I love Mark Steyn and his way with words. Most recently, he tells us as only he can, about the short-sightedness and lack of common sense when “green” is the only goal, the only thought.
Zamboni make the ice resurfacing carts that are a familiar sight at any hockey game, and also at any number of Winter Olympics – Turin, Salt Lake, Nagano and way back into the past. But the company has been frosted out at Vancouver. Instead, the ice resurfacing is being done by what are called “electric Zambonis”. Zamboni is a bit like Hoover and Aspirin – it’s become a generic term – and it turns out the “electric Zambonis” are not Zambonis at all, but manufactured by a company called Olympia that landed the contract because the Vancouver organizers were determined that 2010 should be the “Green Olympics”.
In the men’s 500-meter speed-skating at Richmond, all three of Olympia’s “electric Zambonis” brought on to smooth out the ice failed. If anything, they made the ruts and bumps worse. It looked like one of those Obama-stimulus scarified repaving jobs out there. Those of us who do a little backwoods skating on North Country ponds and lakes know the damage you can do to yourself hitting a ridge even at low speed. So you don’t want to run into one at 40 miles per hour. The cameras and microphones caught furious coaches from the Netherlands to China expressing their disgust to officials at the amateurishness of the Vancouver organizers. The event was delayed, and the American skater Shani Davis eventually withdrew, not wanting to jeopardize his chances of a Gold in the thousand meters by taking a spill on the 500 meters’ scarified ice. You train for years, you build your entire life to this one moment, and then the politically correct eco-gimmick screws you over. Officials attempted to reassure coaches and skaters that a non-electric Zamboni would be flown in from Calgary to prevent further delays.
Still, at least nobody’s dead. Read the rest…
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