Final Thoughts

It ended the way it was supposed to I guess. Canada wins with an overtime goal delivered by the best player on the planet...and leaves everyone with a game to remember for the ages. The historic 14th Gold Medal on Canadian soil won by the team that should have won it. As for me, it has been a tremendous honor to represent my family and the USA at this most memorable of Olympic Games. The most medals ever won by a country at the Winter Olympics...not bad! I saw a quote that I think pretty much sums up the Olympic experience. "The Olympics remain the most compelling search for excellence that exists in sport and maybe in life itself." (Dawn Frazier...2 time Olympian). So think about that and continue to strive for excellence in your personal and professional lives...it's worth the effort.

Super Sunday...USA vs Canada

Well, the BIG GAME is today! Canada vs USA for the Hockey Gold Medal. The most anticipated medal match of these games. Undoubtedly will be the most watched event in the history of Canadian Television. No matter what happens, Team USA will set a record for most medals (38) ever won by a country at a Winter Olympics. Currently Canada is winning the Gold Medal count at 13 which ties the record for the most Gold Medals ever won at a Winter Olympic Games. Will see what today brings. By any measure, a very successful games for North America! Interestingly, the vast majority of the Canadian medals have been won by female athletes...let's hear it for gender equity! This is one Olympics where it pays to "play like a girl"! Well...I've got to get to USA house to watch the game! More Later!

Sports and Tragedy

Sports and tragedy have an odd way of wrapping themselves around each other. At these games a triumphant opening ceremony was intertwined with the tragic death of the Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. History reminds us of other events. Lou Gehrig had the disease named after him. At Virginia Tech we remember that fateful day 4-16-07 when 32 people and a gunman lost their lives...and then the question of how and when to move on. The first baseball game...the first football game. We come together to understand the importance of being together with friends and family in a healing process and honoring loved ones taken from us too soon. Again at these Olympics we are reminded of how fragile life can be with the tragic and unexpected death of Joannie Rochette's mom only hours after she arrived here in Vancouver to watch her daughter skate. And then somehow Joannie finds the strength of will and the courage to skate the best performance of her life honoring the memory of her mother. There is not a dry eye in the arena and again the healing begins...

US Team on Record Medal Pace!

Wow...what a weekend for the US athletes! The ski team is on fire. Eight medals already I think. Bode Miller is back and has won 3 medals in 3 races. Vonn and Mancuso have been doing a great job on the women's side and really pulling in the medals. 24 medals for the entire US Winter team so far. We won 25 total in Torino in 2006. The really huge news was men's hockey. USA vs Canada. Honestly, Canada really outplayed and out shot us but US goaltender Ryan Miller was outstanding in net. This advances US to the semi-final round. Canada will have to play a sudden death game vs Germany to stay alive in the tournament. I think this is the first time the US has beat Canada in an Olympic Hockey game in 50 years! We have some more great skiing coming up later this week and the women's Hockey team made it to the finals earlier today with a 9-0 victory over Sweden. They will likely play Canada who is playing Finland tonite.

Winter Olympics or....the "Weather Olympics"!

Well...the weather has been big news up here dogging the competitions, competitors and the spectators on the opening weekend and into the early part of the games. It has been the classic "winter mix" with fog, rain, sleet and snow all playing a role. On Cypress Mountain there was over 130 mm of rain in 4 days and the venue staff still manged to stage the Men's and Women's moguls events! The US had great results with the Women winning Gold (Kearney) and Bronze (Bahrke) and the Men winning Bronze (Wilson). Alex Bilodeau's (Canada) Gold in the Moguls was the first Gold won on Canadian soil by a Canadian athlete and was accompanied by huge fanfare and rightly so! Hannah Kearney skied a nearly flawless run to take the Gold from Jen Heil, the current world cup leader in women's moguls. Bode Miller skied very well at Whistler to take the Bronze (.09 sec out of first place) in the weather delayed men's downhill to become the most decorated American Olympic skier in history. He seems very focused on the Olympics and despite a balky ankle and has a chance to medal in all of his 3 remaining events. We also took a Gold in Snowboard Cross (Westcott, repeat Gold) and in Nordic Combined (Spillane, first ever US medal in this event).

Now getting back to that weather report. "Everybody talks about it but nobody does anything about it" (Mark Twain)! Currently "Environment Canada" has 35 meterologists and climatologists monitoring the weather at affected venues. Right now given the conditions it is a thankless job! The bad weather and multiple event delays have resulted in lower than predicted crowds for some of the marquis events. The Canadians, however, remain optomistic and very helpful. Vancouver has been a tremendous host city!

Curling. A strange sport to most of us in the US. There has been a huge amount of coverage up here...seemingly second only to Hockey! I have been starting to get into it....the sport is kind of a combination of bowling, baseball and chess all wrapped up into one. Important to have a good commentator to explain the strategy!

Opening Ceremonies Day....Random Thoughts

Well....today is the Big Day!!!! Light the cauldron and get the games rolling! Big speculation up here on who the Final Torchbearer will be! This is the longest torch relay in history....about 45,000 km. There will be 150 torch runners in Vancouver alone today. Each runner runs about 300 meters.

Snow tech update. The Cypress Venue continues to be challenged by the warm rainy weather. Training was pushed back and I think about 150 truckloads of snow have been delivered so far. It's not cold enough for snow making. One novel approach has been tried (among many) that seems to help with the jumps on the aerial hill and the moguls course. They are actually putting dry ice in corrugated pipes buried beneath the snow. Each refill lasts about 12 hours and really seems to help keep the jumps cold and stable. So far the athletes seem to think it's working. Women's Moguls competition starts Saturday so that will be the real test!

The Sliding Venue (luge, bobsled and skeleton) is the fastest in the world with peak speeds reaching 153 kph. Very exciting but also very scary at those speeds. They are going to limit the speeds at the next Olympic Games to 135 kph. There was a bad accident earlier today on Thunderbird turn (#16) which is the fastest turn on the track. A Georgian athlete flipped and few out of the track and hit a post. Condition is currently unknown.

We have finished processing here at the Delta Hotel so today I will be moving to the Hilton Metrotown and spending the rest of the games at the Performance Services Center here in Vancouver...more on that later!

Ice is slippery...yes or no????

Well I am learning a lot about speedskating ice. Apparently, altitude, barometric pressure and humidity all play a role in how "fast" the ice is. Who knew? So when a speedskating oveal is at altitude (Salt Lake City) the ice tends to be much fast than at sea leavel (Vancouver). The amount of difference in time ranges from about .75 sec over 500 meters up to about 12 seconds for 5000 meters. What they have also found out here is that the purer the water the slower the ice so they have switched to using tapwater to make the ice faster. Because the sea level ice is stickier it tends to favor athletes that are "churners" rather than "gliders". So shorter athletes with a more rapid leg turnover seem to do better than longer legged athletes that tend to glide more and have a slower leg turnover. Bottom line, there will probably not be many speedskating records set here if any!

Right now as a medical staff our big focus during processing is to make sure that the athletes have all of their information entered properly in the electronic medical record and that they have properly filled out all of the "where abouts" information for the International Olympic Committee for drug testing. This is actually much more complex than you might think. Each athlete has to provide their absolute location for one hour each day and they absolutely have to be at that location in case they are chosen for random testing. They also have to provide where they are staying, training times and plane flight information. All this has to be entered electronically and be completely accurate. If they are not wheree they say they will be and the drug testing people come looking, it is considered a missed test!