blooming...

This city its blooming, and with the Olympics still on the air...more coming next Friday 12th, the 2010 Paralympics games!!!

Granville street during the Olympics...

A scandal of minuscule proportions

I couldn't agree more...

A scandal of minuscule proportions

Posted Monday, March 1, 2010 8:24 PM ET

By Roy MacGregor, The Globe and Mail

It was their Olympic Moment - and, in an accidental way, mine.

Never for a moment of any kind - Olympic or professional - did I think of it as a story other than a charming and endearing tale. Perhaps I should resign in disgrace from the profession of journalism.

As it happened, I was one of the very few actual witnesses to the postgame, on-ice celebration by the Canadian women's hockey team last Thursday. You will know it as the "booze and cigars" scandal that shook the Canadian Olympic moment to the very core.

The women had defended their gold medal wonderfully with a sparkling 2-0 victory over archrival United States. They had leapt upon their brilliant goaltender Shannon Szabados with a fervour that suggested, for a moment, that she would become the Lucky Loonie under the ice that the men would play last Sunday for their gold.

They had screamed and screeched and hugged each other and burst into tears and, in a lovely gesture, had paraded about the ice with their Canadian flags and saluted a delirious crowd. Some actually shook and shivered as their medals were placed over their necks and the flag and anthem raised to the roof.

That, I thought, was the story, and had been happily reworking it with quotes later in the day, when the packed arena had long since emptied.
The ice had just been resurfaced. It glistened invitingly. The ice-surfacing machine was still out when the first unmistakable scrape of a skate blade on ice floated up into the press area where few of us were still working.
I looked down and smiled to see that the gold-medal winners had still not taken off their uniforms or skates, still had not had enough of their special moment.

Several came skating out, the ice resurfacer cheering them as he saw what they were doing, even though it meant he would have to do his work all over again.

Two of the women - Meaghan Mikkelson and Rebecca Johnston - moved to the far end and began making circles in the ice like figure skaters, unaware that from where those of watching stood, their freshly cut circles were very close to forming the Olympic symbol. How serendipitous.

Several more players came out. They had cameras. One was carrying a bottle of champagne. Others had beer. One had an unlighted cigar. Another cigar appeared and a lighter. Soon, the almost-forgotten smell of cigar smoke floated into the press area.

The former captain of the Canadian women's team, Cassie Campbell Pascal, was still there, packing up from her broadcasting job, and the players called her down. She congratulated them and, wisely, left them to their special moment.

As everyone should have.

The resurfacer asked if he could have his photograph taken with them and they were delighted to accommodate, forming an impromptu team photo at centre ice with the ice machine as backdrop. He let them try the machine.

All, presumably, had driver's licences.

Two of them skated to a quiet part of the rink, lay on their backs, lifted their legs high in the air and shook their skates like little children playing in the snow.

I do not know if I have seen anything so sweet and so very, very, very Canadian.

It never occurred to me that I would write about this except, perhaps, to show that there is something special to being on an Olympic team that goes far beyond any games or medals.

But someone must have thought it was scandalous.

Women smoking cigars? Women drinking champagne and beer? Didn't they just win an Olympic gold medal. And aren't they a hockey team?

But then someone looking for a peg found a peg - the woman with the beer was not only the one who had scored both Canadian goals but was ... wait ... wait ... 18 years old! And what's the drinking age in British Columbia?

Why it's ... 19.

Stop the Games. Call out the police. Charges. Disgrace. Take away their medals.

To me, there is only one thing equal to the embarrassment of a wire service deciding this was a news story of issue rather than an anecdote of great charm.

And that is that some people actually took it seriously. 

Hockey Canada felt obliged to apologize for the women's behaviour. The International Olympic Committee even vowed to get to the bottom of this scandalous allegation of an 18-year-old Olympic gold medalist holding a beer - suggesting perhaps the beer in hand wasn't an official sponsor, who knows?

What Hockey Canada should have done, rather than apologize to women who had already been insulted that same day by the president of the IOC calling the future of their game into doubt, was offer a single response that might not exactly be in keeping with Canada's image of a people so polite they apologize as often as other people blink.

A raised middle finger.

ROY MACGREGOR

The Globe and Mail

Discovering the medal's design and production.

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/9121/omer-arbel-olympic-medal-design-process.html

Follow this link if you would like to discover how this beautiful Olympic medals were made...a pretty nice job, I think...

The Dedals...

... today the Silver Medal...

Vancouver was on fire

and now what?

Going for Gold...with red Mittens!!!

Even Harry Jerome got his mittens, and its running for  Gold!!!!...a funny detail all sculptures around Stanley park got theirs :O) GO CANADA GO!!...

