It was Valentine’s Day at the Olympics for the many Olympic athlete couples, such as Madison Chock and Evan Bates, shown here during their free dance where they are obviously portraying an alien and an astronaut.

While this extraterrestrial love story fell just short of the medal stand, it was gold for another Olympic couple: Ashley Caldwell and Justin Schoenefeld in some kind of ski jumping thing that involved skiing backwards and flipping a million times and was so totally nuts that I woke a fellow Fantasy Olympian up in the middle of the night to make her watch it. I’ll obviously begin training right away for the 2026 Milano Cortina games, just as soon as I get over my fear of skiing forwards down a slight incline.

More Olympians in love- the US’s Madison Hubbell is engaged to one of the Spanish ice dancers, my claimed cousin Red Gerard is dating one of the girl snowboarders who isn’t Chloe Kim, and the one the commentators can’t stop talking about, Michaela Shiffrin and the Norwegian guy with all the names.

Too many more to name (without directly ripping off the USA Today article on the same subject) but it must be awkward to spend the Olympics with your partner when one of you is far superior at the sport. Something I know all too well, as my spouse, Desperado Ken of the Land of Tony’s Flags is a perpetual medalist in Fantasy Olympics whereas I am currently just off the podium in a respectable 13th.

Life imitates art sport as the saying goes, and the Fantasy Olympics is also rife with couples. The Swiddles seem to have joined forces into one country which is I guess not against the rules, but fortunately for them the pandemic has kind of zapped my will to enforce rules so I’m not going to investigate. Shogun Diego of pooponastick the country and Chancellor Trish of Tinkago are a fairly evenly matched 14th and 18th, as are Marge, Other of our our other poop themed nation, Poopopolis, and Sultaness Allison of the Desert of Content coming in at 19th and 22nd respectively.

Waaaaay down at the bottom of the table we have Most Supreme Leader, forever blessings be upon her, Jen of the Kingdom of Aldovia, and Sultan Don of Rootabega at 25th and 27th, and rounding out the group are Queen Gigi of Preschoolia (26th), and Your highlowness Mark of LowerUpper (29th), who made the patriotic decision to choose all Americans, and we all know how the Olympics are going for Americans.

Check the standings here.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Frequent and returning Fantasy Olympics champ falls out of the medal rankings for the first time, possibly ever. Also for the first time ever, the Groganzolans are tasting victory, having soared to Bronze medal contention. (I didn’t check the historical record to see if these stats were true, but they feel true.)

The Most Excellent Swiddle Family remains on top at least until their drug test results come back. Queens Mary and Mimi of Mariposa and Emvania respectively have a little ground to make up.

The US continues to come back in the overall medal standing, largely thanks to snowboard. We have always had great success when we make up a sport, get really good at it, and then force everyone else to compete against us.

Check the standings here.

Well, I was waiting until the US got good at the Olympics before posting but I can’t wait forever.

But Anna, you’re probably thinking, Nathan Chen scored the highest Men’s Short Program Figure Skating score in history, and you yourself included a photo of Jessie Diggins, the first ever US medalist in Cross-Country Skiing sprinting. And to you, I say: WHERE ARE MY GOLD MEDALS? We are tenth- TENTH- in the medal standings and have one gold medal and it’s in Women’s Snowboard Cross and no one even knows what that is.

Speaking of snowboarding though, this exists and is called “the Shred Shed” and it is glorious.

Elsewhere, a bunch of female ski jumpers who just so happened to be from the best ski jumping teams got DQ’d for having baggy outfits. Guess the officials hadn’t heard that bootcut is in again. NBC “accidentally” shut down Leslie Jones and then “realized” their “mistake” and said no actually she could make her videos that are getting more views than the Olympics themselves.

Leslie Jones is somehow a bigger Olympics fan than me, a person whose toddler explained this morning that “it’s ‘limpics season so we have ‘limipcs decorations.” Totally normal.

Closer to home, the top three on the Leaderboard are surprise, surprise: The Most Excellent Swiddle Family of the Land of Potty Words and Wrestling, Desperado Ken of the Land of Tony’s Flags, and Commander Brian of Washington Olympic Team, three of the most decorated Fantasy Olympians in the history of the game. I truly don’t know how they do it and I invented this game.

Check the standings here.

Check your team and the current standing here.

Join the facebook group here.

Attention all Fantasy Olympics participants:

The Leaderboard is now live and up to date through the events of February 5. If you are new to Fantasy Olympics, or time zones, please note the Leaderboard will be updated once a day, and will always slightly lag behind due to the time difference. The source of the information for points is olympics.com.

Join the facebook group (linked above) to stay up to date on blog posts and Olympics chatter, and to interact with other participants.

It looks to be another great year for the Fantasy Olympics. Many countries appear to have had some unrest since Tokyo, which we will, of course, explore, and once again we are joined by many husband/wife and siblings pairings, which we will, of course, pit against each other.

The torch is lit. The Games are now!

In honor of the seminal 1993 Winter Olympics classic film, Cool Runnings, all participants will earn points for the success of the Jamaican bobsled team.

Enter your team now!

CLICK HERE TO ENTER THE 2022 FANTASY WINTER OLYMPICS

You must enter before 7:30 P.M. EST on Friday, February 4.