Vancouver 2010 - Opening Day

Welcome to Cascadia, the Pacific Northwest, and the Lower Mainland!!! Welcome to Canada, British Columbia, Vancouver, and Whistler!!! Welcome to the 2010 winter Olympics!!!

This is my home, and I am proud!!! I grew up in the Northern suburbs of Seattle and went to college at Western Washington University in Bellingham, just South of the Canadian border. I now live in the heart of Downtown Seattle. Vancouver has always been to me both as wondrous as the exotic other and as familiar as the brother I never had. We are, as is engraved on the Peace Arch that marks the border, "Children of a Common Mother." Vancouver is my favorite city in the world, the perfect marriage of urban and natural, glass and green. Canada was the first stamp in my passport. I came here for family vacations and soccer exchanges as a kid. I took my first legal drink here on my 19th birthday, and saw strippers for the first time. I have smoked BC bud and Cuban cigars looking across Coal Harbor from Stanley Park. I have walked the Sea Wall and cruised under the Lion's Gate Bridge. I have attended the Sumo Canada Basho at the PNE, Molson Indy at Concord Pacific Place, and the Symphony of Fire over English Bay. And now the Olympics. I was there at GM Place on July 2, 2003 when Vancouver was awarded the 2010 Winter Olympics, and I will be at the games attending more than 20 events over the next two weeks.

Are the Olympics still cool? I am not the arbiter of cool, but I still believe. Even in Vancouver, public sentiment is mixed and protests have followed the torch relay. In a city of great wealth and opportunity, there is also great despair and poverty. Critics are right in claiming that the billions devoted to the games could be better spent helping the people, especially in the Downtown Eastside, the most drug-affected neighborhood in North America. It is also true that the Olympics have been taken over by commercial enterprise. They are a multi-billion dollar proposition with winners and losers. NBC is expected to lose $250 million on the Games, having submitted their bid at the height of the economy while selling ad time at an historical low. Co-Sport has exclusive rights to sell tickets in the US and several European countries. They are expected to make more on the games than any other entity. Corporate sponsorships and hospitality tents will be ubiquitous. Even some of the athletes will cash in. Snowboarder Shaun White makes $10 million a year. Short track speed skater Apolo Ohno is a celebrity and danced with the stars. Ski racer Lindsey Vonn will become the star of the Olympics if she can overcome a bruised shin and live up to the hype. But most of these Olympians are un-sung heroes. They have devoted their lives, given up the easy freedom of youth, and toiled in anonymity for a shot at victory and glory in their most pure forms. They seek challenge and progress and competition, while embracing the international Olympic spirit. They are athletes and ambassadors, and I am rooting for them.

Opening ceremonies are like musicals, spectacular and emotional at their best, silly and boring at their worst. Also like musicals, they have very little to do with real life. This will be no exception. I don't like musicals. Just the same, I hate to miss a spectacle. So, without tickets, we decided to make a run at it. We crossed the border to Surrey and rode the Sky Train into the city. We got off at Stadium station and joined the throngs headed for the ceremonies. The crowd was jovial, if not jubilant, dressed for the winter that never came and draped in the flags of world. Tickets for Opening Ceremonies in the US market were priced $600, $900, and $1,300. We could never pull the trigger for that kind of money, but we had cash in hand if there was a deal to be had. There was not. As we wandered among the crowds, many people were looking to buy, but very few were selling. I monitored Craig's list from my Blackberry, but every lead was a dead end. We checked the box office at the stadium. We could get in for $1,100. Not worth it. With the rain starting to fall and the public viewing plaza in Yaletown filling up, we went home to watch the ceremonies on TV.

If you were interested, you joined the three billion people worldwide who watched it live. For my money, I am glad I didn't spend it. The evening was dominated by First Nations mythology that has never interested me. The music, virtually all of it lip-synched and performed at half-tempo, failed to inspire. Even "O Canada," the most beautiful national anthem in the world, was flat. Some of the imagery was beautiful, and the projection technology impressive. The dancing images of light magically turned the floor of the stadium into the surface of the Earth. This effect was at its loveliest as a young man ran through, and floated above, amber waves of grain, set to the Joni Mitchell classic, "Both Sides Now." The lighting of the cauldron, however, the highlight of any opening ceremony, was ill conceived and poorly executed. The plan to have four greats light the cauldron together was very Canadian, but lame and uninspired. Having both an outdoor and an indoor cauldron was an awkward solution to holding the ceremonies in a covered stadium. The technical difficulties raising the fourth ramp of fire ended the ceremonies with a thud, echoing the sound of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili hitting the pillar of death in Whistler.

Opening Day left me non-plussed, but the excitement begins tomorrow.

Next Event: Men's Normal Hill Ski Jumping