Jumblerant: Olympic

Friday, February 21, 2014

Frosty Bum!

The Olympics are here, well, the winter ones anyway, and its time for me to reminisce about some great times I spent with some simply marvelous people. Whats the connection? Well, one of them couldn't come to my wedding on Valentine's day many moons ago as he was in charge of the ice skating at the Olympics that year!

Oh yeah, I'm connected.

English: Ice skating in the Canada Centre, Metulla, Israel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I used to travel in connection with ice-skating. Memories abound of traveling to the middle of nowhere, normally off-season, to spend weeks in empty hotels watching angry parents push their kids to be the next Torvill & Dean, or Michele Kwan.

English: Kim during her free skating competiti...

Many a cry of 'frosty bum' as a young lady fell over during her sequence, and probably half a flask of 'medicinal' rum was most afternoon's menu. But it was fun, and the people were great.

Admittedly, similar to dressage, the discus and the 200m hurdles, and unlike the biathlon, figure skating is of absolutely no use in the real world. It is however, very pretty, concise, artistic and I for one am very happy that I get to see Olympic quality skaters every 2 years, as opposed to a summer Olympics every 4 years.

kthanxbai!

Jumblerant

Sunday, August 5, 2012

The Olympic Cost to the Athlete

Old NFO came up with these interesting stats. I say 'interesting', but I really mean 'mind-blowing'.

After reading the below I had to wonder what the taxes on guide dogs and wheelchairs are...

Interesting...

Because conservatives are scrooges, the good folks atAmericans for Tax Reform have gone through the fine print to find out what our Olympians will have to cough up to the IRS should they be lucky enough to win any medals in London.

Even by the standards of our government, the numbers are insane.

For instance: Americans who win bronze will pay a $2 tax on the medal itself. But the bronze comes with a modest prize—$10,000 as an honorarium for devoting your entire life to being the third best athlete on the planet in your chosen discipline. And the IRS will take $3,500 of that, thank you very much.

There are also prizes that accompany each medal: $25,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver, and $10,000 for bronze.

Silver medalists will owe $5,385. You win a gold? Timothy Geithner will be standing there with his hand out for $8,986.

It gets even worse. Not only do our Olympic athletes have to pay taxes on their medals and prizes – chances are their competitors on the field will face no such taxation when they get home. Because the U.S. is virtually the only developed nation that taxes “worldwide”income earned overseas by its taxpayers, our Olympic athletes face a competitive disadvantage that has nothing to do with sports.

I can only wonder if there is any way the athletes can deduct the cost of their training???

Personally, I think this is just beyond stupid!!! At least Rubio has sponsored a bill to relieve the taxes for Olympic winners!

kthanxbai! http://jumblerant.blogspot.com