Olympics

Well, one of my most anticipated cyclical events in my life is now over and I still struggle with that. I probably spent around 14 hours every day during the Olympics watching or following the events in some way. That is pretty sad/incredible when you think about the fact that I sleep and have a full time job. In Canada we were fortunate enough to have the Olympics on up to 5 different channels along with the Internet. I didn't really get into the events until the torch relay and then I started to get excited.

The first day was brutal to say the least. The torch relay was on for about 8 hours and was really boring to listen to the same announcers non-stop telling stories about the torch-bearers or about the Olympics. It was occassionally interesting to see who was carrying the torch but if you want to watch people jogging, I wouldn't suggest doing it through television. About 4 pm I heard about a luger who was in critical condition after crashing on the track. At the time I didn't think too much of it because people crash all the time on these tracks. About ten minutes later there was an update to be made on the luger's condition and my heart sank a little bit anticipating what this update would be. As we now know, the Georgian luger ended up dying because of his crash. Nothing could be worse than starting the Olympics with a death. Things didn't seem as if they would get much better, there were thousands of protestors in Vancouver who didn't want the games to be held there and whenever there are protests things sometimes get out of hand and people get hurt. Luckily, for the most part these people just wanted to voice their opinions and I think that is the great thing about living in this country is that you can do that without fear of something bad happening to you. I was hoping that the opening ceremonies would help overshadow the day's earlier events. They certainly managed to do that but unfortunately in the wrong way. The crowning moment of the opening ceremonies is the lighting of the torch. It was awesome to see Rick Hansen, Catriona Lemay Doan, Nancy Greene, Steve Nash and Wayne Gretzky light the torch... only one problem, the torch wasn't lifting from the floor! Wow, what a national embarassment, we are having hydraulic problems. As if that wasn't bad enough we then had Wayne Gretzky in the back of a pickup truck in a random drive in Vancouver with a bunch of drunk people running beside the truck for what seemed an eternity. Finally, Wayne lights the torch and ends a forgettable opening day for the Olympics.

Now let's move on to the actual games, I was so excited for these games that I did a bunch of research on who our medal hopefuls were so that I would be able to watch and record at the appropriate times. We all heard about the "Own the podium" strategy and the COC's attempt to win the overall medal count as the host nation. I firmly believed that we could do this and we would be in the neighborhood of 30 medals. The first couple of days didn't go so well, snow in Cypress pushed back a lot of the alpine events so we had to wait on our first ever gold medal on home soil until at least day 2. Our first medal was kind of a bitter-sweet moment becaus Jenn Heil was the favorite for gold but got beaten (deservedly) by the American skier. That event really got me pumped for the rest of the games because it was about putting down a great performance but having another person pushing it to that level of greatness when it's all on the line. Our first gold was won by Bilodeau in moguls and that really got things going, we finally had our first home gold medal and it was a great story as well.

The first week didn't quite go as planned. We were way back of the Americans in the medal count but that was to be expected, however, we had missed out on a few medals and the Americans picked up some unexpected ones as well. Throughout some of the events, we had some big mis-steps. We didn't qualify for some events that we expected big things out of (notably speed skating) and people really started to question the "Own the Podium" strategy and even some athletes mentioned that as well. Even though there were a couple disappointments, especially on the first weekend of the games finishing with a team Canada loss to the US in hockey things were at a low point during the Olympics. The one thing that remained positive were the athletes that did find success is that they were good personalities. Then came the turning point and definitely my favorite moment aside from the gold medal hockey game. Jon Montgomery, a skeleton athlete from Russell, Man. overcame a huge deficit to win the gold medal and made the best entrance into a post-gold medal interview ever. I am so glad that I have moments like this on my DVR so that I can watch them again in the future.

After all the earlier failures in terms of medals, the Olympics were still great because you every time a Canadian athlete was announced to the crowd you could feel the energy in the venues where the athletes competing. There is also nothing that compares to a feat like winning a gold medal and then hearing spontaneous outbreaks of "O Canada" . Then things just went crazy, we started to win everything. We went from 6 gold medals to 14 in the matter of about 48 hours and they just came fast and furious. The great thing about the Olympics is the unexpected, everyone was so dead set on winning the medal count that they lost sight of what the Olympic spirit is all about. Then all of a sudden we started to dominate the top spot on the medal podium. After all was said and done, no other country can say that they won more than we did. Not only did we win the most gold medals, but we won the most ever.

Then came the hockey game, it was one of those moments where you'll remember where you were 30 years in the future because it is that important to our country and our culture. I remember going to bed making sure that I set my alarm so that I could go to the bar early with some friends so that we could get a good table to watch the game. About 12pm (2 hours before the game) there were 25 people sitting with us to watch the hockey. Slowly but surely people came into the bar to sit down and watch history. The bar was handing out hockey pucks, noisemakers and even had an organ player for the game. It was loud and the atmosphere was amazing. I didn't even think the game would be close to be honest and after jumping out to an early lead, I was confident that we would win. After going up 2-0 I thought it was a done deal. Then Kesler scores to make it 2-1 off a kind of fluky goal before the end of the second period and then you start thinking a little bit. About half way through the game you could see the Canadian team playing not to lose rather than playing to win and eventually it just was a matter of time before Parise tied it up. There is nothing more nerve-wracking than going into OT in a championship game. During the 15 minute intermission, the place went from a rock concert to an uneasy quiet. 4 on 4 hockey, we should be better than anyone else right? Well things started off well, we got tons of pressure, then all of a sudden the US gets a chance... Luongo comes up with a big save, puck goes to Crosby (It's about time he does something right?), he tries to slice through the D unsuccessfully, puck goes around the boards, hits the ref in the skate, Crosby taps it to Iginla, all of a sudden Crosby is open and gets a great pass from Iginla and before you know it everyone is jumping up and down because we had just won the gold. I will never forget that moment and it is only fitting that Sidney Crosby would score that goal.

I was so depressed the next day with no Olympics to look forward to but at least I have hours and hours of footage recorded and I will probably order the DVD set too because for those two weeks, it was amazing to see how proud 30+ Million people were to be called Canadian.