A snowboarding leopard, a figure-skating bunny and a polar bear wearing a scarf will be the three mascots for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia. Though those are some of the safest choices imaginable, the decision has led to charges of plagiarism, corruptibility and vote-rigging.
The winners were announced on a live television show broadcast throughout the country. Viewers cast over 1 million votes for the nine candidates and officials selected the top-three to serve as Sochi's official mascots. The snow leopard came out on top with 28 percent of the vote.
The announcement was not without some controversy. Ded Morez, the Russian equivalent of Santa Claus, had led in early polling but was pulled from the ballot at the last second when Russian organizers feared that their country's folk hero would become official property of the IOC. That decision left room for the following three winners, which are said to "encapsulate much of Russia's self-image."
Snow leopard
The snow leopard was the favorite of Vladimir Putin's. The Russian prime minister favored the cat because he is "big, strong, fast and beautiful." Not coincidentally, the mascot's popularity rose once Putin threw support its way. Its self-confidence swagger is "not unlike Putin's own projection of machismo" and the fact that the leopard enjoys the prime minister's favored martial arts makes some think the character was based on Putin himself.
Prominent Russian political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin told a Moscow radio station that he believes there may have been some voting irregularities in the telephone voting system that led to the leopard's victory. The insinuation is that Putin wanted the leopard so the leopard somehow made it to the top of the voting. That's silly. A rigged vote in Russia? Preposterous!
Bunny
The bunny will be wear ice skates in a nod to Russia's once-great figure skating program. No word on whether the bunny was in cahoots with the French judge to help with the victory.
Polar bear
The Associated Press says the final mascot looks "dorky." Whether that's true or not (and it totally is), the creator of Russia's last Olympic mascot says it's plagiarism. Viktor Chizhikov, the man who designed the mascot to the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, believes this bear is a direct copy of his.
Meet the dorky, controversial mascots for the 2014 Olympics
