As we detailed on the blog previously, the Sochi Olympic Games seemed to have been fraught with logistical problems from the start, including questionable accommodations and discolored tap water, earning the Twitter hashtags, #sochiproblems or #sochifails. These mishaps, along with other controversies, did not generate the most positive PR for this year’s Olympic organizers.

However, if you watched the Closing Ceremony last night, you saw that it included a joke that allowed the event to poke fun at one of its mistakes with a little self-depreciating humor.

In the Opening Ceremony two weeks ago there was a malfunction in which one of the five rings did did not open in the large light display of the Olympic Games symbol – an example of #sochifails in massive glowing lights. The mistake seemed to add to the sense that not all was up to par at this year’s Olympics.

#sochifails

Last night’s Closing Ceremony included an ironic twist in which during the opening dance routine, several hundred dancers formed the Olympic rings, with the top right ring remaining unopened for a moment in humorous reference to the previous malfunction. The crowd cheered as the ring of dancers actually did open and tweets and gifs of the display went viral with many commenting “Good One, Russia”.

#sochifails

By M. Smelter (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons