Kvetchathon Makes Whining an Olympic Sport

Olympic

INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana.  Mike Thorgrimsen is warming up for his event at the upcoming winter Olympics, but he’s not stretching out or practicing his form.  Instead, he’s sitting in his hotel room, a remote control in his hand, as he barks at a television.  “Johnny Weir makes me puke,” he says in angry yet measured tone.

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Thorgrimsen, totally focused.

 

“Good,” his coach Ty Crosby says with approval.  “Pace yourself.”

“Give me a break,” Thorgrimsen says as he watches the qualifying round of the women’s figure skating.  “That French judge is obviously banging Little Miss Nymphette.”

“Okay,” Crosby says calmly, “Now start your kick to the finish.”


“Let’s see, a remake of ‘On the Waterfront’ shot in Russia?”

 

“The official smokeless tobacco of the Olympics?” Thorgrimsen explodes as he hurls the remote at the set.  “It’s all so commercial!”

Thorgrimsen will get his chance to appear on television himself today as part of the first-ever Olympic Kvetchathon, a grueling three-day test of athletes’ ability to maintain a high level of dudgeon over the games themselves.  “Some of these guys have been complaining since Lake Placid in 1980,” says Merle “Bud” Weiss, a resident of Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey who is an alternate on the U.S. team.  “They’re out-of-shape and raring to go.”

The Kvetchathon is modeled on the decathlon, with ten subjects of complaint ranging from commercialism, jingoism and the American team’s uniforms to the mustaches that adorn the upper lips of Russian women hockey players.  “It’s not enough to be overpowering in a single event,” says long-time Olympic commentator Harold Decature.  “You have to be able to spew venom on a wide variety of topics.”


“Ski much?”

 

Depending upon live attendance at events and television ratings the Kvetchathon could move from demonstration status to an official event as early as 2022, but the athletes who’ve invested so much in training, snack foods and soft drinks say they won’t get their hopes up.  “I’d like to think it would be determined on merit,” says Thorgrimsen, “but everybody knows the Olympics is fixed.”

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