2010 Vancouver Olympic & Paralympic Super-Thread

[mr.x]

Originally Posted by jlousa

We could say the same for the olympics, why have it in a city with a history of protesting and not out in the middle of nowhere so there would be no protesters.
What's happening in Toronto is the the exact thing that happened here, a group of anarchists protesting the only system that allows them to do so. It's ironic that people are protesting the very people that us the people put in power.

Apples and oranges. With the Olympics, the first and foremost issue is choosing an area that is capable of hosting the Games. With things like head of state summits, security tops the list.

You need world-class city infrastructure to host the Olympics, a city with a populace big enough to ensure there is enough significant public interest to support the Games and fill stadium seats, and an area that can benefit from a post-Games legacy. Not to mention that it has to be an attractive location as you have to bid to host it, whereas these summits choose their host by rotation.

The G20 Summit could have been held in a much, much smaller location...like the G8 in Huntsville. Instead, for some reason, Harper chose the complete opposite.

[mr.x]

dp..............

[nova9]

Originally Posted by mr.x

Apples and oranges. With the Olympics, the first and foremost issue is choosing an area that is capable of hosting the Games. With things like head of state summits, security tops the list.

You need world-class city infrastructure to host the Olympics, a city with a populace big enough to ensure there is enough significant public interest to support the Games and fill stadium seats, and an area that can benefit from a post-Games legacy. Not to mention that it has to be an attractive location as you have to bid to host it, whereas these summits choose their host by rotation.

The G20 Summit could have been held in a much, much smaller location...like the G8 in Huntsville. Instead, for some reason, Harper chose the complete opposite.

was toronto not a last-minute (ish) option for the g20? i seem to recall something like that.

also, don't forget that the G20 is new. What chretien and paul martin hosted last was the G8.

[SpongeG]

the G20 involves 1000's of people thoughj - so you need a city or large enough place to house all the people involved

20 countries all their media will be showing up - they all need to be housed, the delegations, all the people involved must number in the 100's

where the G8 was couldn't house 1000's of people - they wouldn't have enough hotel rooms

[nova9]

anyone else get the CTV dvd set yet? I got mine and I have to say, a very piss poor effort.

some of the video is grainy. and things are heavilly edited (neutered) so the only real full event you see is the gold medal men's hockey. the opening and closing ceremonies are cut down (why would they do that on a dvd that we can skip through chapters? and especially when the video quality is so low anyway).

ugh, it was very disappointing.

STILL waiting for my copy of the Vancouver 2010 coffee table book.

[Waders]

Olympic payoff beginning to show as tourism surges
By: ctvbc.ca
Date: Thursday Jul. 1, 2010 3:54 PM PT

The first solid sign of an economic payoff from hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics is here in the form of new statistics revealing a spike in spending by visitors to B.C.

New numbers from Statistics Canada suggest that spending by international visitors grew in the first quarter of the year at the highest rate since 2003, and the Olympics are being credited for the surge.

Officials with Tourism Vancouver are predicting a seven-per-cent increase in visitors this summer compared to 2009. They're spending $1 million on a post-Games marketing campaign, but the biggest challenge is still ahead, according to President Rick Antonson.

"How do you leverage the entire Olympic year as a springboard into the next decade of tourism for Vancouver and British Columbia? And, not to put too fine of a point on it, but whatever the next decade looks like will be determined a lot by what we do, in a marketing sense, or do not do in the next 24 months," Antonson told CTV News.

A TV commercial featuring familiar faces like Ryan Reynolds and Michael J. Fox was part of a $38-million B.C. government marketing campaign. New numbers from the province suggest it was seen a staggering 970 million times in North America.

Evidence of an Olympic payoff is not just showing up in Vancouver and Whistler. The Kamloops area has also seen a big spike in visitors.

"In my own region, it was reported this week that year-over-year hotel revenues are up 24 per cent, which is far beyond our expectations," Tourism Minister and Kamloops-South Thompson MLA Kevin Krueger said.

Olympic organizers are also predicting a major boost in tourism for B.C. and Canada.

"We were told of some global surveys and stuff the IOC had done post-Games, which apparently had very impressive numbers -- extraordinarily impressive numbers -- which they're assessing," VANOC CEO John Furlong said.

