Perhaps it’s the fact that I have a 16-year-old who took up snowboarding this winter, but I think it’s kind of cool that U.S. respectability in the Winter Olympics was beefed up this year by a bunch of “dudes” about whom everybody openly jokes that they have to pee carefully to pass post-competition drug tests for marijuana. The snowboard half-pipe was introduced four years ago in an effort to make the staid old Winter Olympics a little more with-it to younger generations. Now those younger generations have made the United States, normally fairly pathetic in Winter games, look almost like a powerhouse. On the other hand, I wonder how long before snowboard judging – unquestionably somewhat subjective – will become as blatantly corrupt as the judging of figure skating.
