if you’ve got the cojones to contrast Russia’s seriously escalating human rights abuses with your cash cow coverage of the Olympics, and this wasn’t the way to start on the right foot. Take a clue from Canada:

And speaking of the sexualized male form and America’s hat, Canadian bobsledder Justin Kripps noticed that his personal website had been blocked from access within Russia by government order. It appears that it was done because he’s got several pictures of the, and I say this as objective fact, completely ripped Canadian men’s bobsled team wearing only their impressive beards and underwear at a weigh in. Ironic, when you consider the coverage of Russia’s own female Olympians.