Olympics

Now, the International Olympic Committee has reportedly written a letter to the Canadian National Olympic Committee "to find out a few more details," and the team has issued a public apology. What's the big deal, you might ask? For one, 18-year-old team member Marie-Philip Poulin was snapped holding a beer, and she's just under the legal drinking age in British Columbia. OK, so that's inappropriate, I guess -- only, in her home of Quebec, the drinking age is 18. Are people really that scandalized that someone just weeks away from her 19th birthday was caught imbibing in Vancouver after winning an Olympic gold medal?

I suspect not. Judging by the online chatter over the "incident," the age issue is but one more complaint shoveled onto the pile. Primarily at issue is that some perceive it as a display of poor sportsmanship, which I find kind of hilarious for two reasons: 1.) Ice hockey is one of the most impolite professional sports around (within five minutes of the first men's hockey game I attended, two players had already resorted to fisticuffs on the ice), and 2.) Have these people never witnessed the hooting, hollering, fist-pumping, champagne-popping, and exclamations of "I'm goin' to Disneyland!" at, like, any major sporting event? 

I hate to be predictable, but I gotta say it: I suspect there's also a definite undercurrent of sexism here. For example, one blogger wrote:

My question is: Why 'ladies' play men's sports and look so awkward (unlady like) in the process? Being a woman is all about being a woman (grace, softness...). Figure skating is by all standards a women's sport, as we witnessed yesterday in Kim Yu-Na's performance. Simply brilliant.

So ladies, make an attempt to look like females, stay away from men's sports, don't try to be like men, you know, that's what the men are for.

Aw, I think he's scared of the big bad lady athletes. Poor dude -- we just aren't used to seeing women engaged in such stereotypically manly celebration. Not only are they drinking beer, they're also chugging champagne and smoking cigars. Looking through the photographs, you can almost hear their self-satisfied guttural belches -- and, you know what? It makes me swoon in full-blown girl-crush mode. I mean, my cheeks actually ache because every time I catch a glimpse of those snapshots, I grin uncontrollably. Now these are some women I'd like to grab a beer with.

Why don't all the haters take a note from these Canadian ladies: Grab a Molson's and chill out, eh?

"Most 16-year-olds medal at their first Olympics," she joked. "I'm sorry that I wasn't able to keep up that U.S. trend. But, hopefully, I'll be able to make up for it when I get to come back I hope for the next Olympics."

Flatt was fifth and Nagasu was sixth coming into the finale. The top three skaters needed to make major mistakes for either one to make off with a medal. Nagasu finished more than 12 points out of a bronze.

The 17-year-old Flatt lost points on both her triple flips when she didn't complete the rotation. She said "they felt just fine to me" and acknowledged she was a bit surprised by her score.

Asked if that made her Olympic experience somewhat less fun, Flatt said, "A little bit."

"I wish that I could've gotten a better score, but you make do and just continue to improve," she said, then added with a laugh, "Got to make sure I fix those flips."

Any benefits from competing in Vancouver might be seen as early as next month, when the world championships are held in Turin, Italy. No U.S. woman has been on the world championship podium since 2006. American women have won seven Olympic gold medals overall, including three of the last five coming into Vancouver. The only other time since 1952 that they didn't medal was 1964, which was three years after the entire U.S. team was killed in a plane crash.

Nagasu noted that this year's gold and silver medalists are both 19 -- only a bit younger than she will be at the 2014 Sochi Games. Kim Yu-na and Mao Asada each came into the Olympics with significant international seasoning.

"At 16 you don't have the experience and the maturity that they skate with," Nagasu said. "Hopefully, by that time I'll be able to get that."

Belote, who now coaches children and teens in swim, told The Associated Press on Thursday that when she found out her medals were taken, she "wept like a baby."

"I'm just sick about the whole thing," she said. "My medals are the culmination of a journey I started as a young girl with a dream to just get in the water and swim."

The medals also represent the sacrifices of everyone who helped her get to the Olympics, Belote said.

"It's not just, 'Hey, I swam fast and got a gold medal,'" she said. "Even though they're materialistic possessions, there are so few gold medals in the world, and it's something I could give my children that they could give their children. It's something very special that few people in the world can pass on, and now it's gone."

The medals are engraved with Belote's name, have Munich and two Xs on them to represent the 20th Olympiad. Belote, who grew up in Springfield, Va., was an All-America swimmer at Arizona State University and was named the nation's top college swimmer in 1977.

Belote said she's considering offering a reward for the safe return of her medals.

"I don't care if they take them to a library, to a school, to a fire station," she said. "I just hope to get them back."

"For sure" is nothing new, of course. It's been around since the 1580s, arriving after the expression "sure enough" and before "sure-footed," which, sadly, never really caught on. Today it is associated with groovy Californian optimism ("Fer shurr, dude!"), and tends to pepper the speech of Gen Y'ers, the demographic most represented at the Vancouver Games. But the frequency with which Olympic competitors, coaches and officials have been saying "for sure" lately suggests it is more than a meaningless verbal tic.

