Latvia 1:1 Canada after first period.

Thank god, our team has nothing like these evil foreigners. We only have player who made most money in history of hockey so far, nothing like those greedy Swedes. :-p

XD I'm not saying one is any better than the other I just think it's funny that Starmaker (who I really like and look forward to hearing from) chose Sweden to make the point about money when in fact they are loaded with high paid superstars.

On a kind of side note, no one wants to be more cynical about sports than myself but (and call it a guilty pleasure) I really enjoy Olympic hockey and all the cheesy B.S. that goes into it and sports in general. In a few days this will all be over and we can go back to being identified by our species, not our flags, as it should be. Until then, hey I'm gonna dig me some hockey! :D

I congratulate Canada with the minimal 2:1 win over Latvia, it was the hardest game for Canada so far but they had a little bit more luck and managed to score in the last minutes of the game. Everyone in Latvia is very disappointed because they were obviously counting on our win and semi finals.

Russia may have cheated in an Olympic event held on their turf? Shock! Horror! This is totally unprecedented! I would never have expected this. Russians have always been so honest, especially at the Olympics!

</sarcasm>

It's especially blatant on that footage, which highlights a few irregularities so far (most remarkably at 1:49).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogCTonrtlvQ

I honestly couldn't care less what a private company that doesn't seem to leech funds from the public pays its foreign hires, but even if they were in the pocket of Gazprom, it's not important right now.

The Olympic medal standings by country are bullshit. They have ruined the games more thoroughly than the UCI ruined cycling. And no, I'm not talking like a sore loser, I owe no allegiance to the Vlasov flag.

Sports officials and the media like to pretend they celebrate sports, individual achievements, heroism, excellence, and all that highminded stuff. Not so. They celebrate nationalism. An individual victory, which by rights should be independently awesome, is just a point in the country standings; a silver medal is a tiebreaker, and bronze is a footnote. And now sports officials base their decisions not on the potential awesomeness and glory of a victory, but on the necessary, unavoidable blame of defeat; instead of reaching higher and risking moar so that their country could be known as the homeland of that one guy/gal who was fucking awesome and made everyone shit icosahedrons, the whole enterprise turns into damage control and the blame game. It also demeans the athletes whose countries are known to not be in the running, by redefining what counts as a victory in popular opinion.

In light of all this, it's awesome there are countries which don't pay cash prizes for medals. Making people do sports on their own dime on the off chance it pays off in a hueg olympic win is fucked up. Third-world countries attempting to outright buy prospective champions with stupendous cash prizes while their existing citizens don't even have basic food security is even more fucked up. Seriously, you want pro athletes? Pay a salary to the athletes. You want healthy citizens? Build facilities. Back in 2009, my district started funding the construction of a sports center. In four years, they invested $2M. The place is still a dump, and I mean that literally as in literally - it's an actual dump, walled off by a concrete fence. The fence is painted on a yearly basis. $2M, ladies and gentlemen.

It's not looking good for them especially after what they tried at the Summer Olympics.