What a weekend this is for us sports junkies, what with being in the middle of the Olympic Winter Games and the opening of the motor racing season all at the same time.

First, the Olympics. So far it’s been a great show. The venues are spectacular. The organization seems to be operating properly. There have been outstanding individual stories … world records … and upsets.

There have, of course, been controversies. As we write this, the biggest rhubarb so far has been over the outcome of the pairs figure skating competition. The Canadian team skated what appeared to be the best performance of the night. However, the judges’ decisions worked out to give them the silver medal, while the gold went to the Russian pair. The Russian performance was wonderful but flawed.

There are reports that there will be investigations. It appeared that the votes from judges who represent former Soviet nations are what swung the decision toward the Russians. The Cold War apparently has not ended in international figure skating.

There are calls for a complete revamping of the system for providing judges. We hear this stuff every four years.

What I would like to see … what would make watching the Olympics more enjoyable … is a remote which would let met rotate among three or four channels, instead of between two.

I find myself having to push number buttons on the remote to switch among NBC, MSNBC, CNBC and CBC in order to keep up with everything.

Life is hard.

At least on Sunday I won’t have to add a fifth outlet to switch to in order to keep up with the Olympics and the Daytona 500 since the race will be on NBC.

Hot topic in the week before the race is the height of the spoilers on the rear of various brands of cars. Fords have had trouble keeping up with the other makes so NASCAR has given them a break by letting them use spoilers which are only six inches high.

Dodges and Pontiacs have to use six and a half inch spoilers and Chevrolets, six and a quarter inch.

All this is done to try to make each brand of car equally fast on the Daytona oval.

The other hot topic is a lawsuit expected to be filed this week by Bill Simpson, founder of Simpson Performance Products, Inc., against NASCAR.  SPPI makes seatbelts, helmets and other racing safety equipment.

Simpson says that he wants NASCAR to spend as much time and effort on driver safety as they do on restrictor plates and aerodynamics rules. He also wants the organization to apologize for blaming Simpson’s product for the death of Dale Earnhardt a year ago.

Soon after Earnhardt died on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500, NASCAR announced that the seatbelt made by Simpson’s company had broken, leading to the injuries which caused the death. Simpson did his own testing and claimed that, properly installed, his product would have held up against four times the force which actually occurred.

He claims NASCAR did not force teams to make sure the seatbelts were “properly installed.”

At a news conference this week, Simpson said that NASCAR pointed blame his way after he threatened to tell the world that it is the stiffer front ends of NASCAR vehicles which led to four driver deaths in the preceding year.

He also noted that last year, 39 of the 43 starters in the 500 used Simpson products. This year it’s just over a dozen.