Actual Firings Might Happen Because of This

In the spirit of a blog whose title purports to encourage the removal of incompetent persons from their occupations, I bring you this post. In the aftermath of Vancouver, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has decided he's had enough.

Those in charge of preparing Russian athletes for the Vancouver games "should take the brave decision and submit their resignations," he said.

I wish I knew an actual Russian person who could help me unlock the Russian Presidential code that. I lost my Putin decoder ring. So, is this code for:

"The men and women in charge might consider graciously and bravely stepping down from their positions to allow others the chance to help the athletes prepare for the next Olympics"

or

"They better get the fuck out before we disappear their asses to Yakutsk"?

"If they cannot do it, we will help them," Mr Medvedev added.

Looks like the latter.

Russia - traditionally a winter sports powerhouse - ended 11th in the medals table, with just three golds.

It's worth noting that they did finish sixth in the overall medal count, but 11th in gold medals. Still, it's hard to hang your hat on anything when you're managed fewer gold medals than the Netherlands, which has a tenth of your population. [Side note: I just learned that Nigeria is more populous than Russia. No kidding. And they didn't medal at all!] But seriously: Russia still has the advantage of having the most cold weather in the entire world, a HUGE advantage in the per-capita cold weather rankings... and they still didn't win much.

"Fuck Yakutsk!" said Mr. Medvedev under his breath. "We're sending them to Irkutsk!"

"For a long time we have benefited from Soviet achievements, at some point they ran out," President Medvedev said at a meeting of the governing United Russia party on Monday.

I don't know anything about Russian politics. But this still seems a bit silly to me - to publicly call out your atheletes' coaches. But I also imagine this has to do with wanting to save face because his own country is slated to host the next winter Olympics.

If they don't do well in 2014, those coaches better start learning the local lingo in northern Kamchatka.