SPOTLIGHT ON 2010 EVENTS
Vancouver, Canada Feb 12-28; Mar 12-21
The 21st Winter Olympics and 10th Winter Paralympics take place in Vancouver and nearby Whistler, BC, Canada. With an average February high temperature of 440 F, Vancouver is the warmest city ever to host the Winter Olympics. It is also the first time in history any Olympic opening ceremony will take place in an indoor venue. Canada has hosted the Winter Games twice before: Montreal in 1976 and Calgary in 1988. Turin, Italy, last hosted the Winter Games in 2006.
The Vancouver Olympics are planned and hosted with the participation of Canada’s Aboriginal population. The Olympic logo is a stylized Inunnguaq (a human-shaped pile of stones historically created by the Inuit as landmarks) named Ilanaaq (an Inuit language word for “friend”). Handmade Inuit crafts will be sold at all Olympic venues. 
Under the authority of the Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC), Olympic planning and development employed environmental objectives with an emphasis on sustainable and eco-friendly sporting centers. As part of this green initiative, a number of existing sites were refurbished for Olympic usability. BC Place Stadium—site of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies and the Victory Ceremonies—is undergoing a $150 million renovation that includes ventilating the Teflon, air-supported stadium roof to accommodate an Olympic flame burning indoors for 16 days. General Motors Place (“The Garage”), which hosts ice hockey, will be renamed Canada Hockey Place for the duration of the Games because certain corporate branding is forbidden by the IOC. Hockey will be played on North American-sized rinks during the Canada Games, rather than converting to the larger international size, to lessen the environmental impact and to save money.
The newly constructed Olympic venues are conceived with legacy use in mind. The 600-unit Vancouver Olympic Village (VOV) will be turned over to the city and converted into a 3,000-resident community with parks and shopping at the conclusion of the Paralympic Games. Likewise, the speed-skating venue, the Richmond Olympic Oval—whose massive wooden roof was constructed of pine salvaged from a forest of trees dying from a pine beetle infestation—can be transformed into an indoor field house divided into ice, hardwood courts and turf sections. And the new Vancouver Olympic/Paralympic Centre will reopen to the public as a multipurpose community center with a pool, gymnasium, library and curling ice.
Eighty miles north of Vancouver, the pedestrian resort town of Whistler houses the Whistler Olympic and Paralympic Village (WOPV), which accommodates 2,400 guests, with 450 beds designed for wheelchair access. Whistler is the site for bobsled, luge, skeleton, biathlon, alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, Nordic combined and ski jumping competitions. Cypress Mountain in West Vancouver hosts freestyle skiing, snowboarding and the relatively new sport of Ski Cross, which is making its Olympic debut. Ski Cross, an outgrowth of snowboarding, is a timed freestyle skiing event that culminates in a “knockout-style” series in which four skiers race downhill simultaneously.
The X Paralympic Winter Games immediately follow the Olympic Games in Vancouver/Whistler. Athletes will compete at the same venues as their Olympic counterparts in five events: alpine skiing, Nordic skiing, cross-country skiing, wheelchair curling and sledge hockey. In 2009, 12,000 volunteer torchbearers were recruited to carry the Olympic torch on its 106-day, 28,000-mile relay through 1,020 communities across Canada. It is the longest Olympic Torch Relay to take place in a single country. Organizers contend that more than 90 percent of Canadians are within an hour’s drive of the eventual torch route. A 60-day Cultural Olympiad of international music, dance, theater, visual arts, film and more begins Jan 22. The Olympic mascots are fictional creatures: Quatchi, a sasquatch, and Miga, a sea bear. The Paralympic mascot is Sumi, an animal spirit. The Games’ official bilingual motto is “With glowing hearts/Des plus brillants exploits,” both phrases from the national anthem “O Canada.”
For information:
Vancouver 2010
#400-3585 Graveley St
Vancouver, BC
V5K 5J5, Canada
Phone (ticketing information): (800) 842-5387
Web: www.vancouver20l0.com
International Olympic Committee
Château de Vidy
1007 Lausanne
Switzerland
Phone: (41.21) 621-61-11
Web: www.olympic.org
www.chases.com ● Chase’s Calendar of Events 2010