Moustaches are so hot right now, and the obvious key to athletic excellence in all forms. Mitchell Johnson taught us that in the Ashes (and now, against South Africa). And Eva Samkova, the 20-year-old snowboarder from the Czech Republic was not going to let something trivial like a lack of Y chromosomes prevent her upper lip from attaining the necessary follicles to ensure her victory. Sure, she drew them on. And sure, she claims to have been drawing fake moustaches on herself since at least 2011 and that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the recent form of a left-arm fast bowler in a sport she’s almost certainly never heard of. But I don’t buy it. In my mind, this is effectively a gold for Australia.  In a thrilling break with Olympic tradition, Canadian ice skater Kevin Reynolds rocked up to the short form event in his ute, dressed in stonewash jeans and a flanno shirt after spending an afternoon down at the pub sucking down piss with his mates, cheering home some useless donkey in the last leg of his quaddie. At least, I assume he did. Because he then cranked up some AC/DC and did some burnouts with the skates, old school. Love your work, Kevo. Let’s get some Chisel in there next time too, mate.  Slopestyle skier Henrik Harlaut, the man with those oh-so-Swedish dreadlocks, knows how to keep people tuning into the Olympic Games. His most inspired moment of theatricality was to give the W sign and shout “Wu-Tang Is For The Children” as he completed one of his runs in the men’s slopestyle last week. His second most-inspired? To almost lose his pants during a fall on one of his non-Wu-Tang-sanctioned runs. In a way, it makes you sad he didn’t win gold. Because if there’s one thing Olympic Games medal ceremonies need more of, it’s athletes mooning the dignitaries while Gravel Pit blasts out in place of the national anthem.  While she didn’t sport dreadlocks or follow it up with a salute to the Wu-Tangalangsters (as I prefer to call them), Russia’s Olga Graf at least had the wardrobe malfunction portion of her routine down pat. After winning Russia’s first medal (a bronze) in the 3,000m speed skating, she unzipped her skintight suit down to the waist as she set off on a lap of celebration. And then almost immediately zipped it up back up as she remembered she, uh, wasn’t wearing underneath. Does this make her a great ‘character’? Not really. But people have built careers on much, much less. So we’re counting it.  For a man who has been photographed shirtless sufficiently often to make him perhaps the most homoerotic homophobe in history, Putin’s claims that gay people would be safe at Sochi as long as they “leave kids alone” were offensive and insulting to essentially … everybody. Russia’s laws against “homosexual propaganda” are, of course, utterly deserving of ridicule and condemnation, and received that in spades well before the Olympics even commenced. But perhaps the most (inadvertently) humorous response to Putin was an internet meme that spread showing a protester wielding a sign that read “Would we have allowed Nazi Germany to host the Olympics?”. The fact that, um, we did allow Nazi Germany to host the Olympics, along with the revelation that the image was from a protest for the 2008 Beijing Olympics shows that Putin is responsible for highlighting both long-term and short-term historical ignorance. Monster!
Dan Liebke: As we approach the end of the giant slalom that is the Winter Olympics, who have been the personalities of the Games so far?