Putin's Fraught Games

Putin's Fraught Games

Putin, it is safe to say, does not want the Winter Games in Sochi to resemble the fraught events of Moscow in the summer of 1980. To some extent, it is too late: the reports of fantastical cost overruns and corruption, the criticism about human rights (particularly the outrageous backward legislation regarding gays and lesbians), and the spectre of violence in the Caucasus make it impossible to imagine an event as purely athletic, pacific, and show-biz as, say, the 2012 London Games. The stakes have been raised dramatically. There is a long list of Olympiads remembered at least as well for their historical import as for their singular athletic performances—Berlin, Mexico City, Munich, Moscow, Los Angeles (where the Soviets retaliated, in 1984, with a boycott of their own)—and this, in one way or another, is bound to be one of them.

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