The Quad God and American Reckoning at the Olympics | The New Yorker

My favorite Olympic scandal:

Long bouts of exposure to the wild sometimes drive men crazy. You know the archetype—frozen beard and frantic eyes, a raving, paranoid quality of speech. Maybe this explains the bizarre case of the Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Lægreid. After nabbing a bronze medal in the twenty-kilometre biathlon, Lægreid took an interview that quickly became a tearful monologue, not about his sport but about personal matters. Six months ago, he said, he’d met the love of his life. Three months later, amid the chaos of new love and the strictures of training for the Olympics, he’d found time to cheat on his object of affection. “I made my biggest mistake,” he said, choking on tears.

“Sport has come second these last few days,” he said. (Was this a parenthetical excuse for coming in third?) “My only way to solve it is to tell everything and put everything on the table and hope that she can still love me,” he continued. “I have nothing to lose.”

Nothing but his dignity—and the privacy of his already wounded beloved. In the space of a few minutes, Lægreid had managed to make not only the biathlon but the entirety of the Olympics about himself. I felt a pang of sympathy for the guy. He reminded me of an American.