2014!

The 2014 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XXII Olympic Winter Games, will be the next Winter Olympics held from February 7 to February 23, 2014 in Sochi, Krasnodar Krai, Russia. The city was elected on July 4, 2007, during the 119th International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session in Guatemala City,Guatemala.^[1] This will be the first time that the Russian Federation will host the Winter Olympics; the Soviet Union hosted the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow.

Link to Wiki about 2014 games: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Winter_Olympics

Olympics Recap

There were many memorable moments for me from these games:

• Joanie Rochette’s return to the ice after experiencing such tragedy in her life
• Jon Montromery’s run down the sliding track in the men’s skeleton race and his pure Canadian post medal reaction in winning
• Clara Hughes ending her Olympian career in style with a bronze medal in the women’s 5000m speedskating race. She is one of Canada’s most foremost Olympians with medals in Summer and Winter Games over 14 years and includes a gold medal in her specialty race.
• Jasey Jay Anderson finally winning his medal, gold at that too, after so many Olympics of not being able to succeed in reaching podium
• The Korean wipeout in the men’s 1500m short track race. The Koreans were poised to sweep but a bad turn knocked two of them out of the medals.
• Cross-country skiing having such a great venue for some thrilling races.
• and finally the men’s hockey gold medal final.

CANADA WINS!

And the games end with a bang.

Or rather an overtime goal by Sidney Crosby.

The much hyped game of the United States and Canada for ice hockey goal was everything everyone expected to be though probably a bit too nerve racking for most Canadians as it went into overtime.

Overall, this was been a most satisfying Olympics for Canadians. No, Canada did not own the podium but it won more medals than ever before in a Winter Games and won more gold medals than any games to date. In the medal standings, 26 medals ranked the country third behind the United States and Germany. So the efforts of the past six years to nurture an elite class of athletes to bring home as medals as possible should be deemed a success.

Of course, it did not looked like that at the end of the second weekend of the games when the country had just won 10 medals and saw many potential medalists come up short. But in the final week, Canada turned it on and started to rack up medals with a gold medal nearly every night to the final day of the Games.

So ends too my intense obsession with all things Olympian and the performance of the Canadian athletes. Most of my time was following the results of every competition, seeing how the Canadians did, read articles and posts on all aspects of the Games. Now, things will have to go back to the ways things were which is such a less than exciting life.

Closing Ceremonies

I watched part of the closing ceremonies this past Sunday. As always, it was a pretty wonderful spectacle. In a very explicit way it was marketing tool for the entire country of Canada. All the dancing and song had something to do with how great Canada is. It was a showcase of the beautiful parts of the country. This may sound like a negative post but I truly enjoyed it. I don't want to know what the country is actually like, but I will absolutely watch the romanticized version of it. Thank you Canada for doing another great closing ceremony.

Here's a link to a video of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PMoeOC3HVM&feature=PlayList&p=3856BCCCA838BEA6&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=6

U.S. Hockey

The U.S. came into the quarterfinals as the #1 seed in the Hockey tournament after beating Canada 5-3 in a great game that rounded out the preliminaries. Not sure whether it was tightness or overconfidence but the U.S. looked tight during their quarterfinal match against Switzerland.But Zach Parise put all that frustration aside, deflecting a wrist shot from Brian Rafalski early in the third period. He then scored into an empty net to seal a 2-0 quarterfinal win that sends the U.S. to Friday's semifinals against Finland, which beat the Czech Republic 2-0.

"The goalie was great and we did a good job of sticking with it. We were pretty confident and said just keep putting pucks at him," said Parise, who failed to score on his first 13 shots of the tournament.

Ryan Miller made 19 saves to backstop the victory and move the Americans within two wins of their first men's hockey gold medal in 30 years.

Shaun White

All about Shaun White:

Shaun just took down GOLD for the Americans in the Men's Halfpipe yesterday in snowboarding. He is the most popular American at these winter olympics because of his flaming hair, absurd tricks and outgoing personality. He is something that few athletes are: a creator. He doesn't just perfect tricks that those who came before him created, he makes up new tricks that no one has ever done and then perfects those. He is so far ahead in his sport that in a recent 60 minutes interview it was revealed that he hardly hangs out with any other snowboarders on the professional and olympic circuit because they hold a grudge against him for being so good. I created a Jing to help you navigate his official site and showed the video that i found the coolest.

http://screencast.com/t/MTRhN2Q3M2I

and here's the link to his site: http://www.shaunwhite.com/

here's a couple more ways you can follow shaun:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/Shaun_White

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ShaunWhite

Cool Runnings

Since this blog is focused on the history of the games, I would be remiss if I didn't include the Men's bobsled team from Jamaica in 1988. They were inspiring to millions and even inspired a movie. Truly one of the great stories in the history of the games. Here is a closer look at the men that were involved:

1 Devon Harris

After failing to qualify for the LA Games in '84, middle-distance runner Harris joined the Jamaican army and there, in 1987, saw an advert for "dangerous and rigorous" trials to choose the nation's first Olympic bobsledders. The idea seemed ridiculous, "but I tried my darndest and made the team", says Harris, who had found a way to become an Olympian after all – as well as a new passion. He went on to alternate between bobsledding and army life for the next decade, before retiring to write a children's book. Now 45, he is a writer and motivational speaker.

