Closing Time

So the Olympics are now over and the Flame has been extinguished. It was a great 17 days of athletics and a great show of national pride by all of Canada from Coast to Coast. You would usually see an outpouring of support by the US given similar circumstances but it was nice to see the passion that all the people in the streets wearing red and white HBC fashions. They might actually be the big winners of the games. The Olympic apparel was stunning (I know how that sounds, and no I am not trying to play Mr. Blackwell), but it was very well designed and made all of our athletes not only look like a winning team but made us look professional. When the average person is clamoring for the same stuff and not being able to get it because it is in such high demand and sold out says a lot.

Back to sports...The, I don’t want to say fringe sports, lets call them niche sports, managed to showcase themselves and their sports in front of the world. It is too bad that it will more then likely be 4 more years before we get excited for the luge or 4 man bobsleigh again. Similar to the Summer Olympics where people who have no knowledge or interest in gymnastics become super fans of the sport and 16 year old’s become bigger then professional baseball players. It is almost funny how we get so excited for people we have never heard of in sports that we never follow just because they are wearing the Maple Leaf. I guess the old adage is true... You play for the crest on the front not the name on the back.

It is almost funny that a bunch of media outlets report that we are expected to medal in whatever sport or discipline and if the athlete doesn’t perform we are disappointed. If someone we haven’t heard of comes out of nowhere and are successful they become the pride of a nation and morph instantly into rock stars.

We were also treated to great coverage by the "Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium" who offered some 4800 total hours of programming on CTV, TSN, RDS and RIS, APTN and Rogers Media’s Omni Television, Rogers Sportsnet, OLN and on radio on the Fan 590. The commentators were all pretty good and even Jamie Campbell did a good job in becoming the voice of the ski hill at Cypress Mountain. Canada was treated with live events when they happened. NBC in the USA have taken a lot of heat for their plan of holding events on tape delay for prime time and other events on MSNBC and CNBC (which are not available to a lot of viewers). In an age where now is almost too late, tape delayed sports is not a good model to continue with. Imagine the 3pm Gold Medal Hockey game between Canada and the USA being held until 8pm est.

See you in London in 2012 and Sochi, Russia in 2014