How were the 2010 Winter Olympics for you?

A snowHead

For me the biggest thing after watching massive amounts of differing completions was how close it all was (at the top)
Take the alpine skiing (but not solely confined to that) When you consider all the variences that effect a run
1,snow condition including ruts
2,weather wind fog
3, technicals in the kit wax,edges
4, athletic ability of the competitor and his mental state.
5, over the length of a course, slight variations of lines.

It all comes down to 100th's of second. I watched the bobsleigh final run between Gold and Silver is down to just .16 of a second. over 4 runs and 2 days.
This is the most amazing part for me.

Then there's the other end of events, Outside the top 15 or 30. No chance of winning but been there is enough - is beating an old rival even better at the Olympics? I'm sure it is.

It has also raised the funding issues which I'm sure will be all over the media in the next few days, then it will be forgotten in the head long rush to 2012 Sad

Thank you.

*more random musing to be added later rolling eyes

A snowHead

Dwarf Vader, thanks to you they were way better than they started out to be! Reporting in general was abysmal to non-existent until you started posting and keeping us up on what was going on. A really, really big thank you for all your work - YOUR ARE A STAR!!!

The German/European TV coverage was the other saviour. I feel sorry for all you fans with only free view! The Beeb were dire - what on earth were they thinking?

I could not believe the state of the skiing courses - alpine and cross-country were consistently wet and heavy. I've not seen ruts and slush in Alpine WC for so long I'd forgotten it actually could be a reality. No wonder some teams did not know how to handle it. I remember watching one of the biathlon events early on and you could see the water splashing on some of the corners.

Sochi will be interesting - coastal, but continental so with luck no melting, just a question of whether everything will be in place and working in time! rolling eyes

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Having been here, I can say it was fantastic. The athletes in Whistler were very accessible in the evenings (except for the US ski team, which holed up in a closed venue with security outside as if another 9/11 was in the offing). The weather just is. You work around it. The course workers on the alpine events were absolutely amazing - the usual stint was working through the night to prep the course for the next day's racing.

And I'm pleased to say I've been enjoying the Canadian tv coverage, which is gracious both in victory and defeat. In all honesty, our media could learn a lot from them, as could our population from the Canadians.

Sochi. Hmm. Russians. There have been a lot of Russians out here, few of whom appeared to have been competitors. It's hard to shake the feeling that they have been looking for the best angles to fleece the public in 4 years time. I hope I'm wrong.

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I enjoyed what I saw, some of the alpine was superb, Anja Paerson is one tough lady, and ski cross was even funnier than boarder cross although there were no Jacobellis's this time. wink

BBC were appalling though. I finally realised halfway through that even on their own website schdule they were unable to tell us what they were showing, couldn't they have employed someone to update the info when they changed their scheduling plans? I missed the women's downhill, I missed Bode getting his gold and I missed most of the women's Super G, all because freeview and BBC website said they weren't on whilst they were actually broadcasting! The situation was hugely improved by Mr Vader's info though, thank you sir. snowHead

To sum up: shame about the weather but still some fantastic events. And I don't know about the Austrian men's alpine coach but heads should definitely roll at the BBC. Evil or Very Mad

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I've enjoyed the games and will be cheering on Canada in the hockey today. I second Swiss_Toby's opinion on Anja Paersson, though the funniest event for me was snowboard half-pipe (oh, I forgot about ice-dance!).

For the first half of the games I was in France, getting more and more frustrated by the French TV coverage. Much of the evening was given over to Olympic coverage but a talking head in a Paris studio kept interrupting the action. I expected to find better when I returned home to the BBC. Ye gods and little fishes, the Beeb has the most abysmal Olympic coverage I have ever seen. I still cannot believe that the Olympics was pre-empted by a program about blacksmiths a few days ago. I have only just discovered that much of the live action was available online - couldn't they at least have told us that on the TV?

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Hmm. Thought from the outset that Whistler might be a dodgy location with possible rain/slush/fog issues - which duly transpired. Nice to see Bode coming good. I think we have won one medal (albeit a superb gold). I wonder how much per medal that works out as from public money. I see that the lottery chucked £6.5 million at it. Was that the lot? Even if it was, it still is £6.5 million per medal. Can't say I am impressed.

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Never mind the weather.

The whole event has been fantastic. I dont want to end.

Ive seen more of these games on BBC red button than any comparable event, and with Eurosport to complement or offer an alternative commentary I think both broadcasters have done the games proud. Balding was polished and Leigh and Bell added fun.
(If you want a media blackout and a sport treated with disdain and indifference try following Rugby League on terrestrial broadcasters)

Thanks also for the info on here.

More medals would have been the icing on the cake. I expected 3, but one gold is better than most.

After all it is free

T-Dub, I think the experiences of those with cable/satellite and those with only freeview have been rather different...

Swiss Toby, yes, it was pretty evident that Claire Balding must have been giving advice on what was on the Freesat red button - not Freeview's.

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I've really enjoyed these winter Olympics and watched more this time than I can remember for a long time. We were lucky that we had Sky when we were in Morzine for the first week of the games so got to watch quite a lot on the red button there. Well done Vancouver - what a show! Happy

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The games been disappointing for me. As a huge winter sports fan and the type to sit and watch Eurosport for an entire day through jumping, biathlon, alpine, etc in the regular season, I just think much of it has been a poor advertisement for our sport.

A lot of it's been the weather, which it's easy to say can't be predicted but Whistler doesn't even have a World Cup alpine race because the weathers too unpredictable, so why give it the Olympics?

