I mean, of all the cities in Russia, you pick just about the only one that has a subtropical climate for your Winter Games? And one so near the dangerously unstable Russian Causasus, at that? Then you got all the bad press saying that the preparations for the Olympics were simply redefining the meaning of the word "corruption", going far above and beyond the already bad expectations people had in that regard, with all the stories of multi-billion roads to nowhere. Putin wishes the gay issue was the biggest of his worries.

Of course, there were a lot of complaints in the lead up to the Beijing Summer Olympics, too, and those were a resounding success, so in the end Putin may still gain from Sochi, at least in the short term. Here's to hoping the Russian athletes suffer some humiliating defeats in key events, though...