Canadian Girls Kick Ass

(Note: I wrote this yesterday, but didn’t get the chance to post it)

Remember those t-shirts? I think I had one that said that in high school.

Ok, so now I’m awake.

Yesterday was insane! Being here and being able to experience what happened here yesterday has been an unbelievable experience.

Our girls played a great game. The US were a little smug, walking in here like they had it in the bag after winning in the very same building at the Canada Cup in September. They put up a decent fight this time but our goalie was unstoppable.  Can you believe that’s three Olympic golds in a row for the Canadian women’s team? Amazing!!

Impartiality was once again out the window for me last night; especially during the raising of the flag. I’m not usually one to sing in public, but I belted out the national anthem loud and proud like every other Canadian in the arena. I figured I’d probably never have the opportunity to sing the anthem after witnessing a gold medal performance ever again, so I just went for it. (This is not to say that I think our men’s team isn’t going to take it all – in fact, I’m convinced they will – I’m just not working the game on Sunday)

All this controversy surrounding our girls drinking and smoking cigars on the ice afterwards has been blown way out of proportion. Come on, let them celebrate! If people are actually concerned about the underage drinking issue concerning Marie-Phillipe Poulin, they really need to get a life. That 18-year-old is one of the main reasons Canada has another gold medal.

And how about that performance by Joannie Rochette. I don’t how she managed to stay so composed; I could never.

So like the ladies of hockey did, let’s cheers to gold and hopefully many more to come!

Can’t do it justice

I wouldn’t trade last night for anything in the world. It was amazing. Unfortunately I’m way too tired right now to write about it, and I want to do this post justice.

I’ll get it done as soon as I can.

Thanks for reading!!

Vancouver is going to party tonight!

Since the weekend the lines at venues have gotten smaller and the streets have become a little bit less noisy at night. Olympic burnout has set in. That is all going to change. Vancouver is going to party tonight!

Let’s forget about Super Sunday. Today should be dubbed Wonderful Wednesday! A bronze for our flag bearer Clara Hughes, a silver for the women’s 3,000m short track relay, silver and gold for our two women’s bobsleigh teams and an amazing performance by our men’s hockey team! Our athletes did us proud today.

After Sunday’s unfortunate loss to the US, I made a prediction; I said that when we met Russia in the quarterfinals, if the guys were able to get as many shots on net during the game as they had in the previous two, they’d easily beat Russia. It doesn’t take a hockey expert to see that Nabokov had been shaky this entire tournament.

The crowd at Canada Hockey Place was going crazy today! It was so much fun to witness. As a volunteer I’m supposed to remain impartial. I restrained myself from cheering along with the crowd, chanting ‘Go Canada Go!’, or my favourite ‘Na,na,na,na goodbye…’, but I couldn’t stop myself from screaming and clapping at each of our seven goals tonight.

Tonight Sweden faced up against Slovakia, and surprisingly the Slovaks came out on top. It was another great game to watch! Team Canada faces Team Slovakia in the semi-finals on Friday.

Tomorrow our women’s team meets the US in the gold medal game. Here’s hoping today’s good luck continues!

No words

There are no words to describe how that loss felt yesterday. I’m sure everyone at home felt the same way. The majority of the crowd at yesterday’s game was so dejected afterwards. The streets were nowhere near as fun as they have been the past few days.

A girl from Texas sitting behind me at the next game commented, “I was rooting for Canada to win. Americans don’t really care about hockey. I bet there are a lot more sad people today than there are happy people.” I’m sure she was right.

Hopefully this serves as a wake up call to our men in red. They play Germany on Tuesday. This should be an easy win. It should also be good practice for the next game where they’ll encounter the Russians much earlier than they had anticipated. Ovechkin and co. haven’t been living up to their hype yet though either. If Canada starts communicating better, we have a really good shot.

I’m crossing my fingers we can still take this home. And wouldn’t revenge be the sweetest if we met the US in the gold medal game?!

In other news, I caught a puck yesterday! This might seem slightly trivial, but only 4,000 official pucks were made for this tournament, so it is kind of exciting. Apparently they’re already selling on eBay for a couple hundred dollars. This one, that I acquired from the Swedes win over the Finnish, will be going to my hockey-obessed nephew Rylan.

I also got to meet Joe Sakic yesterday. He was sitting right behind me with his family during the Canada vs US game. The “in-game host” came over to do an interview with him during the first intermission. This interview appeared on the jumbo-tron for the entire arena to see. Needless to say, he was hounded for autographs at pretty much every whistle.

I felt so bad for the guy, but he was a great sport about it. I wanted to ask for a photo with him, but I felt he had already taken his fair share. I helped escort him and his family through our media centre so they could get out without a crowd full of people following them our of the building.

