Well, this ought to be good.
With only the semifinals standing in the way of the men's ice hockey championship game at the 2018 Winter Olympics, the Vegas odds are out for the favorite to win gold. And that favorite, as of Wednesday, is a country that doesn't exist: OAR.
So "OAR" obviously has real people from a real country. But its full name -- Olympic Athletes from Russia -- was created so as not to give Russia credit for any of its Winter Olympics accomplishments in South Korea. (That was the punishment handed down as part of an outright Russian ban by the International Olympic Committee in December, the result of a years-long investigation into an alleged state-backed doping program, which enabled hundreds of Russian athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs.)
And yet here we are, with the gold-medal ice hockey final just around the corner, and Bovada has OAR as the favorite to win it all with -150 odds (meaning you have to bet 3 units to win 2). Cue the inevitable and awkward podium presentation, where the Olympic organizers figure out how to crown a country that, technically, isn't in the Olympics at all.
Bovada's complete gold-medal odds for men's ice hockey are as follows:
OAR: -150
Canada: +200
Czech Republic: +700
Germany: +2500
The Czech Republic, which upset the United States in overtime on Tuesday, will face OAR in the semifinals, while Germany will square off with Canada, which has won two straight Olympic gold medals and three of the last four in men's ice hockey.
