The King of Salt Lake Has Left the Building

By David “Large” Larzelere
Mitt Romney has pretty much become the laughing-stock of the political universe in the last two weeks, and now, following his surprisingly poor showing on Super Duper Tuesday (didn’t it used to be just Super Tuesday? wasn’t that enough?) he’s dropped out of the presidential hunt altogether.
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I think that I will not be giving away too much about my own political leanings when I say that I was not exactly a Romney supporter (although I do have a soft spot in my heart for billionaire Mormon cyborgs). But here on this “sporting” blog, I would like to point out that if you were looking to cast your presidential vote on the merits of purely sportscentric achievement, I think he would have been your man.
McCain was a great wrestler and even a decent boxer back in the day, and yeah, he takes great interest in sports, but that mostly seems to translate into a lot of soundbites about steroids. Huckabee? Lost a lot of weight, and evidently jogging played a role in that. You are the weakest link, goodbye.
Obama’s people have posited him as a scrappy pick-up basketball player and a poker genius of note. I must say, as yet I do not fear him on either front. And Hillary… wore that Yankees hat and let us never speak of that again.
Romney, on the other hand - whatever else you think of the guy, Mitt Romney almost singlehandedly saved the scandal-plagued orgy of bribery and graft that was the 2002 Winter Olympics. It’s very hard to say what the Salt Lake Games would have looked like without him, or if they even would have happened at all. With him, however, they were an astounding success, money-wise, logistics-wise and most of all sports-wise. That triple crown right there was simply unfathomable circa 1999, when Romney started bailing out the Salt Lake Titanic.
In conclusion, Mitt, today I raise a completely non-partisan glass in your honor. I can’t say I wanted you to be president, but as someone who absolutely loved the Salt Lake Olympics, you’ll always have a claim on my good graces.↵