Winter Olympics Vancouver 2010

[killatokes]

omfg! this "first gold on canadian soil" thing is really bugging me now. Visa just premiered a new high tech commercial (obviously produced months ago) literally 2-3 hrs after the men's mogul finals; with the tagline: "congratulations Canada on winning your first gold medal on Canadian soil"......wtf! what if it hadn't happened? have these people never heard of jinxes?!! you don't mention a no-hitter to a pitcher on the way to winning one, and I for one am sick of some of the "tone" of the CTV coverage. you could have played a pretty devestating drinking game with the # of times it was mentioned! their coverage itself is pretty comprehensive but for whatever reason i find most of the commentary brutal...ugg

i've also been flipping to the american coverage to watch some of the high tech toys that are being rolled out in the broadcast. LOVE the luge coveraage where they overlay multiple racers on the course to illustrate how fine the margins are. pretty cool!

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CTV has had a few good moments, it's not all bad by a long shot. The 'Difference Makers' series with Rick Hanson is good, 'Super Bodies' is well-done and interesting, and the 'How Tough is That Sport' (or something like that) is pretty entertaining. But yeah, the fashion and celebrity buzz stuff has got to go. The CTV announcers rely too much on taglines rather than actual commentary, although I guess some of that is to be expected as they're (mostly) all covering these sports for the first time. Particularly annoying was the 'LOOK AT THAT SPEED' in the moguls tonight.

Brian Williams is always good (as is the other Brian Williams on NBC), and James Duthie is really doing well.

Best recovery from a gaffe was scored by James Duthie, who told viewers they were going to see women’s hockey seconds before they were taken to speed skating. When Duthie came back on, he deadpanned, "That was one of the strangest women’s hockey games I’ve ever seen.â€

The NBC coverage of the opening ceremonies was waaay better than CTV though. CTV's audio was super muddy and quiet while NBC's was clear and loud. The NBC graphics were better, and the hosts were more interesting. They don't seem to be showing as much of the events though, yet. Strange. Maybe they weren't interested in the first weekend.

I hate that Nikki Yanofsky song so much. And I hate that she butchered O Canada.

[killatokes]

VERY much agree with the comments regarding the singing of O Canada at the opening ceremonies. only the americans should be wacked enough to pop(ularise) their national anthem...i don't even like the comparison that that version invites.

on a more LOL moment: the simpson's Ivan Reitman produced opener tonight was highlarious!

[Velvet]

I calmed down, went to a different Future Shop outlet and got a little notebook for working on the road.

It's a rough time for luddites.

Yay Canada Gold! I danced.

[phishtaper]

It's a rough time for luddites.

today maybe ... but tomorrow? or the day after that?

[Booche]

what if it hadn't happened?

This:

VANCOUVER — All hail Jenn Heil for her performance on Saturday at Cypress Mountain.

Second best in the world is nothing to sneeze at. But in freestyle skiing, of course, the ‘world’ consists of a relatively small handful of rich, northern countries. But, hey, you could say that about any sport at a Winter Olympics. As my great track and field buddy Cecil Smith used to say, there’s no synchronized swimming in Africa. And you can interchange synchronized swimming with freestyle skiing, luge or biathlon.

But Heil deserves to be content with her silver medal. She did win silver, not lose gold, because she didn’t crash and burn, or choke under pressure. Her final run Saturday was solid. It’s just that the run by American gold medallist Hannah Kearney was superior.

That being said, Heil’s comments since her Saturday performance have been gracious, magnanimous and enthusiastic. And kind of frightening.

It seems The Beast is back. And we don’t want The Beast.

And there’s nothing scarier at an Olympic Games (perhaps other than a trip to Cypress Mountain) than The Beast — Canadian athletes who are happy with disappointing performances.

Until recent years, The Beast reared its ugly head all the time: If a Canadian athlete didn’t win a medal, that’s OK, as long as you tried hard and enjoyed yourself.

Thankfully in recent years, there’s been a change of attitude, the likes of Donovan Bailey in Atlanta and Myriam Bedard in Lillehammer and even Jenn Heil in Turin four years ago comes to mind. Second place was not good enough. They were there to win and damn the politically correct goal of competing and being a good sport. Being a good sport is great, to a point.

That’s why Heil’s gushy comments, post-silver medal, have thrown some of us for a loop.

“All I can say is that this is really a celebration for me,†the Spruce Grove, Alta. native said Sunday when asked about her silver medal. “It’s so amazing.â€

The last thing the Vancouver Olympics needs is more of The Beast. The Beast accepts disappointment.

Do you think if it was an American or Australian athlete, defending her Olympic title on home soil, that they’d be as over the moon? They’d be ticked.

My all-time favourite athlete was Montreal’s Victor Davis, an Olympic swimming gold medallist and world-record holder who absolutely refused to accept losing, once causing an international stir when he kicked over a chair in front of the Queen at the 1992 Commonwealth Games.

After finishing second in a race at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, he dove into the warm-up pool and remained submerged for such a long while that people began to fear he wouldn’t come up again. But he charged back later and won a gold.

