Reflection: XXI Winter Olympics - Vancouver 2010

As the games wrapped up yesterday night with the closing ceremonies, I thought it would be good to reflect on the games.
I really enjoyed watching the sports themselves: my favorites were hockey, curling, ski jumping, and aerial skiing.
That said, the games overall were kind of bad.
It started off on a depressing note with the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili. The IOC has claimed that investigation into his death is not their responsibility.
OK...
But then they feel that it is perfectly appropriate to condemn the Canadian women's hockey team for celebrating their victory by bringing champagne and cigars onto the rink.
Wait, what?
So basically, the IOC would rather exercise jurisdiction over the stupid little things and shirk from the hard issues facing it.
What's worse is that the IOC president and his team don't even fully know what their responsibilities are, as said to a journalist who asked this.
Wow. Bra-vo, Monsieur Rogue (yes, that was an intentional misspelling).
Next, the opening ceremonies were boring. That's not the worst, though - when it came time to light the torch, the mechanisms malfunctioned, so only 3 out of the 4 supporting pillars for the cauldron moved into the right place.
During the course of the games, one of the rinks where speed skating was being held had some bad ice and needed to be re-iced. Somehow, all of the ice-surfacing machines broke down.
This, in Canada.
That is truly pathetic; for this, the races were delayed by over an hour.
Later on during the games, in one day of one of the bobsled races, almost every team crashed.
That's not something wrong with the teams; that's something wrong with the venue/track.
While I congratulate the Canadian team for getting the most gold medals, all in all, these were quite poor games in terms of execution by the organizers (the athletes themselves are blameless in this regard).

Just Another Ordinary Opening Ceremony

(It's a play on "Just Another Ordinary Miracle", a song that was sung at this years XXI Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony.)
It was boring. Of course Beijing's organizers blew everyone out of the water with their ceremonies, but even judged on its own, the Vancouver ceremony literally made me fall asleep. Totally unimaginative and uninteresting.

Also, where was the Vatican delegation? I want to see the Pope as head coach of the slaloming archbishops and the curling cardinals!
I kid, I kid.

Finally, I want to dedicate this blog post to Nodar Kumaritashvili, the Georgian (in Eastern Europe, not in the southern US) luger who died during training the morning of the opening ceremony. He was 21. As you read this, please join me in observing a moment of silence in honor of him.
Thank you.