2 Chris Stokes

Despite hurried training that involved jogging on a frozen lake, the team were so unused to running on ice that one of them, Caswell Allen, slipped and was injured just a week before the Olympics. A new member was quickly drafted – Chris Stokes, present in Calgary simply to cheer on his brother Dudley. He had never seen a bobsled before. "We taught him everything we knew about it," Harris tells OSM. "Then we began the event three days later..." Stokes competed in four Winter Olympics, led the Jamaican Bobsleigh Federation and is now a finance manager.

3 Dudley Stokes

After a terrible Olympic debut – a push-bar collapsed while driver Dudley was hopping in – the second day of competition brought improvement, and Team Jamaica recorded its best ever start, the seventh fastest in Calgary that year. Unused to the speed, however, Dudley – a Sandhurst-trained army captain who is still involved with Jamaican bobsled today – lost control. "There was simply no wall left," says Harris, "and there was only one thing left for us to do. Crash." The sled, travelling at 85mph, upturned with the team underneath. It was the end of their Olympics.

4 Michael White

A radio operator and private in the army reserves, brakeman White was one of the first to be selected for the team, and also competed in the two-man bobsled with Dudley in 1988. Like his three team-mates, White went on to compete at the Winter Olympics in Albertville, France in 1992; he now lives in New York and works in retail. Jamaica, meanwhile, has sustained its bobsled programme to this day, the team overseen now by the Stokes brothers. It will return to Canadian ice at the Vancouver Olympics this month, alongside a Jamaican ski team.

5 Pat Brown

Team coach Brown (now a bobsled instructor at Utah Olympic Park) was played by John Candy in the 1994 film based on this story, Cool Runnings. "Loosely based," Harris stresses. "We didn't experience any animosity from other teams as depicted in the movie. One of the East Germans smiled at me and gave me a badge." And the film's rousing climax, in which the team hold their crashed sled aloft to carry it over the finish line, was also a fiction. "We did what any team would have done," says Harris. "We pushed it to the end of the track before lifting it off."

The Vikings are usually credited with being the inventors of luge sleds. They made them to slide down mountainsides in Olsofjord. The Vikings were actually conducting Luge races as early as 800 AD! The sleds were not very aerodynamic, but they were made heavy and strong for speed.

Luge is the French word for toboggan. The 1st international event was held on a road in Davos, Switzerland, in 1883 with Twenty-one competitors from Australia, Sweden, Netherlands, England, Germany, Switzerland and the USA.

In 1913, the International Sled Sport Federation was founded in Dresden, Germany. It was taken over by the International Bobsleigh and Tobogganing Federation in 1935. The International Luge Federation was founded in 1957 and remains the sport's governing body.

In 1914 men's singles and doubles races were conducted at the 1st European championships. The 1st world championships were held in Oslo in 1955.

Luge made its Olympic debut at the 1964 Games in Innsbruck, despite protests by many critics that the sport was too dangerous.

Athletes go down the track feet first at speeds of up to 120 kph. In men's and women's singles events, each athlete has 4 runs over 2 days and the times are added together for the final result. The luge is steered by shifting bodyweight or pulling on reins.

The doubles competition, in which teams can be same-sex or mixed, is a 1 day event in which each pair of athletes takes 2 runs down the course. No mixed-sex team has ever competed at the Olympics.

Here's a link to my favorite luge video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG99ULoWXHU

The Olympics are almost here! I wanted to post about my favorite sport that takes place during this wintry classic-CURLING!

Here is a little description of one of the world's fascinating sports: "Curling is a team game with similarities to bowls and shuffleboard, played by two teams of four players each on a rectangular sheet of carefully prepared ice. Teams take turns sliding heavy, polished granite stones down the ice towards the target (called the house). Two sweepers withbrooms accompany each rock and use timing equipment and their best judgment, along with direction from their teammates, to help direct the stones to their resting place. The complex nature of stone placement and shot selection has led some to refer to curling as "chess on ice."

As a soccer player, I like to think that most sports were created organically out of activities that people were already doing. Running, jumping, and kicking seem to be natural acts that everyone has done at some point in their lives. Throwing a large stone down ice toward a target while your friends use a brush to get the ice out of the way? Seems like a joke. Either way, I love the strategy that is involved with curling and can't wait to see the competition at the Olympics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM5mFH3_Qhs&feature=related