And just like that, the Vancouver 2010 games have ended. Canada went out in a blaze of glory winning 14 gold medals in the 2 and half weeks of competitions, with more than half of those coming in the last week.
Alex Bilodeau, the first Canadian athlete to win an Olympic gold medal on home soil stands at the Royal Canadian Mint's Vancouver Pavilion with a framed technical drawing of his gold medal, which was produced by the Mint in Ottawa. (CNW Group/Royal Canadian Mint)
Two of those golds hold particular importance. After days of waiting and wondering, there was the first gold medal won by a Canadian on Canadian soil–props to Alexandre Bilodeau who won the men’s moguls event. (Small side note, for a man like myself who has had knee surgery, moguls is probably the most brutal sport I could imagine partaking in, more props to all the moguls participants) The men’s hockey team was also able to win the gold, redeeming themselves for their failure 4 years earlier in Turin.
I know all the golds Canada won are important, but as the stereotype goes, hockey is our sport, and this was on home turf– the men’s team had to win. Even those who aren’t big hockey fans like me would have been pissed off if they didn’t.
On to the games themselves. I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I was pretty worried with the start we got off to. With the malfunctions and problems with the opening ceremony, to the tragic death of the Georgian luger, the games did not get off to a strong, let alone good, start. This was compounded by bad weather (whoever thought Vancouver was suitable for winter Olympics needs a review of climate in the area; seriously the mean temperature is like 10 degrees in the winter and it rains. Both of those things tend to melt snow. Rant is over). Compound that with the relatively slow start by Canadian athletes.
The Whistler Sliding Centre (bobsled, luge and skeleton events were held there) caused controversy the entire time for being too fast, and therefore to dangerous. As mentioned before, poor weather conditions caused a lot of problems, in particular, where they held the skiing and snowboarding events. However as Canadian performances improved and complaints died down, optimism began to reign about these Vancouver games.
I for one was quite impressed with how the games were run. The CTV-Rogers consortium did a great job covering the games, presenting everything live, and with unbiased coverage for the most part.
Props go out to the technology rolled out for these games. The superbodies features that showed the athletes’ bodies and the way they worked in their events was spectacular. I highly recommend watching them, here’s a link to one.
All the events were covered by every angle and all breaking news was brought to you pretty quickly. The atmosphere of the games was also terrific as the crowds cheered whoever was competing, Canadian or not. These sentiments are echoed by Mr. IOC himself Jacques Rogge, so you can take my word for it.
The games definitely ended in a flourish as Canada went back to their 1860’s Yukon days with another gold rush. 14 golds is the new standard for any host nation and competing nation alike. We also got to see the courageous performance of figure skater Joannie Rochette, who won a bronze medal in spite of her mother’s death during the games.
Closing thoughts, Vancouver did a solid job. Obviously these weren’t the greatest games ever, but they were pretty damn good. The competition was top notch in spite of less than stellar circumstances, Canada itself did very well even though they didn’t own the podium as hoped (they did own the top of it though) and the world seemed to enjoy the games as well.
I’m happy Vancouver got some international exposure and hopefully all the facilities left behind are a positive legacy rather than money wasted. Although I hate to end on a negative note, I can’t end without getting these beefs off my chest. I believe my eyes have now turned red and white from the advertising barrage we had to suffer through for 2 weeks. There is such a thing as too much guys. And after witnessing the closing ceremonies, which were on the whole better than the opening ones, I find it hard to believe they failed to represent that which most Canadians would be proud of—that being our diversity. K-os the only non white performer? Come on now. Surely we could have found some other musical talent in our wide range of ethnicities. Ah well.
sending...