Source: http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local..._100701/20100701?hub=BritishColumbiaHome

[SpongeG]

interesting

RCMP disclose details of officer misconduct during Olympics

Fifteen members of the RCMP’s Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit were sent home during the Olympics for misconduct that included skipping out of work early to catch a hockey game and breaching a confidentiality agreement by taking pictures of the Team Canada jerseys.

Another officer was sent home for arriving at work without any bullets.

The majority of the incidents however, involved “inappropriate intoxication”, allegations of unwanted sexual advances, and altercations between police officers and staff on the cruise ship that housed members of the security unit.

One officer was criminally charged with shoplifting.

The incidents were disclosed by the RCMP at a press conference on Monday in Vancouver.

The officers involved represented four different police forces. The Integrated Security Unit was made up of 6,200 police officers from across Canada who provided security services for 90 days during the Winter Olympics.

Another 33 incidents of alleged misconduct were also investigated during the Games, but none of the officers involved were sent home.

Several of those incidents involved police officers leaving their unsecured guns lying around in places including a portable washroom, YVR airport and their bedrooms. Other complaints arose from officers using foul or disrespectful language.

One officer was accused of trespassing after entering a rail yard and throwing rocks at parked rail cars. Another was found sleeping on the job. It was also alleged that an RCMP officer grabbed an Estonian dignitary and ripped his suit.

One of the more bizarre allegations was that a person wearing a balaclava at a Whistler gas station refused to take it off and showed police credentials before leaving. He could not be identified and the file was closed. There were several other instances where the police officers involved in the complaints could not be identified.

...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/nati...sconduct-during-olympics/article1629281/

[mr.x]

LOL wtf. Canada's finest.

[nova9]

From Montreal Gazzette:

"It was awesome," says Hurley, 23. "It was our first off-day and I wanted to see Vancouver a bit. We pretty much covered everything ... Stanley Park, a bunch of beaches. It was awesome.

"I knew a bit about Vancouver from the Olympics but when I was telling people that I might be coming here it seemed like everyone knew about it. They were saying it's one of the most beautiful places in the world. They're right. It's incredible. I was sitting on the beach the other day and I was looking at the water, the city and the snow-capped mountains in one view ... it was incredible."


Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/sports/from+family+from+home/3293317/story.html#ixzz0u6WQKO3M

Basically an article about billeting minor league players but I wanted to highlight quotations from one of the new players who is new to our city. He's from a small town and felt he had learned a bit about Vancouver through Olympic exposure.

[Hourglass]

Originally Posted by mr.x

LOL wtf. Canada's finest.

Wow. I know this is the vast minority, but still --- trespassing in a railyard and throwing rocks at parked rail cars? How old was this officer? 10?

My impression though of the police I encountered at the Olympics, though, was generally pretty good.

[mr.x]

Originally Posted by Hourglass

Wow. I know this is the vast minority, but still --- trespassing in a railyard and throwing rocks at parked rail cars? How old was this officer? 10?

My impression though of the police I encountered at the Olympics, though, was generally pretty good.

Same here...though really, my impression of the police overall is pretty good and I have great respect for them.

[Yume-sama]

Originally Posted by Hourglass

Wow. I know this is the vast minority, but still --- trespassing in a railyard and throwing rocks at parked rail cars? How old was this officer? 10?

My impression though of the police I encountered at the Olympics, though, was generally pretty good.

lol Maybe they are based somewhere that doesn't have... umm... trains.

I saw police, but had no contact with any during the Olympics.

Which is too bad. I took up all that self defense training when I was told that I'd be oppressed, beaten, and rounded up for no good reason!

[mr.x]

Originally Posted by Yume-sama

lol Maybe they are based somewhere that doesn't have... umm... trains.

I saw police, but had no contact with any during the Olympics.

Which is too bad. I took up all that self defense training when I was told that I'd be oppressed, beaten, and rounded up for no good reason!

We were also told that those CCTV cameras would still be around....

[Yume-sama]

Well, there is that camera of death and destruction attached to the symbol of corporate greed that is the Olympic cauldron.

