Between the Lines
End Games Do we really need the Olympics? That question has been posed in editorial pages across the globe for a couple of decades now and recently informed Outside’s own coverage of the Games. It’s not that we don’t love the spectacle of the quadrennial competition, but increasingly the scandals and grift involved have become impossible to ignore. In 2013, when we sent McKenzie Funk to Sochi, Russia, to write about the lead-up to the 2014 Winter Games, he uncovered a mountain of excess and shady dealings. A year later, Rachel Sturtz reported on the devastating legacy of sexual abuse within competitive swimming, which had largely been overlooked by the Olympic-affiliated governing bodies charged with protecting athletes. In a 2016 online editorial, contributing editor Brian Alexander argued that hosting had become…
