Gus Kenworthy Is Olympic Silver Medalist And Dog World's Gold Medalist

OK, so I was impressed with American athlete Gus Kenworthy's silver medal winning performance in the slopeside ski event at the Sochi Olympics.

Gus Kenworthy with one of the
stray puppies he's trying to
rescue from Sochi and bring
back to the United States.  

But the guy has been making news and waves that gives him a total gold medal in this dog lover's mind.

Sochi was overrun by stray dogs as the Olympics neared and the Russian government hatched a plan to poison and kill them before the cameras and kleig lights captured them during the games, thereby ruining the nice photo opps that go along with the Olympics.

A lot of people of course didn't want the dogs killed. After all, it's not their fault humans let them reproduce and run roughshod over the city. So Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who underwrote much of the financing for the Olympics, is paying for their care. 

Kenworthy is trying to arrange to have as many dogs as possible shipped back to the United States for adoption.  He seems particularly attached to a mom dog and her four puppies. 

He's doing the legwork to get them back to the United States.

Meanwhile, there's an underground railroad of sorts going on around Sochi, in which Russian volunteers are smuggling stray dogs out of the Olympic area to other spots in Russia where the volunteers hope they can be adopted and live out their lives in peace.

That effort is part of what the billionaire Deripaska is helping pay for.