[SpongeG]

Woman 'blown away' Slovakian parents' photos found

By: Darcy Wintonyk, ctvbc.ca
Date: Monday Aug. 9, 2010 3:13 PM PT

Andrea Kunova said the day her Slovakian parents lost their camera's memory card at the 2010 Olympics was the saddest of their month-long visit to Vancouver in February.

"My whole family was together, which is rare, and we took so many pictures during the Olympics. They were just so sad to lose those memories."

Her parents, Elana Kunova and Vladimir Kuna, visited Stanley Park that day, taking in a tram ride around the city's historic parklands, visiting the aquarium and taking photos of the eight famous totem poles standing proudly at Brockton Point.

Unbeknownst to the Kunova family, a Knoxville, Tennessee woman named Julie James was also there that day.

James, who was working as a graphics operator for the Olympic Broadcasting Services "doing crazy hours," decided to walk down the city's 10-kilometre seawall to get some fresh air before her shift.

"It was my turn to have some fun so I decided to see the totem poles," she told ctvbc.ca from her Tennessee home.

It was walking on a path near those poles that something caught her eye: a tiny black four-gigabyte camera memory card.

"Who knows how many people would have walked by it -- this little black memory card on the ground on the black asphalt. So I picked it up," she said.

The card stayed in James' pocket for the remainder of the day, and at her desk for the rest of the Games. When she returned to her hometown in Tennessee with the card still in her possession she decided to take her fight to the internet.

She started a Facebook group and posted two photos on the card. The first showed a young man with his arm around an older couple in front of the Olympic flame; the other showed the same man and woman at an Olympic pavilion. Both people are holding Slovakian flags.

"I knew those flags would mean something," James said.

But six months later no one had contacted her, so she contacted CTV News, one of Vancouver's largest television broadcasters. The web story was shared by hundreds of people online, and soon came to the attention of a Slovakian newspaper editor, who saw their national flag in the photos and wrote a story to spread the word that one of their fellow countryman might be the owner.

And it worked.

Someone from the Kunova's village recognized Elana, and contacted a reporter at a local newspaper. The Kunova family, now the subject of an international photo manhunt, was one step closer to their long-lost photos.

"My mom called me and was really excited. She said ‘you won't believe this -- someone found our photos,'" Andrea Kunova told ctvbc.ca from her Vancouver office.

"This is unbelievable. We were hoping somehow we would recover the pictures one day. It's amazing."

Kunova thinks that her parents' patriotism might be the key to them getting their photos back.

"Everywhere they went they wore the Slovakian clothes. I guess it was the best clue they could give."

Kunova said her parents were stunned that a total stranger would do something so nice for nothing in return.

"They could not believe someone had put such an effort into returning the family memories, which you can not put a price on. They would like to thank Julie James for not giving up and contacting CTV News in Vancouver."

As for James, who spoke with the family this morning, she said she never gave up hope that she would find the rightful owners.

...

http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local..._100809/20100809?hub=BritishColumbiaHome

[mr.x]

Back only momentarily to post this....holy crap, did anyone watch the Singapore Youth Olympic Games Opening Ceremony this morning?


For a small fraction of Vancouver's cost, they sure put on an amazing show that trumps ours in some ways...the arrival of the flame and lighting of the cauldron was especially amazing.

Pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/15322733@N05/sets/72157624722380428/show/

[Yume-sama]

I saw some pictures, it looked pretty cool.

On a happy note, I finally got my Vancouver 2010 book in the mail last week. Yay.

It's a real nice book.... no wonder it took them 6 months to make it

[Lover Fighter]

Yeah, I was watching those opening ceremonies and couldn't how much more visually stimulating they were (which is essentially all the ceremonies need to accomplish).

[Waders]

Very nice, very colourful. Thanks for sharing the photos link.

[mr.x]

While it was a visually stimulating show, in retrospect it absolutely lacked originality. Virtually every segment was a copy from a previous show.


Opening drums - Athens
Fire - Sydney
Monster/lost boy - Salt Lake
Piano - Beijing
Arrival of the flame by boat and pier - Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games


At least Singapore realized the importance of the "grand" and "epic" feeling, which Vancouver lacked.