Heil should be more like Victor Davis, even if just a little bit.

Her silver is marvelous, but she had a chance to win Canada’s first Olympic gold medal on home soil. And defend her gold medal from Turin — here at home in front of thousands of supporters at Cypress, and millions more on TV. She didn’t, yet she feels really happy.

Heil didn’t fail us, or herself. But shouldn’t there be a little more disappointment?

All hail Jenn Heil.

But down with The Beast.

Remember — in Vancouver, Canada is supposed to Own the Podium.

[Northern Wish]

These are my first Olympics. For a sports writer, I'm told this is a big deal, but, like most sports writers -- and even more Canadian sports writers -- I'm suspicious about whether or not it will be any good at all. But, having been in Vancouver since Friday, my only regret is this: that my coastal reportage will make this event seem impossibly good and fun. Still, impossibly good and fun it has been. Like Expo 67, the 1972 Summit Series, and the 1980 Quebec Referendum, Vancouver has left the impression, so far, that, after these Olympic Games end, Canada will never be the same again.

To start, this is a city -- and a country -- that feels released from itself. It's as if a very fat man is tickling Vancouver. A very fat and happy man. A very fat and happy Russian or German man: yowling and

waving around a stein of lager. Plunked upon by pavilions, tents, and beer gardens, and strung with countless lights and cables by which hellions zipper above Robson Square, Vancouver resembles Shanghai by way of Octoberfest, a transformation that, on my first day here, held deep into the night and early morning. After Friday's Opening Ceremonies, I watched revellers spill into the streets crying out the name of their respective homeland while being shouted down by young Canadians electrified by this sudden jolt of national fervour. From points east, Vancouver can sometimes feel like its own continent during normal times. But now, even locals would be hard pressed to identify their city.

In the former Canada, you'd go to events like this and expect nothing to happen. Either that, or you were disappointed. Festivals that celebrated great art existed in a vaccum-- the 1987 Canadian Independent Music Festival in Vancouver changed my life, but the crowds were small, and caused hardly a ripple on the national scene -- and even though the effects of bp Nichol's first poems or early DOA records eventually registered, it took the country forever to catch up to them. But not now. Not after Vancouver. At the conclusion of the Opening Ceremonies, Canadians were talking en masse about the work and performance of a poet -- Penticton's Shane Koyczan -- who read to a billion television viewers from a hundred foot platform rising out of the floor of BC Place. As it was happening, two New York Times writers said to me, "This would never happen in the USA, and maybe nowhere else." My heart thumped against my breast pocket. A guilty moment of shopworn pride it was not.

As a people traditionally distanced from each other, Canadians need a reason get together, and however justified the reasons for protesting the Games, gatherings like these help solder the country. I watched the Opening Ceremonies in a sandwich of provinces and people who cheered rapturously during the flag-bearing and torch-lighting celebrity reveal, which not only reflected Canada's new ability to embrace itself, but reminded you that, oh, yes, right, we have celebrities, too: actors, basketball players, singers, and Bobby Orr. Then kd lang sang "she tied you to chair/she broke your throne/she cut your hair," which was as weird and good and Canadian as any moment I've ever witnessed. The Times' writers couldn't resist: "Both Leonard Cohen and k.d. lang? What are you, trying to kill us?" For those of us who are uncomfortable with such broad expressions of national culture, the presentation closed with our greatest national icon riding in a Chevy pickup truck as if cast in a lost Trailer Park Boys episode. While it's true that this type of gesture might have been possible elsewhere, it was happening here. It was happening now.

As Canadians, we reserve the right to be careful and self-conscious about who we are and what we mean to the world. But in Vancouver, you get the feeling that those are now old sentiments, emotional shackles of a former place. Those among us who are cynical about expressions of national self-worth are now the minority. You can see it in the streets, hear it in the pitch of voices. You might want to think about experiencing it for yourself. On second thought, don't think about it.

Just get here.

www.davebidini.ca

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2565670#ixzz0fd9ju5CL

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stuff

That was written by Steve Buffery at QMI Agency, for Canoe.

I think the guy's a tool for writing it.

[Booche]

From hence forth, he shall be referred to as Steve Buffoonery.

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Silver. Soooooooo close to gold for Robertson in Snowboardcross. He shoulda had it!

[hey now]

i cringed when the announcer doomed him by practically guaranteeing a gold.

jesus what a thing to say

like buck martinez talking about a no no in the 6th inning or something.

[Booche]

That dude had so many huge leads in the preceeding races that I think once it happened again in the final race, he let up for fear of falling but didnt account for the quality of his opponent. You could almost see it when he noticed the American rider.

"Holy fack! Where did he come from?"

He slammed on the pedal again but it was too late. I dont know, whatver. That's what I think I saw but none the less. Way to go kid.

And no. It had nothing to do with a jinx.

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He missed the last jump.

[hey now]

not that i think there is a jinx however it is still bad form for an announcer

[Velvet]

He did not put in a Gold Medal performance on the Gold Medal run and he ended up with Silver.

A momentary disappointment for us - but I'll bet it haunts him for a while.

