Sports from the past week.

Past sports article for the week of 3/14/06

Winter Olympics Environmental Impact Report
By, Grey Sports

With the Winter Olympics over, I think, after all who pays attention to this stuff, the time has come to assess the environmental cost of the many winter events in Italy. Turin, Italy. I think.
Rockets featured heavily in the events, causing no small amount of local heating, though this has been determined to have minimal worldwide impact.
The massive use of defoliant to take out otherwise impassable groves of evergreen trees on some slopes is a worry and may have some long term effects, especially the one that turned all the snow in the immediate area purple.
These areas are also now under increased risk of avalanche, as those trees were vital to securing those slopes. New plantings are being undertaken though these areas will remain susceptible to avalanche until the trees are mature enough to offer significant support.
Nuclear devices were used as threats only this year meaning fall out is a nonissue.
Biological weapons were small scale, intended to take out individuals rather than groups.
Over all hazmat teams are pleased with the way things have gone on this front.
Swarms of dive-bombing pigeons used by the Swedish team to disrupt certain events were a problem, leading to massive clean up bills, and the collapse of nine drycleaners due to overwork.
Of greater concern are, as was initially pointed out by the French, the clothes.
Lycra in every offensive colour in the rainbow and anything else that ever vomited up colour now litters half of Italy.
Much of it was originally created out of a need to make the competitors visible against the show.
The US, Britain, China and a number of others chose relatively subdued tones of red, blue and black, maintaining visibility, individuality and practicality.
Other nations chose vibrant yellows, vivid greens and livid purple. Not necessarily bad individually, in combination it was quite stomach turning.
And then there were the costumes using shades of pink, indigo, puce, and some sort of new colour the Spanish are calling “glov”.
Skiers, Ice Skaters, that thing with the sled, all were plagued by nasty colours and more than a few attempts to rewrite good taste with poor use of feathers, leather and Subway wrappers.
Whatever you call it the result was horrific, numerous cameramen were treated for flash blindness, as were a significant number of spectators.
The athletes were not ignorant of any of this, least of all the horrific nature of their colour scheme.
This does not mean that they took any steps to minimise the impact, just the opposite. There is not a single team that does not have at least one member who tried to dump their uniforms before leaving the country.
Four Italian villages are now flooded with this stuff. Adults cannot go to work, children have more than the usual number of reasons to fear going to school.
This is the cost of the Winter Olympics, more forgotten than the games themselves.