Rippon gives audience more of what they want
U.S. figure skater Adam Rippon is the breakout star of the Pyeongchang Olympics and NBC has made sure he’ll keep shining until the closing ceremony.
Sunday morning Christine Brennan of USA Today reported that the network had hired the 28-year old bronze medallist to work as a correspondent for the remainder of the Games.
Rippon’s profile rose sharply in midJanuary when he sparred with U.S. VicePresident Mike Pence over the politician’s homophobia. When Rippon, who is openly homosexual, said he wouldn’t associate with a politician who supported therapy to turn gay people straight, Pence’s office denied he advocated conversion therapy.
And when Rippon tweeted out a paragraph from an old Pence campaign website recommending funding outfits that help people “change their sexual behaviour,” Pence, who attended the opening ceremony, and his office tried to arrange a meeting with him.
Rippon, an outspoken advocate for gay rights, declined the invitation, but his turn as Pence’s foil boosted his social media stock — he now boasts more than 347,000 followers on Twitter and another 457,000 on Instagram.
NBC hopes to capitalize on Rippon’s built-in audience, deploying him on TV, online and on social media, according to the USA Today story.
Rippon placed 10th individually and won bronze in the team competition.
DOWN, SET, SLED: Men’s two-man bobsled competition started Sunday, and while there’s no doubt about who leads so far — Latvia’s Oskars Melbardis and Janis Strenga — you could have a spirited debate over which of the squads is best at football.
Canada would seem to have an edge, with one sled featuring former Bishop’s defensive back Nick Poloniato alongside brakeman Jesse Lumsden, who starred at McMaster in the early 2000s. Lumsden even auditioned for several NFL teams before his six-season CFL career.
But football roots also run deep on two of three U.S. entries.
Brakeman Sam McGuffie’s high school football feats are legend in suburban Houston. He rushed for 5,847 yards before heading to the University of Michigan on scholarship. He transferred to Houston’s Rice University after one year and totalled 1,543 rushing yards over four collegiate seasons, while his pro career included brief stints with Oakland, Arizona, New England and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
Another U.S. brakeman, Hakeem Abdul-Saboor, transitioned to bobsled from bodybuilding, but spent his college years playing football at a Division-II school in his native Virginia.
“Bobsled is definitely harder (than bodybuilding),” he told NBC Sports earlier this month. “(Some athletes) might be fast but not strong or strong but not fast . . . You have to have the total package in order to become a good bobsledder.”
CURLING AND CARDIO: The sexiest sport in Pyeongchang? It might be curling. Twenty years after its Olympic debut, the sport has made significant inroads among mainstream U.S. audiences, and is in the midst of an image makeover that has made some of its stars mini-celebrities.
BET’s late-night show The Rundown aired a spoof starring host Robin Thede as Gail Jones, an African-American curler who triggers right-wing outrage when she appears to take a knee when throwing a stone.
And a Sunday morning feature in the New York Times curling’s evolution from a game full of weekend warriors to a sport for high-performance athletes. The sport’s new emphasis on physical conditioning is so intense some competitors — such as Alexander Krushelnitckii, the Russian mixed doubles curler who reportedly tested positive — are doping.
And it’s so popular that curlers are now striking suggestive poses, published in places like The Men of Curling Calendar.
“You get a lot of the older ladies up in Alberta or Saskatchewan who are just going to buy those things up,” U.S. curler John Landsteiner told the Times.