Jonathan Mahler, Columnist

Sochi Offers the Thrill of Victory, the Fear for Your Life

Athletes know how to prepare for Olympic competition. How do they prepare for Olympic mayhem?

January 22, 2014 at 3:46 PM UTC

Jonathan Mahler is a sports columnist for Bloomberg View. He is the author of the best-selling "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning," the basis for the eight-part ESPN mini-series. He also wrote "The Challenge," the winner of the 2009 Scribes Book Award, and "Death Comes to Happy Valley." A longtime contributor to the New York Times Magazine and the Times Book Review, Mahler has written for numerous other publications including the Washington Post, Slate, the New Republic and New York magazine. He lives in New York.

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It's hard not to wonder how your average Olympic athlete is feeling about the upcoming Games. There you are, strapping on your Fitbit in the morning and putting yourself through hour after hour of physical punishment every day. You come home exhausted at night -- from the slopes or the rink or wherever -- make yourself a giant smoothie, plop down in front of your TV and catch up on the latest news out of Sochi.

What do you learn? Well, on Sunday, a video surfaced in which the leader of a terrorist group claimed responsibility for last month's fatal bombings in Volgograd and promised "a surprise" for Sochi — "a present from us for the Muslim blood that's been spilled." Turned out it was the same Chechen separatist commander who had previously called on Islamic militants to disrupt the 2014 Olympic Games -- or, as he referred to them: "Olympic revelries upon the bones of Caucasus people killed by Russians."