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!