Johnny Weir says it with fashion (while skiers shake that booty)

February 13, 2014

Johnny Weir – the famously out skater turned NBC commentator – told us at WAG magazine that he would pull no punches in anti-gay Russia. But leave it to the flamboyant fashionisto to make a statement with gold pearls and a white ensemble and blush and lipstick. Perhaps that’s why he and gold medalist Tara Lipinski are relegated to commentating on NBCSN instead of on NBC itself. Maybe the Peacock Network thinks they’re not ready for conservative prime time – though there are many in the blogosphere who’d rather listen to the free-wheeling Weir and Lipinski than the more staid Scott Hamilton, Andrea Joyce and Sandra Bezic.

In other fashion news, The New York Times had a fun story on skiers’ pronounced derrières that readers took way too seriously. Read more

Mountain Men: The Sochi downhill and the uphill battle of Michael Sam

February 11, 2014

The Caucasus are a long way from the gridirons of America, but they both yielded big news Sunday, Feb. 9 that spoke to the allure of male power and its limitations.

Matthias Mayer of Austria took gold in the men’s downhill – one of the most glamorous, thrilling and dangerous of Olympic sports – ending a 12-year Austrian drought in the event.

The men’s downhill is two minutes and change of pure testosterone. It’s men against a mountain and a clock. Hemingway couldn’t have scripted a crisper, cleaner, crueler narrative. And while the women ski the same disciplines as the men, I don’t know, they’re not as exciting.

“It’s just in my mind, for lack of a better word, kind of a manly sport,” veteran American skier Marco Sullivan said of the downhill in The New York Times. And it demonstrates what’s so attractive about men – their speed, their power, their abandon, for no one wins the downhill without combining technique with risk-taking. Veer too much to the former and you’ll ski too cautiously. Stray too close to the latter and you’ll crash and burn. (American favorite Bode Miller, anyone?)

The dark-horse winner Mayer said he eliminated his final training runs to conserve power for the race. That comment conveys the truth of power, which is as much about retaining as it is attaining. Read more

What if New York had the Olympics?

February 9, 2014

With the Sochi Games now open, The New York Times has been wondering just that, with drawings that imagine the Big Apple as an Olympic winter wonderland. (This year we certainly have the snow for it.) But readers need wonder no more. In my new novel “Water Music,” it does.

This first of the series “The Games Men Play,” two pairs of athlete-lovers who are at the heart of my story – swimmers Daniel and Dylan and tennis players Alex and Alí – meet at a Summer Olympics in Manhattan, where shifting professional fortunes signal shifting personal alliances.

Having awarded New York the Summer Games, I’ve gone on to give Omaha its own football team. The Omaha Steers are center stage in my second book in TGMP series, “In This Place You Hold Me,” about a quarterback’s search for identity. (Omaha, I know you were disappointed that Peyton Manning – who always uses Omaha as one of his audibles – and his Broncos lost the Super Bowl. I hope my giving you your own team takes the sting out of that – but I doubt it. Art can’t make up for real life.) Read more