Controversial celebration...

Sports Illustrated weighed in with the great headline: Ain’t No Party Like a Gold Medal Party, calling it the "most authentically cool celebration I’ve seen at these Games," adding "When you win a hockey gold medal for Canada on home soil, I think you’re pretty much given carte blanche."

--- 

Canada's Women's Hockey team celebrated a much deserved gold medal on Thursday after beating perennial rivals the U.S. 2-0. Members of the team, returned to the ice some 30 minutes late and held a kegger held a tasteful celebration with a bit of beer and some champagne. This being an Olympics on home soil, you think the IOC would cut us a little bit of slack. After all, the City of Vancouver and Canada have rolled out the red carpet for these overpaid Swiss bureaucrats. 

Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/02/26/canada-s-women-s-hockey-team-celebrate-with-beer-cigars-ioc-gets-huffy.aspx#ixzz0giHsdumU
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red and white all over

 downtown Vancouver, every day and night...all over...red and white....few more days of craziness !!!

Cathartic...

VANCOUVER -- If only the crowd could have hugged Joannie Rochette for three solid minutes, ensuring she stayed on her feet through a performance that we're told was cathartic but surely must have been hellacious too, they would have all felt better.

The figure skater from Ile Dupas, Que. was everyone's daughter on Tuesday night at Pacific Coliseum, essentially adopted by Canadians not long after her mother Therese died early Sunday of a heart attack at age 55, leaving Joannie and father Normand to grieve under the sporting world's microscope.

But then she did the remarkable, she stood on her own, taller even than anyone could have hoped, with a medal chance still in her grasp at the end of the short program. She's third, locked in for bronze at 71.36, seven points clear of Japan's Miki Ando in fourth.

platinum medals??

Evgeni Plushenko, the decorated Russian figure skater, was poised to repeat as a gold medalist in the Vancouver Olympics last week, but fell short on the second night to American Evan Lysacek.

Since then, Plushenko has blamed the judges and gotten support from his own prime minister, Vladimir Putin. Lysacek, meanwhile, has been caught up in confusing drama with a possible girlfriend.
It seems Plushenko has found a way to get past the near-miss, however -- and it doesn't involve a Sex Bomb. A visit to his web site reveals that he won a silver medal in 2002 and a gold in 2006. Both true. But then he claims to have won a platinum medal at the 2010 Winter Games. Scroll down for the bizarre screenshots, via Fourth Place Medal and zap2it.

electric blue Vectorial Elevation

Using 20 large robotic searchlights around English Bay, the canopy of the Vancouver sky is transformed by the local audience or individuals worldwide who design their own patterns via a website . Their light sculptures are visible from a distance of 15 kilometres and the pattern changes roughly every 8 seconds.

Hockey Canada...facing elimination???

Ice quality...

Ensuring that the ice conditions at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games are the best and most consistent possible for each athlete takes a great deal of hard work by a myriad of individuals, from members of the relevant International Federations to teams of experts from the Vancouver Organising Committee (VANOC) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Crashhhh

Mayor crash today on the mountain!!! auchhh...that was scary!!!

1st Gold on Canadian soil!!

This is what I saw and how I enjoyed the 1st Canadian gold...I was jumping as high has Alexander Bilodeau on the picture on the monitor.

the torch and the crowd

everyone wants to get a picture by the torch...too bad there is a fence all around...why?? not sure..security? not only that...mm

the torch is almost home

it was for sure, less than 20km xhr...almost there...

Olympic fiasco?

Despite using bales of straw to fortify Olympic ski courses at Cypress Mountain, organizers are now trucking snow from a provincial park peak about 250 kilometres away to replenish dwindling snow supplies and make it look good for TV.

Snow has been melting off the peak faster than organizers can make it, and last month VANOC closed the resort entirely to focus on making snow and getting the courses ready for snowboarding and freestyle skiing events.

haiti needs help!!

Haiti needs help!!

International Medical Corps is a global, humanitarian, nonprofit organization, founded by volunteer doctors and nurses and dedicated to saving lives and relieving suffering through relief and development programs. Their emergency response team is in Haiti responding in force and I would like to ask for your help


 There are still thousands of patients seeking treatment of which approximately 80% are in need of surgery and are running out of time - especially with the tremendous aftershocks still devastating this country. The team is treating crush injuries, trauma, substantial wound care, shock and other critical cases with the few available supplies - And they're in it for the long haul.  I would love your help spreading the word by blogging or tweeting about IMC's rescue efforts. We've put up a blogger friendly widget here on our site:

http://www.imcworldwide.org/haiti