Venezuela will also make an alpine skiing appearance: it is sending one competitor to Sochi this year. Violence in Venezuela is at appalling levels, with nearly 25,000 homicides in 2013 (although the government denies this figure). To put that in perspective, when Venezuela’s sole Olympian returns home, he is more than 150x more likely to be murdered than he would be in the United States (a nation with one of the highest homicide rates among developed countries).
Argentina is fast becoming an economic pariah as global investors brace for the worst. The country’s reserves of hard currencies fell 30% last year, and the currency has been in a tailspin of late. As the Argentine Peso has weakened, the government continues to tighten restrictions on transactions using foreign currency. Items purchased online from websites like Amazon need to be picked up at the local customs office, where waits often run 3 or 4 hours—and they are taxed 50%. Should an Argentine win a medal, good luck getting it past customs…
The locals
As I wrote in a recent piece for Time, the situation in Ukraine is deteriorating—with serious potential impact for Russia and the Winter Games. Part of the issue derives from Ukraine’s split personality between Europe and Russia. About one-sixth of citizens are ethnic Ukrainians who speak Russian as their first language rather than Ukrainian. Another one-sixth are ethnic Russians who speak Russian. So how will Ukraine’s Olympic delegation proceed? Will there be any signs of support for the Ukrainian opposition? Will Russia try and muzzle them from interviews? It’s an important space to watch.
As Russia tries to pull Ukraine deeper into its orbit, there are other countries in its cross-hairs. Belarus and Kazakhstan are already members of the Russia-led Customs Union. If Putin could realize his dream of building out the Eurasian Union to include more of the former Soviet Union—Armenia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan would be early candidates for this formalized security-economic integration framework—just imagine what it could do for Russia’s Olympic medal count.