The 2018 Winter Olympic Games are in the past.
The 2018 Winter Olympics will be associated with the name of Ester Ledecka in the future, just as other past Olympics have been associated with the names of Věra Čáslavská, Emil Zátopek, Martina Sáblíková, Dominik Hasek and Jaromír Jágr. I will remember them also because of the small number of hours broadcast by Czech TV, the need to watch the added Eurosport channels to get to some of the sports at all and the doping of the unteachable Russians. Overall, I have a bit of an incomplete feeling about the Games. A sporting festival that is looked forward to by hundreds of millions of people around the world does not strike me as a celebration of sport, human togetherness and fair play. A significant contributor to this is the fact that we Czechs did not have the freedom to choose to watch the less frequently broadcast disciplines, but had to respect the dramaturgical view, which was narrowed down to the CT4 channel, where the main role is played by watching the 'Czech track'. The depressing sight of a blue rectangle (CT24) underlining the sports news, announcing that TV does not have the rights to broadcast the Winter Olympics, not even interviews with our athletes, was the crowning glory of the piece. In the conditions given by the changed circumstances of the purchase of broadcasting rights from the owner, it probably couldn't have gone better, but I see it as a signal that something is wrong. I am no longer tempted to take two weeks of vacation, buy supplies, and spend dozens of hours in front of a television screen to enjoy the sports stories of legends, emerging champions, or perennial underdogs. The Olympics are a commercial commodity that is traded almost without regard to the viewer or listener. They are divorced from those for whom they are staged. Or at least they should be.
It's a shame there were no medals left for our hockey players. I would have really wished for that badge at the expense of the Olympic athletes from Russia. And anyway, I'd like to know what's really going on with the doping.
photo: positively tested Russian bobsledder