Posted on 01/22/2014 7:06:21 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
What to ask the ruler? Last summer I joined the presidential press pool in Sochi, Russia, the home of February's Olympics. Russian president -- and self-appointed Sochi Games manager -- Vladimir Putin was in town to christen an Olympic hockey rink and watch a junior game between the U.S. and Russia. The woman from his press office said I would have the chance to ask him a question. This was a significant proposal. Putin holds just one press conference a year, and even that is more like an autograph session.
I hopped inside the van outside the Sochi Breeze Spa Hotel, near the eastern coast of the Black Sea. I was the only foreigner. The rest were journalists from state-controlled TV. We drove along Sochi's winding main road, past the construction zones that had plagued this resort town for the past seven years, past Olympic rings, 20 feet high, set among a tangle of new highway overpasses. My foreign colleagues were sociable, and we conversed in Russian. It wasn't long, however, before they pressed me to answer for America's shortcomings: the NSA's gathering of personal data, Barack Obama's sinking approval rating. Having lived in Russia from 2003 to 2008, I was used to these types of questions. I just smiled. I had other things to consider.
Hoping to strike the right balance, professional but probing, I thought I might ask Putin: What is the meaning of the Sochi Olympics for the Russian people?
(Excerpt) Read more at espn.go.com ...
“...I would have the chance to ask him a question.”
Are you going to give that Superbowl ring back to New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft?
I guess this so called reporter does not remember the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Herr Hitler did a pretty decent job of lording over the games too
I hear there are plenty of good tickets. In fact this might be the first Olympics nobody attends.
Russians were literally starving in 1999. Putin has brought them all the way back.
Hitler really didn’t care all that much for the Games, the Games were already awarded to Berlin before the Nazis gained power.
I hope Fedor Emelianenko gets to light the torch.
During the Cold War the USSR’s reporters sent just such reports back about American leaders.
For the same reason as this guy- they had to.
Shoes for industry!
Gay sport network no like Putin I guess/
I think Vladislav Tretiak will light the torch. Probably the most legendary hockey player for the Soviet Union.
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