Lincicome: Making more memories of the Winter Olympics

My last Winter Olympics were in Italy, much the same for the athletes themselves, I’m guessing. Nothing is more temporary than a Winter Olympian.

Twenty years later the Olympics are back, near to where I left them, in Milan instead of in Torino. Having been to both places, I couldn’t tell you which is which. The way I keep them straight is Torino has the shroud and Milan has the Last Supper.

The official name of these Games includes Cortina, a village somewhere in the distance, where skiing and such takes place, leaving hockey and skating to Milan. I’m sure NBC has figured it out.

The Winter Olympics always brings to mind the old Robert Frost poem that wonders if the world will end in fire or end in ice. Frost said he knew enough of hate to know that either one would do the job just fine. Me, I’ll take ice, although I agree the Olympics would not be the Olympics without a flame.

Which brings me to the opening ceremony, the usual leaping and flopping about by figures in costume, much the same as the Olympic winter sports themselves.

I did not understand the ballet in boxes or the celebration of paparazzi; something to do with Italian culture, I guess. Any country that goes to so much trouble can show off however it likes.

What Mariah Carey was doing there singing an old Dean Martin song is anybody’s guess.

The U.S. team was welcomed, if not as warmly as was Canada. Scattered boos were directed elsewhere than at the U.S. skiers and skaters, reaffirming that politics do seep into these things without being invited.

As long as there are anthems and flags (less Russia and Belarus for the time being) and while nations are grouped in clumps, all Olympics will be xenophobic.

I find no better example of this than myself at Lake Placid, my first Winter Olympics. I caught a bus to town each day with a Russian (then Soviet) journalist who would greet me with raised fingers.

“Two gold,” he would say. “Three gold.” The Soviet daily count mounted until the morning after that little hockey game known as the “Miracle on Ice.” I greeted him with one finger, assuming it meant the same thing in Russian.

In Calgary, while trying to interview Eddie the Eagle, I had my press hat stolen off my head by someone. I have always suspected one of the polar bear mascots — Howdy or Hidy (she was the one in the skirt).

I cracked a collarbone in Albertville and covered those games with one arm tied across my chest. I crashed a reindeer sleigh in Lillehammer.

Don’t believe those tales about Dasher and Dancer. Reindeer are nasty little buggers. I also fell repeatedly on the hidden ice in Lillehammer, leaving considerable skin behind in Norway.

Monkeys threw feces at me in Nagano and my nail clipper was seized as a weapon in Salt Lake City. Nothing memorable or remarkable happened to me in Torino, and for that I have an explanation.

I credit, or blame it, on the bull of Milan.

There is under the glass-roofed open-air galleria near the Duomo in Milan, a mosaic bull embedded in the floor. It is supposed to bring good luck to anyone who spins on his heel on it three times.

I guess it is Milan’s answer to the Trevi Fountain, but a bit more severe. No coins needed, just a solid shoe.

I had stopped in Milan on my way to Torino, and with the Winter Olympics and I having a sketchy relationship, I was willing to take all the luck I could find.

And so, there I was, spinning on my heel just in case, as others had before me, as they still do, I guess, three times, clockwise.

Everything went fine except for the bull, because the very point at which the heel spinning is done is the very part that makes the bull something other than a steer.

So my thoughts for these Olympics go back to that poor bull in Milan and the damage that hope has brought to him.

Good luck to all the athletes in Milan and Cortino then; not so much good luck for the bull.