Games in Sochi, Siege in Syria

Games in Sochi, Siege in Syria

Most viewers of the Olympics are aware that Sochi is only a few hundred miles from Chechnya—that’s part of what’s given these Winter Games their tension. It’s less widely known that Sochi is only a thousand miles from Homs, Syria. The two cities are separated by the Republic of Georgia, Turkey, and the ruins of Syria. I thought about their proximity after watching the men’s downhill on Sunday—the most exciting event of the Winter Olympics, as far as I’m concerned, won (as usual) by an Austrian, Matthias Mayer, on a nearly lethal course that had skiers flying down the mountain at close to ninety miles an hour, with one jump taking them almost the length of a football field—and then waking up to a picture from Homs.

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