"The use of 'for sure' is very interesting," George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a phone interview. "'For sure' is an idiom, not a literal phrase. It doesn't automatically mean 'surely.' It's usually an attempt to modify the rest of a sentence, and tends to rise in conditions of uncertainty, particularly in relation to future situations where the outcome is unknown."

Hence the popularity of "for sure" at the Winter Games, where much is unknown and yet certainty demanded. The odd juxtaposition can create a confusing contradiction, in which a speaker is for sure about something they think. "I thought I was in control for sure," said Mike Robertson, a member of Canada's snowboard team, after ceding the gold medal to American Seth Wescott. "I think for sure he will get at least one medal," said Norwegian biathlete Ole Einar Bjorndalen about his rival, American biathlete Tim Burke. "I think [the course] was acceptable, for sure," said women's race director Atle Skaardal, in what looks like a last-second attempt to mask her displeasure with the slushy, weather-beaten course.

The Olympics are obviously a stressful and demanding affair. For two weeks every four years, otherwise obscure athletes become both our national ambassadors and the avatars through which we experience strange sporting events like skeleton or short-track speed skating. There's a tacit obligation to be positive and "for sure" about things -- to make one's country proud, but also to reduce one's own fear and anxiety. Faced with the ambiguity of the Winter Games, though, appearing confident is not so simple -- even, and perhaps especially, for athletes' elected spokesmen.

Take Thomas Vonn, the voluble coach and husband of Lindsey Vonn. "It is entirely possible that she could race in all five events and be fine," he said on Feb. 10, three days before the Games. "It is possible, for sure." Two days later, with postponements to the downhill and super-combined affording Lindsey's shin time to heal, he said, "This helps us, that's for sure." But by Feb. 17, the postponements had become rampant and disorienting: "It's getting ridiculous, for sure." And finally, on Feb 18, after Vonn failed to finish the super-combined: "Nothing is for sure, one way or another ... anything can change in 10 minutes."

The context of these statements is important. Vonn, with privileged access to the state of his wife's health, was being pressured by reporters from the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Associated Press to make predictions about her ability to race. So Vonn, in a valiant effort, expressed his certainty that it was possible, before finally breaking down and conceding that it was anyone's guess.

Other athletes and their coaches, under less intense media scrutiny, have employed "for sure" to stress the obvious, in order to sidestep more speculative predictions. "If there's snow we'll ski for sure," as U.S. mogul skier Patrick Deneen said. "Injuries [don't] make you faster, for sure," said German women's ski team coach Matthias Berthold, on racer Maria Riesch's debilitating injuries. "She's going to be sore, that's for sure," said U.S. women's ski coach Jim Tracy, after racer Tracy Cook crashed into the safety netting in the downhill at 70 mph.

But occasionally athletes get trapped in uncomfortable situations, whereupon "for sure" becomes a handy verbal dodge. For example, when Norwegian Alpine skier Aksel Lund Svindal was asked to speculate on the unpredictability of Bode Miller (that is, before he surprised everyone by staying out of the bars and winning three medals), he replied: "[Bode is] amazingly gifted and I'm sure we'll see some great runs from him ... But at the same time, I'm not sure we'll know what to expect from him week to week ... But for sure, he'll be someone that people will watch because you never know with him."

Considering the harried navigation such questions require, you can almost hear the relief that comes over athletes when asked not for predictions but for how they feel about something. (At last, a no-brainer!) For example:

How did Lindsey Vonn feel about an Austrian newspaper calling her "heavy"? "As a woman, I want to drop the subject, but I used it as motivation, that's for sure."

How does Mellisa Hollingsworth, the 39-year-old Canadian skeleton racer, feel after years of slamming her head on the ice? "My memory isn't quite as good as it used to be, for sure."

How did U.S. mogul skier Hannah Kearney feel about learning backflips? "I don't know if it's a phobia exactly, but it's something I was uninterested in, that's for sure."

How does Mark Grimmette, the American luge veteran, feel about the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili? "It's something I'll never forget, that's for sure."

On this subject, athletes could learn a few lessons from politicians, experts at projecting certainty under the foggiest of circumstances. "I don't claim to know all the technical details," Mikheil Saakashvili, the president of Georgia, said in the wake of Kumaritashvili's crash. "But one thing I know for sure, that no sports mistake is supposed to lead to a death." In this crafty usage, Mr. Saakashvili succeeds in casting blame on Olympic officials, causing us to overlook the fact that, although such mistakes aren't supposed to be fatal, this is the inherent risk that all athletes run in today's Winter Games. After all, if we allowed Olympians to contemplate the great unknowns for too long, we'd have a lot less Winter Games, that's for sure.