Don’t miss the 2010 Olympic Winter Games

© VANOC/COVAN
 The 2010 Olympic Winter Games will be held in Vancouver, Canada from February 12 through February 28. Above are the First Coca-Cola and RBC Torchbearers.

by Gina Rullo, Gazette Staff Writer

The 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Canada begin on February 12 and run through February 28. The Olympic Games can be exciting to watch and have a way of increasing national pride.
After 106 days on the road, the Olympic Torch will be lit inside BC Place in Vancouver on February 12. The almost one-meter-long torch, inspired by both the lines carved into the snow by skiers shushing down mountains and the undulating beauty of the snowy Canadian landscape, was designed by Bombardier’s aerospace and transportation design teams in collaboration with the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC).
The fun begins on NBC 10 Philadelphia on February 12 at 7:30 p.m. with pre-Games analysis and the first event ski jumping. Then at 9 p.m. the opening ceremonies will unfold. The lighting of the Olympic flame will happen indoors; this is the first time the opening ceremonies have been held indoors.
The 2010 Olympic Winter Games sport program includes seven sports and 86 medal events: Biathlon, Bobsleigh and Skeleton, Curling, Ice Hockey, Luge, Skating, Figure Skating, Short Track, Speed Skating, Skiing, Alpine Skiing, Cross-Country Skiing, Freestyle Skiing, Nordic Combined, Ski Jumping and Snowboard.
For a complete schedule, please visit www.nbcolympics.com/event-results-schedules/index.html. The NBC-owned channels will be featuring hours and hours of Olympic coverage. It will be almost impossible to miss.
An intriguing sport to watch is curling.
According to vancouver2010.com, “The game of curling is more than 500 years old. The earliest written record of curling — of groups of people sliding stones on frozen ponds and lochs (an arm of the sea that is similar to a fjord) in competition — is found at Scotland’s Paisley Abbey and dates back to 1541. Curling for men was played at the first Olympic Winter Games at Chamonix, France, in 1924, but curling did not appear again as an official Olympic sport until the Nagano 1998 Winter Games with both men’s and women’s tournaments.”
It is exciting in an odd way as you watch the teams try to control the stone with brushes.
On Sunday, February 28, the games conclude with the closing ceremonies beginning at 7 p.m. on NBC10. The final medal sport of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games will be played earlier that day. Two teams will battle it out in Men’s Hockey at 3 p.m.
The first modern Olympic Games were held in the summer of 1896. The organizers added skating to the Summer Games in 1908 (ice rinks could be kept cold even in the hottest weather) – but eventually decided that winter sports were perhaps best left to the winter. The first Olympic Winter Games were held in 1924, in Chamonix, France.
The first gold medal at the first Olympic Winter Games went to speed skater Charles Jewtraw of the United States, but Finnish speed skater A. Clas Thunberg was the overall star. He earned medals in all five speed skating events: three gold, one silver and one bronze. The Canadian ice hockey team won all five of their matches, outscoring their opponents 110 to 3.
In that first Olympic Winter Games, 16 nations participated, bringing 258 athletes (11 women, 247 men) to compete in 16 events.
And there are medals, lots and lots of medals.
During the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, many more athletes – approximately 2,500 – will compete in 15 sports and more than 86 separate medal events.
As unique as the world’s top athletes and their awe-inspiring performances, every medal won at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games will be a one-of-a-kind work of art. The medals, revealed today, each feature a different crop of larger contemporary Aboriginal artworks and are undulating rather than flat — both firsts in Games history.
The dramatic form of the Vancouver 2010 medals is inspired by the ocean waves, drifting snow and mountainous landscape found in the Games region and throughout Canada. The Olympic medals are circular in shape, while the Paralympic medals are a superellipse, or squared circle. Both are equal in size. Their significant weight — between 500 grams to 576 g depending on the medal — represents the magnitude of the athlete’s accomplishment. The Olympic medals are 100 millimeters in diameter and about six mm thick, while the Paralympic medals are 95 mm wide and about six mm thick. They are among the heaviest medals in Olympic and Paralympic history.