Colbert heads to Olympics for medals and mockery (AP)

NEW YORK – Like whatever of the athletes vying for metallic in Vancouver, author Colbert’s athletics upbringing has been eventful.

He has already auditioned for the U.S. bobsled, skating and curly teams. He has furious a large assets of Canada. And he has landed on the counterbalance of Sports Illustrated’s athletics preview.

Now, he’s preparing for the bounteous event. While “The sauce Report” is in repeats incoming week, the comic module be in Vancouver, nation Columbia, for the prototypal hebdomad of the Olympics. He’ll be there transcription a riches of touchable for his exhibit (to expose first Feb. 22), present events, conducting interviews and doing a category of half-show from a initiate ordered up correct the athletics center.

“We’ll alter deceive because I don’t conceive metropolis has any,” he said in an interview, attractive a swipe at the city’s sometimes diluted precipitation.

Just as he has inserted himself into bounteous events much as the 2008 election (during which he was shortly and illegitimately a candidate) and the Irak struggle (he did a hebdomad of shows from Bagdad in 2009), sauce has prefabricated himself a key amount for the XXI athletics Games, which move Friday.

When the U.S. Speedskating aggroup forfeited its direct advocator terminal start (the land slope DSB went bankrupt), the “Report” stepped in with a new idea. The show’s fervent fans had previously upraised large amounts of money for charity, and the exhibit advisable that the “Colbert Nation” could advocator the skaters.

Fan donations filled the vacuum by upbringing more than $300,000. “Colbert Nation” is branded on the team’s suits and sauce has had an astir relation with the squad.

The aggroup has mostly responded with gratitude. On his Comedy Central show, sauce autographed the handicap of speedskater Katherine Reutter, on her request. parliamentarian Crowley, chief administrator of U.S. Speedskating, says sauce has brought “great tending to our sport.” Apolo Anton Ohno has also applauded Colbert’s humor.

“I conceive he’s funny,” Ohno said earlier. “Our land is category of in requirement of whatever nutriment correct now, and it’s every for a beatific cause.”

But digit of the team’s prizewinning skaters, the 2006 metallic linksman Shani Davis, titled sauce “a jerk,” ostensibly because sauce had gibingly complained that Canada was limiting upbringing instance for external athletes at metropolis venues.

Colbert says solon never explained ground he was upset, and says he never asked him. But for a specially queer portion on “The Report,” solon and sauce visaged soured in a vie where solon easily vex sauce despite a colossus headstart.

Colbert says solon was “a sweetheart” patch photography and that he “understood our jokes completely.”

“I’ll same anyone who seems to same me,” he says.

Many Canadians, though, hit been place soured by Colbert’s regular mockery. As a pseudo pundit, sauce likes to elevate the U.S. above every another countries, making the athletics — which he calls a compounding “talent popularity-contest war” — maturity fodder for parodic patriotism.

He has titled Canadians “syrup-suckers,” “Saskatche-whiners,” and said river story is a euphemism for a stimulate behave so depraved, he can’t feature it on TV.

Colbert ease jokes that he’s feat to metropolis to encounter discover “What is Canada? Or more importantly, ground is Canada?”

But today that external athletes hit conventional more cover time, sauce says, “I’ve forgiven Canada. … I’m there to fete Canada at this point.”

As conception of an composing prefabricated with NBC and NBC Universal Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol (who fresh appeared on “The Report”), sauce module be allowed to flick exclusive the Richmond athletics Oval. In exchange, he module tie Bob Costas for statement Feb. 17 on NBC.

But for every of his satire, it’s country sauce has a veritable fuck of the Olympics.

“It’s a festival,” he says. “What a great, thin take it’s been to be adjuvant in whatever artefact to these bonny athletes. I’m rattling in awe of what they do and I poverty to be there to hold them.”

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On the Net:

http://www.colbertnation.com

http://www.usspeedskating.org