The wintery olympics are many things. They look spectacular and mainly cold with either ice, snow or frost not very far away from the sports. In some ways they are closer to the elements than other types of games or sports. The bobsleigh is an actual sleigh that descends the mountain because of the ice and not in spite of it. The skiing is only able to happen because of the snow as if it wasn't there then it would not be very exciting would it. I did not expect as I turned on the television to watch something to pass the time to witness something that was genuinely thought provoking. The women's downhill.

For background there is an American skier that is called Lynsey Vonn who is, or as it is now was, a very capable skier in her pomp. Several big wins including previous olympics which although in the past were still hers and hers alone. However, we do not live in the past do we. The present is here and only here pushing out ever presently along an unbroken line of being. What happened yesterday in any real sense, meaning its only skiing, effectively did not happen. At 41 Vonn was attempting to compete in the olympics again and win, it is a story, it is content and that is what matters. The content and thus the capital that can be extracted from something, the person is secondary and a bit of an illusion as they do not exist. They have been subdivided and evicted from it by the content. The story is what drives a thing towards an end.

The story in this case grew beyond a single person and exploded into the broader news.net bubble that people give their attention on their devices. The week in the run up to the olympic run where she will be, in everyones eyes who cares to watch, crowned the olympic downhill champion. An oldie but a goldie. The fact that she spent her previous professional career navigating injury and recovery on a basis that would have made an alcohol councillor wince was forgotten. She may be decades older than the other athletes but it was hers to lose. At least that was how it was billed. A crash and a blown ACL later it only made it more odds on that she would win. The logic is truly staggering. A bit of research shows that yes, it is in fact okay to ski with a completely damaged ACL. It is not advised or warranted but it can be done. However, if I told you I was going to enter a competition for the most times to stand up out of my deep seat sofa and walk to get a Stella out of the fridge on a warm spring day while I watched an Saudi Arabian illegal stream of a League One Barnsley game and also to do it in competition with the worlds best people at doing exactly that you wouldn't place a bet on the guy who's fucking leg didn't work would you? Not as it seems for the broadcasters at the BBC or the online content community, it only made it more odds on. This is the spectacle, the personal had become a story that had become a spectacle.

So on that Sunday whilst a group of very talented mentalists hurled themselves down a mountain at 90mph the only talk was about how this legless Vonn was going to come out and win. The danger and the risk each athlete undertook was itself overtaken by the spectacle that was dangling at the top of the course. At her allotted time Vonn then pushed off from the little tent erected to act as a sort of mountain start chalet and started her own plummet down the side of the mountain in the Italian alps. Which unsurprisingly lasted all of 13 seconds before, unable to land fully on her hobbled right knee it gave way and a, at least, visually calm and slow ski run ended in a violent crash. Which is a funny thing about skiing as when they are going fast they are tight and hold a form and pattern and as soon as things go wrong it is like physics catches up with them incredibly quickly. It calls out, speed, gravity and crashing are violent so lets see your best rag doll. A stunned crowd and tv crew meant we were treated to the rare phenomena on television, silence. Which would have been total had it not been for the agonising cries and shrieks from the injured Vonn still near the top of the mountain which were obviously picked up on microphones closer to the crash site but played alongside a wide angle modesty shot showing the distance between the striken skier and the finish line only exaggerated them into something otherworldly and primal. The spectacle in full view, this person had transcended the human only to be crushed, broken and put on display on a 4K television 1000's of miles around the world for all to see.

In all that carnage it now is not in my mind who won the actual race. In some way it doesn't matter. We all got what we came for to witness someone trying to push through to be themselves destroyed. That poor knee.