Vancouver 2010

GO Canada, GO Germany (if not pushing Canadians off the podium) - everybody talks about it on facebook, in the gym or in the pubs. It seems time to put something up on my blog as well.

I went twice already to absorb the atmoshpere. Below are a couple pictures from Downtown Vancouver during the Olympics. Last week Wednesday was a wonderful sunny day. Lots of people in the streets - literally in the streets since most of them are closed to traffic. Many foreign languages and clothes displaying country colors from all over the world. Yesterday I went with a friend in the evening to see the city lit up - it wasn't as nice and dry as last week. Nevertheless, it happened to be a Hockey night and the city was packed - Vancouver was playing Russia in the quarter finals. It looked like almost everyone wore red or something Canadian (I only saw one Russian outfit). Everyone was cheering, the games was displayed on every outdoor screen - of which there are a few - and inside every pub - of which there are many. Russia was considered a real threat to the Canadians making it into the final so everyone was quite anxious - but hey they won!!!! Pretty loud downtown afterwards - and that was only a quarter final!!!!

The Canadian Women's hockey team JUST won the Gold medal in a game against their archrival USA. They scored 48 goals throughout the tournament and really dominated all the other teams. Go figure - well done though!!!

Few things to note about Canada and the Olympics on home turf:

1. Well, there is the weather - we are having one of the warmest February's on record. Good for my paddling, not so good for the events that require snow and cold. I am sure though everyone enjoyed last weeks blue skies and sun shine. Someone said on the radio Vancouver is the only city in the world were one could hold winter and summer Olympics and the weather would be just the same. So true!! That had been known before the IOC approved the Vancouver applications for the games - and nobody can be held responsible for what nature has in store for us. Last winter was very cold and lots of snow.

2. Apparently Canada spent quite a bit of money on it's winter athletes to have a shot at winning the medal count overall ("Owning the Podium"). Well, with only a few days left chances are they won't - not even close. Many people comment negatively on that which I think is wrong. I am VERY impressed with the Canadian performances overall - some disappoint as in every sport and some come up with the big surprises. To really grow a sport - and this is my personal opinion - one needs to start with the grass roots and not just 4 years ahead of the Olympics. Funding the clubs that are involved with the sport so that they can recruit many potential athletes and offer them the best conditions to train (I am not bitching about that BC just cut all their funding for youth sport last week and made it VERY difficult for some sports to grow). You need a BIG pool of athletes to produce the best in the world. One has to have talent that's for sure but having other athletes to train with and constantly challenge each other also goes a long way. Grow the sport and you grow good athletes. Unfortunately Canada has this obsession with hockey and that draws a lot of good athletes away from other sports (I know I am bitching again).

3. Canada never won an Olympic Gold medal on home turf. Darn, I hated the media for putting that type of pressure onto the athletes. Any medal in the Olympic games is a MAJOR achievement. Take Jennifer Heil as an example. She won the first medal for Canada on day 2 which happened to be Silver. I saw her moguls run - she did great (as far as I can tell not knowing nothing about skiing in general never mind moguls), looked like gave all she had - but there just happened to be one other person that performed slightly better than her. She was sooo disappointed not have lived up to the expectation set to her by the nation/media - she shouldn't have been!!! Canada finally did get a gold medal - so all is good now. Actually we are tied with the USA for gold medals. It just happened that the US has a few more off those other colours and currently leads the medal count. But I am cheering for the Germans too and they will take the top spot from USA soon - just wait.