Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘olympics’

Team Canada wins Gold - Vancouver 2010

It was the shot heard from coast to coast – Sidney Crosby’s overtime goal to win this hockey game 3-2 and secure the record-breaking 14th gold medal for Canada.

A fitting feather in the cap of what have been incredible Olympic games. And they couldn’t have scripted it any better. Perfect photo finish.

A moment, to salute all our  Olympic medallists.

Now, let the celebrations begin!

We’ve now won 10 gold medals, which – at the moment, anyway – is more than any other team.

Our athletes are impressing the hell out of everyone, on the skating rink, the ski hill, the hockey arena, the bobsled track, hell, even the curling rink. (Is curling even a sport? Debatable. But we are pretty damn good at it. Even if the Norwegians have those awesome pants. But I digress.) The figure skaters have captured our imagination, from the near-perfection of Moir and Virtue to the inspiring courage of Joannie Rochette. And of course, in hockey, our women have claimed gold, while the men have just advanced to the finals against the USA on Sunday, with tonight’s nail-biter of a 3-2 win over Slovakia.

Everywhere, the red and white waves, crowds burst into spontaneous renditions of the national anthem, and the entire country from coast to coast has come together to cheer on our Olympians.

Has there ever been such a display of Canadian patriotism in recent history? Not that I can remember.

The Olympics had a controversial staging, a rocky start, and endless debates over cost overruns, podium pressure and everything under the sun. But leaving all that aside, it’s been a pretty incredible couple of weeks. And I have to believe that this has done a lot to buoy pride in the red and white in this country of ours, which, you gotta admit, is really fucking awesome.

There are two more days left in these Olympic games. Whatever happens – in the hockey finals or elsewhere – I’m really proud of our athletes and our country. Go Canada Go!

Shots: 45-23 for Canada. Final score: 5-3 for USA.

Ouch. ‘Nuff said.

*Sigh*. Onto the qualifying game, and hopefully we’ll get a chance for revenge.

Update: Canada fared somewhat better at Hockey Night in Kandahar; the morale game for soldiers serving in Afghanistan resulted in a 16-2 “ass-whooping” of the US by Canada. Too bad that’s not the score that counts in the Olympics.

The biggest attraction at the Olympics? Stephen Colbert, who’s been on site all week.

He and Michael Bublé sang their unique take on the national anthem. He’s done mock tryouts for events. He cheered on Shani Davis of the US speedskating team (which he sponsored) when he won his gold medal. He’s getting more press coverage than some of the top athletes. AP has called him “his own Olympic event“.

I’m not sure which is funnier: Stephen Colbert on his game, or the legions of people who don’t seem to understand that it’s satire.

The Olympic opening ceremonies will stand as a shining example of where creative-by-committee will get you. As best as I can figure, someone at some point must have had a cool creative concept for this thing. But then it got watered down by layer after layer of bureaucracy until we ended up with… well, I’m not quite sure what that was, to be honest. Other than boring as hell.

But, we all know Canada is much cooler than the lame-ass CBC-heritage-moment crap we saw tonight. Way to represent.

So, here’s my top five list of things that they could have done to better showcase what Canada is all about:

5) Joe, from the Molson Canadian commercials. That watered-down imitation preacher guy was just stealing from his material anyway. I mean, Zed, not Z? If I were Molson, I’d sue.

4) A 3-hour Arcade Fire concert. Yes, believe it or not, we have musicians who are more recent than Bryan Adams. How about getting some of them on stage?

3) The Canada-USA gold medal game from Salt Lake City. Get the teams back for a re-enactment. Or, hell, just show video footage on a big screen.

2) Festivals from coast to coast. A medley of acts from everything from the Montreal Jazz Festival to Toronto’s Caribana to the Calgary Stampede.

1) Cirque du Soleil… we friggin’ invented it, why do other Olympic games get to use them and we get some random dude faking flying while held up by wires?

A roof collapsed at a Canadian sports stadium yesterday . . . and it wasn’t the Big Owe:

The inflatable fabric roof of Vancouver’s downtown sports stadium, scheduled to host the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics, collapsed on Friday.

There were no injuries, and officials at BC Place Stadium said the incident — which one witness likened to watching a soufflé implode — would not hamper its availability for the Olympics as the roof could be repaired quickly.

The cause of the accident at the stadium, which was opened in 1983 and has a seating capacity of 60,000, was not immediately known.

What is it with these stadiums that can’t keep their roofs intact, anyway?

Hopefully Tremblay has been brought back to reality on his nonsensical Olympic musings.

Buried in an article lauding the success of the FINA world championships here in Montreal is this seemingly throwaway tidbit:

Then Tremblay raised another possibility yesterday, telling reporters earlier in the day this city might bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games on the 40th anniversary of the costly 1976 Games and hinting he might make a more concrete announcement during his remarks at the closing ceremony.

All Tremblay said, however, was Montreal would not wait another 30 years to meet the world again.

Is he nuts????

Montreal is finally going to finish paying off the Big Owe next year, 30 years after the fiasco of the 1976 games. And now, just as we’re finally climbing out of debt, Tremblay wants to send us zooming right back into it? You’ve got to be kidding me!

Sure, I cheered when Vancouver was awarded the 2010 games. Canadian pride and all. But I’m not delusional. A 2016 Montreal bid would surely be futile, since what makes Tremblay think that Canada would be awarded two Olympic games in the same decade is beyond me. But even a failed bid is costly. Just look at what cities like Paris and New York just spent to lose the 2012 Games.

Memo to Tremblay: you may be soaring high right now because we managed to host a relatively minor sporting event without bleeding massive sums of cash. But you really need to get over your delusion that this means Montreal is invincible.

Someone please, please take Tremblay’s ego down a peg before it’s too late.

London has won the bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics, beating out co-finalist Paris and an all-star competition that included New York, Moscow and Madrid.

Regardless of how they feel about the Olympics, there’s sure to be a lot of smug satisfaction in England today about having one more thing to stick in the collective ear of the French.

Looks like Canada will have a chance to defend our gold in Turin next year, as it’s rumoured that the NHL will be going to the Olympics after all.

Let’s hope so.