Oh, for the fun in Games

Everything’s fine, except for the cold and the wind and the feeling that it’s all so serious here

PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— It was going so well.

At this point in Rio I had already seen one dead body, though in fairness it was under a sheet. At this point in Rio the pool had turned green, and Games spokesperson Mario Andrada, that big lug, had explained by saying, “chemistry is not an exact science.”

We still hadn’t experienced the Ryan Lochte Tries To Fool The World story, which was a good illustration of So Dumb You Don’t Even Know How Dumb You Are. We had yet to experience Andrada talking about two athletes robbed at gunpoint by saying, “I think that when you said several at gunpoint, we didn’t have several reports at gunpoint, we had some.”

Rio creaked and groaned and there was a menace there that does not exist here, unless you consider the security guards for the North Korean cheerleaders. But at least there was comedy, too.

Pyeongchang has had its bumps, but we are doing great, thanks, but everything seems much more serious, if sometimes less severe. One time-tested Olympic tradition is keeping an updated chart of the crises as they unfold, and it has veered all over, as they tend to do. The cold, for instance. It has been, at times, very cold. And the wind! The other day, it was very windy. Ted Wyman of Postmedia is a big man from Winnipeg, and the wind nearly knocked him over, and he said, “I have never seen winds like this.”

There were the North Koreans, who have sent robotic cheerleaders to send the message that all Koreans are the same, and there was the norovirus, which was such a terrifying idea at an Olympics that even if you didn’t have it, the idea made people want to vomit, or . . . well, poop their pants. But that seemed to be coming under control.

And Friday there was L’Affaire Adam Pengilly, the IOC member from Britain who has been a lonely critical voice on Russia and doping, and who was drummed out of these Games after a murky confrontation with what was described as a volunteer at these Olympics.

There are of course other IOC members with some pretty heavy allegations against them who are here, living the high life. Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah of Kuwait has been accused of bribery, and resigned in 2017 from the FIFA council, which is like a Mafia member resigning his capo-hood. Israeli IOC member Alex Gilady has been accused of rape by four women.

Everybody made jokes on how Fabian Boesch had covered all the ways to go viral.

But Pengilly, a critic, was booted. The IOC’s Rio hijinks were much less notable, in the bigger picture. Rio Irish IOC member Patrick Hickey was arrested on ticket-scalping accusations, which eventually went away. As it unfolded, the IOC was big on the presumption of innocence.

Here, Adams kept saying that Pengilly had admitted “it,” though what “it” was was not agreed on. Pengilly says he simply rushed by a security checkpoint and swore, not noticing the young man fell over. Local media alleged there was physical abuse and racist terms involved. Pengilly denies this.

But never mind, he’s gone. See ya, choirboy.

“We obviously had an incident here yesterday at the Games, with security, with a volunteer, and we take that very gravely,” said IOC spokesperson Mark Adams. “I haven’t seen the video footage. I do know that we quickly summoned (Pengilly) to see the ethics and compliance officer where the incident was discussed. Adam Pengilly admitted that he made some errors, apologized and I think he has actually left the country now.

“You’ll appreciate that during the Games this is something that has to be addressed immediately.”

Adams seemed to be basing the expulsion on the fact it was a volunteer (it was a paid security guard) and that it happened during the Games. Well, maybe the IOC would have forced Hickey to leave the country if he hadn’t been thrown in a Brazilian prison.

Either way, it’s hardly a Gamesaltering tempest. No, everything is going more or less OK.

And then came the news that two members of the Swiss freestyle team had contracted the norovirus. One of them was Fabian Boesch, whose video of riding up an escalator holding onto the handrail from the outside had gone crazy on the internet.

Everybody made the jokes that he had now covered his bases on all the ways to go viral. Good job, everybody.

Laughter is, of course, a very human reaction when you are terrified. The number of cases of the vomit-and-diarrhea misery virus had been dropping steadily as quarantines were implemented and most available surfaces were covered in bleach. And now the noro has snuck into two happy, funny Swiss gentlemen who did nothing but entertain us. They are out of the athletes village now, but what is the story that surfaces with every Olympics, other than logistics and corruption?

That’s right: athlete condoms, and athlete sex. We are now eight days into this 16-day lifetime of the soul, and nothing has derailed the Games yet.

But the norovirus has always been the sneaky, puke-inducing wild card in this whole affair, now that North Korea is cool and Donald Trump is distracted. We have not seen any dead bodies, and almost nobody — only a couple hundred people — has turned green.

But there’s still plenty of time for that to change.