For those of you in real estate who don’t share my commitment/compulsion/obsession with the Winter Olympics (or, as it’s now being called, the Warm Olympics), here is a recap from week one:
• Bob Costas had some terrible eye infection that forced him to take a break, ending his streak of 50,462 hours of providing non-stop Olympic back stories of human sorrow and sacrifice.
• The living conditions in Sochi were not perfect, as evidenced by the journalists’ tweets, one noting that his hotel didn’t have a lobby, but he was welcomed by an empty desk with a photo of Vladimir Putin.
One journalist had to climb out of his hotel room window, as the hotel room door was locked. And my personal favorite: “My hotel has no water. If restored, the front desk says, “Do not use on your face because it contains something very dangerous.”
• There are always some great names for the Olympic Athletes and this year is no exception:
Gracie Gold—Figure Skating U.S. (no pressure there …)
Jenni Asserholt—Ice Hockey Sweden (you fear her in advance)
Bong Shik Shin—Snowboarding (of course)
Lucia Anger—Cross Country Germany
Tobias Angerer—Cross Country Germany
Monica Angermueller—Cross Country Germany (are we seeing a pattern here?)
Otgontsetseg Chinbat—Cross Country Mongolia (Inner or Outer, I’m not sure)
Christofer Farrup—Alpine Skiing Denmark (somehow his parents just knew….)
Satoshi Sakashita—Short Track Japan (he would have never survived fifth grade in the U.S.)
And no Warm Olympic review is complete with the curling update: Dave Barry describes the sport of curling as “dating back to 16th-Century Scotland, where somebody—and I am guessing this person had consumed at least two quarts of Scotch—came up with the idea of sliding heavy rocks (or “stones”) along the ice (or “frozen water”). The basic idea of a curling match (or “bonspiel”) is to slide your stone into the middle of a circle (or “house”) while keeping the stones of the other team (or “opponents”) out of the house via such tactics as the “takeout,” the “draw,” the “freeze,” and “slinging the hot bunny.” (OK, he made that last one up.)
And, come on, who doesn’t love a sport that allows you to dress like the Norwegian curling team?
(Photos by Cassie Kovacevich, Loudmouth Golf, and AP.)
Susan Arledge is managing principal of Cresa Dallas. Contact her at [email protected].