[Booche]

He missed the last jump.

Did you see the lead he had?

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Absolutely. The guy behind him carried more speed and hit the last jump perfectly. It was a gold medal run for a while. The gold medal dude raced better though. No shame in that.

[Kanada Kev]

[Kanada Kev]

Great shots of the opening ceremonies:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/02/opening_ceremonies_for_vancouv.html

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Another gold!! Snowboardcross is awesome

[Kanada Kev]

AD, you'll like this one

Tatar version of "We Are The Champions" willing the Russian team on to victory in the Winter Olympics.

[Booche]

A universal truth: no stories are written about planes landing safely.

That said, the hammering which the Vancouver Games are taking right now in the international press is not merely a case of cynical, bored reporters willfully ignoring silver linings.

There have been problems here. Some of them are the result of unforeseeable circumstances, of acts of God, some have been wildly overblown.

And some are absolutely real and simply inexcusable, the unhappy byproduct of taking calculated risks, of incompetence and design flaws and bad planning exposed at the very worst time.

No point in circling the wagons and pretending otherwise, of pointing to every bus that arrives on time, every security checkpoint that works flawlessly, every smiling, polite volunteer. The locals tried that in Atlanta in 1996, and it only made things worse.

Better to face up to the facts, and while pressing on to the finish, try to understand how a massive and massively expensive enterprise so long in the works might have avoided the worst of what's happened.

But first, a glimpse at how others are seeing us right now....

"Vancouver Games Continue Downhill Slide From Disaster to Calamity."

That's a headline from The Guardian.

"What Went Wrong at the Winter Olympics"

That's a nifty graphic feature in The Times that also includes one thing - and only one thing - that has gone right so far: Alexandre Bilodeau.

"Fours years ago in Turin I thought the ice was bad. And the same guy was responsible for it. I hope next time they take a different ice master.....This is not of Olympic quality. It is laughable."

Those are the words of the Dutch speed skater Jan Bos, as quoted in Algemeen Dagblad, published in Rotterdam and one of the most influential daily newspapers in the Netherlands.

Pretty rough stuff. No doubt there's more, and some of it, some of that, is piling on.

But it is a fact that the two most significant venues built specifically for these games, the Whistler Sliding Centre and the Richmond Oval, have in their first week of Olympic operation been the site of tragedy and massive embarrassment.

Luge is a dangerous sport, and its participants assume a significant degree of risk, but in other dangerous sports (automobile racing being the most obvious example) technological advances and improved track design are supposed to make things safer. The horrific death of Nodar Kumaritashvili can't be explained away as just one of those things, a terrible fluke - especially given the alarms sounded about the track's safety long in advance of the Games. Hard questions must be asked, and at least a degree of responsibility must be assigned.

The ongoing fiasco at the oval, the failure of the highly touted ice making equipment, perhaps the failure of the ice-making personnel (as suggest in what Bos had to say) can't be blamed on the weather, or outside agitators, or anything but a multi-layered screw up. In the parts of the world where speed skating matters, we're a laughing stock right now. And just maybe, beyond the ice making machines themselves, there's a question to be asked about trying to be everything to everyone for political reasons, about building an Olympic speedskating oval that is designed to be used for everything but once the Games are done.

The weather delays at the alpine venue in Whistler are one thing - it happens all the time in that sport, because of too little snow or too much snow or issues of reduced visibility. The same thing could happen in Austria or Switzerland or France.

The issues at Cypress are something else again. Everyone understood from day one that the venue could be problematic, a situation aggravated by the spectre of an El Nino winter, but the organizers loved the hill because of its proximity to the city, because of the easy accessibility of the freestyle and snowboard runs, and because of those beautiful television images from the top.

It was a roll of the dice that, for all of those virtues, has proven to not nearly be worth the risk. For all of the fond memories Canadians will retain of Bilodeau's wondrous night, the sheets of rain during the women's moguls, the bales of straw masquerading as snow, the 20,000 ticket refunds (so far), are pretty convincing evidence that it's the wrong place to be.

And finally, if you're going to build an Olympic cauldron with four individual pieces that are supposed to rise out of the floor at the climactic moment of an Opening Ceremony beamed around the planet, they'd damned well better work. Three out of four is bad.

Easy pickings, this stuff, for anyone looking to take a shot (and in the case of the English press, to make a point in advance of their own Olympic Games in 2012.)

Easy pickings, but also fair game.

[phishtaper]

zamboni rulez

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I think it was a Star reporter that noted the dude who

wrote the Guardian piece is their golf reporter and speculated

he was pissed for not being assigned to Pebble Beach. The Star reporter also notes that the UK sent more journalists to the games than athletes.

I wonder why they have to bring in a zamboni from Calgary. Surely there are zambonis in Vancouver that could be rented. Or are they customized for speed skating ovals?

[Northern Wish]

I do believe they are retrofitted with special tires and blades. Olympias?? Maybe they should have sprang for the brand name: Zamboni.

And sorry Toronto Star but that is some fucking terrible journalism. I could speculate that the speculation was just that. Or we could call it sour grapes and move along.....