DAY ONE, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2010
Let's just say things didn't start too well. Early in the day, a Georgian luger died after flying off his sled coming out of a turn and hit an unpadded metal pole at close to 90 miles per hour. Let's hope they learn from this and don't leave metal posts exposed. They may have to adjust the course to keep the speeds at a safer level.
Then came the ceremony. What a bore! First of all, how do you have an Olympic Opening Ceremony indoors? Sports, especially winter ones, are all about being outdoors. You can't put a mountain in a stadium. It was raining outside, so maybe being indoors wasn't the worst thing in some ways, but it just didn't seem right.
It started with some teenager butchering the "O Canada." It was painful to listen to someone take 10 times longer to sing a crappy version of a very nice anthem. Then, they went way too heavy on the Native Indian stuff. It droned and dragged on. Then Bryan Adams and Nelly Furtado came out and sang some song that I couldn't hear because of the Natives banging on drums the whole time. Also, Furtado was wearing a skin tight blue cocktail dress witha big-ass bow on one shoulder and black stripper heels. Classy.
The parade of nations was ok as usual. The Czech's and another country that I forgot had some weird pants. The best part was seeing the Bermuda contingent actually wearing their Bermuda shorts. I doubt they would have tried that had the ceremony been outside.
The next part was somewhat interesting focusing on the natural scenery of Canada. Sarah MacLachlan and k.d. lang each sang some crappy songs. There was some fiddler in a boat in front of the moon. Then, a bunch of tap dancing people did their thing. Some blob with a bad beard recited a screwy sounding poem bragging about Canada.
Some opera singer belted out the Olympic Anthem, and that wasn't too bad. I didn't understand a word she sang, but it sounded good. The head of the Vancouver Organizing Committee rambled on forever putting everyone in the stadium to sleep.
The grand finale is always the lighting of the Olympic Flame. There's no way this could get screwed up, right? WRONG! Wayne Gretzky was the final torch bearer in the stadium, and that was wonderful. How he would light the flame was the final mystery. He stood in the middle of the arena waiting for some underground contraption to appear as did the other four torch bearers. They were each supposed to light a portion of the cauldron to make the flame, which is a new twist. One of the pillars never came up from under the floor. Insert ED drug commercial here. You could see the sweat on Gretzky's lip forming from being nervous and overheating because he's wearing a warm outfit and mittens because it's the Winter Olympics, but he's inside, so he's not very cold. After that ordeal finished, Gretzky had to hop on a truck to light another cauldron because the Olympic flame has to be visible to the public, which again begs the question: WHY NO OUTDOOR STADIUM? Gretzky's on the truck, and it's like watching the O.J. Simpson low-speed chase 16 years ago. He gets to the outdoor cauldron configured the same way as the one that didn't work inside BC Place. Finally, the actual official flame was lit. Then fireworks shot off atop BC Place. Perfect. You pay thousands of dollars to go to the Opening Ceremony and you can't even see the fireworks.
In conclusion, Day One stunk. It can only get better from here.