Winter Olympics 2010

[Milky Tears]

Excellent opening ceremony in Vancouver last night with some decent stuff from Bryan Adams and Furtado. Sadly, the whole thing has been overshadowed by the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili:


http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olym...ge/8513595.stm

[Rob McCow]

I absolutely loved the BBC's advert for this. A lovely bit of animation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcJ9Wm7ncyY

[Dave Tudor]

WEll, these games have really captured everybody's imagination, haven't they...?

(You're right though, Steve - wonderful trailer.)

[Captain Tancredi]

I've been watching bits and pieces in the morning- having some Norwegian ancestry, there's a little bit more at stake for me, I suppose. Still, you can't knock a sporting event which brings us athletes with names like Wank, Goergl and Satan (and yes, that does sound like a firm of solicitors). Not to mention the speed skating collision caused by the Korean competitor who rejoices in the name of Ohno...

[Captain Tancredi]

Just watching the dramatic end to the ice hockey- looking at all those happy Canadians bouncing up and down (and Americans looking pig sick and wondering what they're supposed to do with a bunch of flowers), I can't imagine what it must be like to feel good about your country. Apart from the aforementioned Norwegian ancestor (who, by the way, supposedly had a flame-red beard, thus lumbering me with the Ginger Gene from my dad's side and the Twin Gene from my mum's), ultimately the reason why I'm here is that most of my progenitors- in spite of spending most of the last hundred years in Liverpool, one of the great European emigrant ports- lacked the vision or energy to leave.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

WEll, these games have really captured everybody's imagination, haven't they...?

Well the Winter Olympics are always the Summer Olympics poor cousin.

Plus with most competitors in ski-suits, it loses out on the perve factor compared to say Beach Volleyball.

Just managed to catch some of the ski-jumping and figure skating. Figure skating doesn't seem quite as exciting as it was in the days of Torville and Dean. It's so strictly structured around technique, there seems less choreography, razzle-dazzle and showmanship. Plus the comentators for it make it about the dullest sport going.

It's a shame really as for once New Zealand with it's climate has an advantage in these games over it's arch rivals Australia.

[Captain Tancredi]

NZ should put a bid in (although I guess it'd probably have to be Christchurch to keep the skiing fairly close to the city events). Although I suspect that the problem there would be that the games would happen in July and that's probably the downtime for most winter sports.