XXI Olympic Winter Games

By Sara Millbank

The 21st Winter Olympics will be held February 12-28th 2010 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. This will be the third Olympic event hosted by Canada, but the first by the province of British Columbia. Previously, the 1976 Summer Olympics was held in Montreal and the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. The motto for the Winter Olympics is With glowing Hearts or Des plus brillants explits.

Olympic Flag

Following Olympic tradition, the mayor of Vancouver received the Olympic flag during the closing ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy. The flag was raised on February 28th 2006 in a special ceremony at Vancouver City Hall and will remain there until the opening ceremony.

Some events, like the opening and closing ceremonies, will take place at the British Columbia Place Stadium, with others being held at the resort town of nearby Whistler, or Richmond Olympic Oval (which has been built at sea level). Cypress Mountain will host the Freestyle and Snowboarding events, Whistler Mountain will hold all Alpine Skiing and Sliding events like Bobsleigh, Luge and Skeleton will be on Blackcomb Mountain.

Vancouver will be the most populous city to ever hold the winter Olympics and also the warmest, with temperatures of an average 4.8ºC. The 2010 games will also be the first, Winter or Summer, to have ever held an Opening Ceremony indoors. Athletes will stay in specially built villages in Vancouver and Whistler with state of the art energy efficiency provisions. 80 nations are expected to take part, with 2,500 athletes competing in 86 events in 7 sports. The sports categorized as Ice Sports are Bobsled, Skeleton, Ice Hockey, Figure Skating, Speed Skating and Curling. Alpine, Skiing and Snowboarding are in another category called Alpine Events, while Biathlon, Cross Country Skiing and Ski Jumping come under Nordic Events.

Vancouver 2010 will be the first Winter Olympics in which both Men’s and Women’s Hockey will be played on a narrower ice rink. The change is expected to save 10 millions dollars in construction costs and allow an additional 35,000 spectators to attend hockey games. There were also a number of proposals for new events to be added to the programme and finally Skicross has been voted in. Not making the event were proposals like Mixed Doubles Curling, Team Alpine Skiing, Team Luge and Women’s Ski Jumping. The issue over Women’s Ski Jumping actually ended up in the supreme court of British Columbia in Vancouver during April 2009. The verdict did exclude Women’s Ski Jumping from the 2010 games, but it will almost certainly be included in the 2014 games in Sochi, Russia. The event was not included in the 2010 games on the grounds that the sport was not yet developed enough and did not meet the basic criteria for inclusion. A group calling themselves Top Women Ski Jumpers filed a statement of claim with the Supreme Court of British Columbia, suing the Vancouver Olympic Organising Committee, for excluding women from Ski Jumping. They claimed their rights were violated according to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom. However, on June 10th 2009, this was also ruled against, stating the International Olympic Committee were responsible for the validation of events included and not the British Columbia.

As is normal with all large events, many decisions have been controversial. Scandals have included reports of bribing and corruption. Not everyone was happy with the British Columbia portrayed in the mascots, as they are said to represent a minority population of Vancouver, the Inuktitut. The logo was unveiled on April 23rd 2005 and is named Ilanaaq the Inunnguaq. Ilanaaq is the Inuktitut word for friend.

Vancouver 2010 will be broadcast worldwide by a number of television broadcasters. Rights for the games have been packaged with those for the 2012 Summer Olympics, so broadcasters will be largely identical for both events. The host broadcaster will be Olympic Broadcasting Services Vancouver, who is a subsidiary of the new in-house unit Olympic Broadcasting Services. This will be another first for Vancouver, as the first games where the host broadcasting facilities provided solely by the Olympic Broadcasting Service.

The Olympic Torch Relay will transfer the flame from Ancient Olympia, Greece - where the first games were held thousands of years ago – to the stadium of the host city. For Vancouver, the flame was lit in Olympia on October 22nd 2009. It will travel from Greece, over the North Pole to Canada’s High Arctic and on to the West Coast and Vancouver. The Olympic Torch will be carried by thousands of Canadians of all ages and cultural backgrounds. It will be carried on foot, dog sled, snowmobile, horse, plane and virtually every means of transport known to the people of Canada. The torch replay is said to be the longest in Winter Olympics history and will travel across all of Canada on its journey to Vancouver.

With so many ‘firsts’ in Olympic history before it’s even started, it could be well worth watching. Will records be broken? – absolutely. Will someone get a positive drug test? – probably. Will someone get injured? – hopefully not. Will we all be on the edge of our seats watching these fine athletes who have trained for years in their particular sports? – try and stop us!