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Columnists

Omega at the Olympics - Days 1 and 2

Cam Charron - Sports Editor

Lights, fireworks, music, dancing, hundreds of people lining the streets of downtown Vancouver, this city is bumping early on in the Olympics. Day one was officially the opening ceremonies, but the first day I got out to enjoy some hoopla was day two, the Saturday.

I was lucky enough to catch some speed skating at the Richmond Oval, the men’s 5000 meters, and was overwhelmed by the amount of Dutch supporters there were. Their countryman, Sven Kramer took the gold, much to the delight of the orange-clad partisan crowd, and the brass band Kleintje Pils that took over the oval.

The Richmond Oval is a cool venue. There are only about 4,000 or 5,000 seats, but they're spaced all across the building so the skaters will always hear the crowd cheering regardless of where they are in the oval. The roof is made up of several wooden arches spanning the length of the building and there's a cool finish done to all the walls.

Denny Morrison of Fort-St. John, B.C., also home to our own News and Digital Editor Amber Yake, had his family sit in front of me at the Oval, so he came up and visited to watch fellow Canadian Lucas Makowsky. The families of American skater's Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis were sitting behind me, so I learned quite a bit about the sport from eavesdropping on conversations.

Morrison was 18th in the event and Makowsky 13th, good showings by the Canadians at an event where they weren't expected to compete for a medal.

That night I took the streets to downtown Vancouver to celebrate Jenn Heil and the first Canadian medal of the games. Several renditions of O Canada were heard from Robson Square to the steps of the Art Gallery. It was unlike I’ve ever seen in the town that is sometimes referred to as ‘No-Fun-Couver.’

This city can put on a show.

People’s Heroes: A somber note, but Nodar Kumaritashvili should be acknowledged in this post. It was a death that dampened our spirits and made us think of what really counts at these games.

I’ll reserve my opinions on the sport of sliding for next week and simply use this space to remember him. This is a very tragic event.

Canadian Heroes: She did not win a medal, but Chloe Dufour-Lapointe, the 18-year old girl from Montreal, put up a spectacular performance in the Ladies Moguls to finish fifth. She’ll be a great Canadian hope for a gold in Sochi.

I love mogul events. It’s a real shame that there’s only one of them. If you’re going to have dozens of ways to medal biathletes and speed skaters, why not have four mogul events? One based on speed, one on turns, one on air, and one all-around?

And that’ll be enough out of... Olympic protesters. Violent attention whores. They’ve riled up so many people now, from veterans to local shopkeepers, that they’ve detracted so many from their cause.

If you have twitter, you can follow my adventures along @camcharron