Who's In?

“She has such long arms, that any ballerina would give her eyeteeth for.”

Ya gotta love sports commentary, especially in something like figure skating, where there’s a contradictory lack of action in between the jumping passes, plus the mysterious subjective element.

So that was Dick Buttons. I wish I’d have kept track of the other bon mots out of Torino.

And here’s an aside: Is it affected to call a place not by its English name (if you’re an English speaker), or is it rude and chauvinistic to impose your language on some other place? I mean, why can’t we be bothered to add another vowel to Turin? And where did we come up with “Leghorn,” for that matter? I don’t know; I’ve always wondered about this.

And while we’re tangentially on Olympic sports here, here’s an admirable website to check out: DFL. Anybody who’s done any racing needs no explanation of the acronym. (For those who haven’t, it’s “dead * last.” And for those who like acronyms, here’s another that I believe originated with MIT rowers: QFB. (“Quite far back.”))

“DFL” you’d think would be tongue in cheek about losers and Eddie the Eagle type longshots. (I love making Eddie the Eagle references! Met him in Lake Placid where we were training. A rare brush with celebrity. (He liked my friend Naomi.)) But, back on topic, DFL actually takes a more respectful approach. They may be last, but… they’re there! And there’s an ethos that DFL is better than DNF (“did not finish”), illustrated by the story of a slalom skier who missed a gate and instead of skiing off the course in resignation, he herringboned back up to the gate and went around it to finish the course. I hope I would do that if it were me.