Olympic Cities Distance Quiz (3 of 6) Montreal to Moscow

Today, we continue our series of the distances between cities which have hosted the Olympics, with a question about far about Montreal, Canada, site of the 1976 games, are from Moscow, Russia, which hosted the event when the city was the capital of the since-deceased Soviet Union.

We are going with Misha the Bear, the mascot of the 1980 Olympics, here since we dined at a place called Mishka's Restaurant in Baku, Azerbaijan, back in 2008. Ironically, the place had great hamburgers and french fries, which one would associate with, well, capitalism.

During the 1976 Olympics, Nadia Comaneci of Romania scored three perfect 10s; American Bruce Jenner won gold in the decathlon and is now on the front of retro Wheaties cereal boxes (at least in the United States) and American boxer Sugar Ray Leonard beat out Cuban boxer Andres Aldama for gold.

But, Aldama was able to win the gold himself four years later due to the large Olympic boycott of the United States and 64 other countries. Nadia (we prefer to break the rules and use her first name) won gold on beam and bars during the 1980 Olympics as well.

So just how far apart are Moscow and Montreal?

Is the answer:

A) 4,225 miles

B) 4, 395 miles

C) 4,705 miles

D) 4,885 miles

UPDATE: The answer is B

Yaaaay! The Olympics are Finally Over!

It's not that we didn't enjoy them. The Vancouver Winter Olympics were certainly memorable for many reasons, including South Korean figure skater Kim Yu-Na's exeptional performance which garnered her a well-deserved gold medal.

But, an 18-day event is sort of like a performance of Richard Wagner's long opera "Gotterdammerung/Twilight of the Gods." You were glad to watch it, but you are also certainly most pleased that you can now watch the original 1925 version of "Ben Hur," which you have no idea why you put on your NetFlix que to begin with! (In my case,the long film is actually a three-hour 1969 Chinese epic called "A Touch of Zen.")

Of course, it should be pointed that we are featuring Dudley Do-Right here to poke a little fun of 'our friends up north'- not that we are biter over losing to Canada by a 3-2 count in yesterday's hockey game. Of course, if we had won Glenn Beck would have been ranting about 'American superiority' for weeks on end...!


The good thing about not having a blog that gets over 1,000 hits per day like my friend Chris Knight's blog (http://theknightshift.blogspot.com) is that I am not getting emails from Swedes, Danes and Finns who are perhaps rightfully ticked with me for snubbing their athletes in my recent series on 25 Olympic athletes.

I did profile the great Norwegian skier Alex Lund Svindal, but I otherwise completely snubbed Scandinavaian countries, which won a total of 39 medals (Denmark and Iceland failed to medal). However, I also featured three athletes from African nations none of whom medalled though The Snow Leopard finished in the top 50!

So, I will make a random list of ten Scandanavian athletes we could have profiled. Oh, I should mention we mostly snubbed Eastern European countries too, but we only have so much time to make amends:

1. Emil Jonsson-cross country skiing-Sweden
2. Iris Gudmundsdottir-slalom skiing-Iceland
3. Laura Lepisto- figure skating- Finland
4. Angelina Jensen-women's curling- Denmark
5. Petter L. Tande- nordic skiing- Norway
6. Anna Holmund- free style skiing-Sweden
7. Henrick Lundquist- men's hockey-Sweden
8. Mikka Kiprusoff- men's hockey- Finland
9. Anja Paerson- slalom skiing- Sweden
10. Janne Ahone- ski-jumping- Finland

We believe at least two of these athletes, Tande and Ahone actually medalled as did the Finnish men's hockey team (the Swedes won bronze in women's hockey as well).

The American Olympic delegation actually won some surprising medals, including nordic skiers Billy Demong (gold) and Johnny Spillane (silver).

We also got a gold medal in four-man bobsled,which during the time of the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid,would have been virtually unthinkable. The "Night Train" team consisted of Steve Holcomb, Justin Olsen, Steve Mesler and Curt Tomasevicz.

Later in the month, we hope to update some of the 25 athletes we profiled in an entry entitled "The Olympic Hangover." But, for right now, we are going to resume regular programming, but at least here you won't have to watch Jay Leno interviewing Sarah Palin, who will speaking for $300 in Charlotte, NC, later this spring (we are not making this up!).

SIDEBAR: Speaking of snubs, it appears that the local Greensboro, NC, newspaper "The News and Record" did not publish a letter I wrote which was critical of The Rev. Pat Robertson's heinous comments regarding the devastation in Haiti.

I realize that it is possible the letter got lost in cyberspace or there were similar letters about the matter or that they had limited space.

Nevertheless, the same newspaper did publish a fringe, right-wing letter by Tony Maschetti of High Point, NC, today which actually said that Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama should make arrangements to have terrorist Khalid Sheik Mohammed stay in the Lincoln Bedroom.

This does make me think of liberal columnist Eric Alterman, also a professor at Brooklyn College, who entitles his pieces in "The Nation" under the name "What Liberal Media?"

I consider myself much more to the political center than "The Nation" (though I prefer them over "The National Review") and I realize that "The News and Record" may not have published my letter for other reasons. But, irregardless I fully sympathize with Alterman's motto. And, I have to wonder if I were to write a letter to an arbitrary local newspaper about how we should nuke Canada to avenge our losses to them in both men's and women's hockey if it would in fact get published the next day.

Not that I'm going to try............