And I don't even know where to start with the BBC. I've never seen such a pathetic, unprofessional shower of ****. Claire Balding, a joke; standing around at the bottom of a random ski run to present, unprofessional; showing repeats of Porraige on bbc2 whilst live Olympic alpine (forgotten which disapline) is on, disrespectful; commentry, uninformed (with some exceptions); red button priorities, bizzare;

and to whoever complains about spending £6m on the athletes please consider that we sent 52 athletes to the games and splitting £6m over 4 years is never going to return a heap of medals. £2m+ of that went on the skeleton bob and that hasn't just returned one medal. In the last four years Amy Williams, Shelly Rudman and kristin Bromley have between them won multiple World Championship golds and silvers, world cup overall titles and many world cup events.

In comparrison John Terry alone earns £2m in about 12 weeks (if recent reports are to be beleived) I know who I think is the better value!

On the positive side my favourite three skiers are Cuche, Svindal and Millar, so to see two of them clean up was sweet. Unlucky to Didier, broken thumb was never going to be good prep

You know it makes sense.

Did not really watch much but caught some of the ice hockey final. Nice result for Canada and a great overall medal performance 14 golds. Well done.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

A snowHead

A snowHead

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Well now if giving the games to Whistler looked dodgey, look at the forecast for Sochi (KrasnayaPolyana the mountain where the skiing is at) sure this is only the next 7 days but boy only 5 trails? temps of 10 degrees? and the freezing line is 3/4 way up the mountain....! Doesn't look good but hey its only 1439 days for it to get better!!!! Cool

http://www.snow-forecast.com/resorts/KrasnayaPolyana/6day/top

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m_raff123, Welcome to sH's interesting weather in Sochi.

Because I don't do TV I watched the games online and it sounds like I have a better coverage then TV. Smile

The only time I stuggled was the second run of the womans salom which did not apear on the bbc until into the race but I was watching it on eurovision anyways.
Also a great find was http://www.eurovisionsports.tv/olympics/ and I would like to thank again the original poster.
The commentators did annoy at first but by the end I got use to it, and sort of tuned them out.

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Only really saw a few bits. Boardercross and Skiercross (why is that classified as "freestyle"?) were the most entertaining, plus of course luge & skeleton.

Now the official Vancouver olympic website was pretty cool - real time updates of the luge/skeleton/bob (well maybe a 2sec delay) showing all split times, speed trap times, etc. much more than the on-screen graphics. No real lag. No performance issues. Wonder what we'll see in 2012?

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Never expected the Mens British Alpine ski team to bring back as many medals as the Mens Austrian Alpine Ski team. Wink

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After all it is free

DB, now that's a positive slant on it Smile

While I enjoyed the nutters racing each other - sorry, skier cross - and it was a great game of ice hockey last night - this remains the ultimate in winter sport for me. Yes, the various alpine ski events are great to watch and I have nothing but admiration for every single competitor from slalom to downhill - but the guys & gals that do moguls with such style AND get the jumps in too are quite simply the best.

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Dwarf Vader, will you be doing the same sort of coverage for the Para Olympics? I am just as interested having watched the World Championships a couple of years back in Niederau.

Now those skiers really do have incredible guts and do it all still for the best of reasons - participation! The real original Olympic ideal is still held with these games.

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Samerberg Sue, Sadly I'm skiing that week Sad

but

Here is the schedule

http://www.ncski.co.uk/45.jpg

*MOD: edited to turn the huge image into a link*

Dwarf Vader,

My guess is that the order of events is based on the susceptibility of each event to poor weather/visibility. - If you'd scheduled the Mens Downhill as the last alpine event of the Games, it wouldn't have been run. Scheduling the speed events ahead of the technical events gives you some slack in case of fog (especially in Whistler!). In the event, the Initial DH training and race schedule WAS delayed, but that allowed the actual races to go ahead in very good conditions later in the week. Slalom can go ahead in almost any conditions (well, it did this time).

Generally I followed most of the alpine racing online (it helps that I always work late, so took advantage of very fast connections), but it WAS frustrating to discover that freeview red button coverage was limited, compared to satellite cable (WHY???? - They have the capacity to offre more choice on Freeview) - as someone pointed out in another thread, you'd think that the Beeb are trying to drive their loyal supporters into the arms of the Dirty Digger.

Some of the commentaries were ..............eccentric. I'm not quite sure how being an Olympic middle distance champion makes you an expert on curling: I guess they just assume that the bulk of the viewing population know even less.

I'll be there for the last couple of days of the Paralympics: It'll be good to sample some of the Olympic atmosphere.

You know it makes sense.

Acacia, Technical events (Slalom and Giant Slalom) also make more of a mess of the slope, piste bashers can only do so much, you need a long time to get a speed track smooth again if there has been a slalom on the bottom part of it.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Acacia, they don't have extra capacity to offer more choice on Freeview any more.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/pressred/2009/10/changesonfreeview.shtml

A snowHead

A snowHead

Despite some of the grim weather really enjoyed it. The Downhill was fantastic, as was the skier cross and the snowboarding equivalent, and the the Bob was great because of the British involvement. Ice Hockey final was a great finale as well.

I've been away and watched some of the recordings of the bbc coverage last night - I must admit that I became increasingly irritated by Matthew Pinsent. Why the need for a load of summer Olympians to be commentating on the winter Olympics that they have little in-depth knowledge about ? Even Paula Radcliffe joined Steve Cram for a while to commentate on the Curling - what was all that about !!!

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How were the 2010 Winter Olympics for you?

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