With the Turin Winter Olympic Games now underway, the handoff to the Vancouver Games will be in just a few days. Following Olympic tradition, we'll be getting a few minutes to pitch our upcoming games during the closing ceremonies, with the help of the lovely miss Avril Lavigne: "Canada! - nyaa!" (per SNL's take on her).
Over the coming months, we'll be covering the development side of the story, as the construction of sports venues gets underway and the final design plans for the Athletes' villages are announced.
In the meantime, the official website for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games has been redesigned, and is worth checking out.
We've got a couple old Olympics-related posts from our archives as well. The first makes note of the mini-controversy generated by our Olympic logo, while the second considers the adequacy of BC Place Stadium as the venue for the opening and closing ceremonies.
Speaking of the opening ceremonies, after watching the bang-up job that the Turin Games did on theirs, one can't help but have concerns that ours might not quite have the same cosmopolitan look and feel as the Italians were able to pull off.
While we do know that Vancouver has some very talented artists and designers, the proposed 'ring of fire' around BC Place Stadium doesn't instill confidence in the games' current planners. If they have their way, the standard, trite cliches of Canadiana will once again be trotted out for the world to see - beavers, mounties, hockey iconography and Celine Dion. In short, there's a danger that we'll come off looking like a bunch of provincial rubes.
Our best hope is that the people we've sent to Turin will come back with some ambitious ideas.
In the meantime, and on a more positive note, below is a link to a promotional video for the Vancouver Games. There's definitely flashes of talent in its production, giving us some optimism for the future.
Video: Inspired by Dreams (Vancouver Olympic Committee)
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