Today is the women’s semi-finals. Hopefully there won’t be any surprises in this game.

P.S. VANOC asked me to give the Vancouver Sun an interview about being a volunteer, so if you’re interested here’s the link to it: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Volunteer%20experience%20Long%20days%20totally%20worth/2596091/story.html

Livecity

I took a couple of days off from the blog – my apologies! 

The hockey tournament has been pretty exciting these past few days. Slovakia beat Russia in shoot-out, and Switzerland edged out Norway in overtime. Today’s contests should be the most exciting though. The two top ranked teams in each pool will face off. 

The Czech Republic would love to win and send Russia to a qualifying game (it’s actually better for Canada if Russia wins though), Canada needs to beat the US to avoid the qualifying game, and Finland wants revenge over Sweden in a rematch of the 2006 gold medal game. 

I will be watching the second two games live and I can’t wait! 

Enough about hockey for now though, as I’m sure I’ll be talking about the games in length tomorrow. For now let me tell you about the streets of Vancouver: they are insane! 

During the day families roam the streets visiting the torch, the Canadian Mint where you can see the medals, the pavilions from all the provinces, and the houses from participating countries. I haven’t had much time to do the last three yet, but I’m hoping to have the chance this coming week. I did get to see the torch the other day, but it was before they moved the fence closer and put up the plexiglass. 

I'll go back and get a better picture now that the fence has moved closer

As for the nightlife, it’s even crazier. People regularly break in to singing Oh Canada and are joined by hundreds of strangers. Whenever there is news of a new medal won by a Canadian athlete it’s high fives all around. I was out pretty late the other night, but you wouldn’t have known it was almost 4:00 am by the amount of people who were still out walking around. I’ll try to get some pictures next time. 

You would think the amount of people everywhere would start to get on people’s nerves, but I’ve barely seen this at all. Everyone just seems so happy to be participating in something so huge. This city is alive.

I was sitting in the arena yesterday and heard it best from a guy sitting just behind me “I wish everyone in the world was this friendly all the time.”

Hope everyone is watching the hockey game today. Go Canada Go!

Too close for comfort

That was intense! I was not prepared for that much drama only two games into the tournament. As a volunteer I’m not supposed to cheer, but I couldn’t help myself when Sidney Crosby finally scored that shoot-out goal. It was about time!

Canada really needs to get their act together before they play the US on Sunday though, or they may find themselves playing in the qualification round. That said, Hiller was incredible and the main reason the Swiss were able to stay in the game. Canada had twice as many shots (46) and Hiller saved all but two. Had he been playing that well on Tuesday, they may have been able to beat the US.

Confession: I never thought of Crosby as being a good-looking guy, but every time he skated by today (I was positioned in the front row, rink-side!) I couldn’t help the small smile that creeped across my face.  I’m working Sunday’s game versus the US and crossing my fingers that I get a rink-side position again.

Heatley plays the puck while the sea of red cheers him on

Wednesday night I was invited to attend a Speed Skate Canada function with employees from my company’s Vancouver office. We were wined and dined at the UBC Boathouse which has been converted to the Speed Skate Canada House for the Games. We got to watch Marianne St-Gelais win the silver medal in the 500 metre short track race and talk to some up-and-coming Canadian speed skaters.

I’ve been here just over a week, and it’s been pretty insane. I’ve definitely been burning the candle at both ends – but for those of you who know me, that’s really nothing new. I’m pretty sure this trend will continue for the remaining two weeks of my trip.

My motto for the rest of the Olympics: I’ll sleep in March.

Seeing Stars

Mostly seeing hockey stars, but Matt Lauer walked by me yesterday in the Press Workroom, so that counts too right?

Sorry I didn’t post yesterday. I’m working days now so I’ve had to flip my blogging schedule around. (Although I am blogging from work right now before today’s games start)

Yesterday I spent my entire day at Canada Hockey Place. I worked the USA vs Switzerland game, and the beginning of the Canada vs Norway game, behind the Photo Helpdesk. For the most part my job consisted of handing out locker keys to photographers and printing media guides for them. Not the most exciting position available to Photo Assistants, but hopefully this means I’ll be rink-side for tomorrow’s Canada vs. Switzerland game.

Because I was working the Helpdesk I was also able to catch Maëlle Ricker’s gold medal race live. So exciting!!

The highlight of my day was being able to snap a few pictures of the Canadian men during their warm ups!

I was also lucky enough to be able to watch the end of the Canada vs Norway game, and the entire Russia vs Latvia game from the stands. The Canada game was so fun! The crowd just gets so into it! The first 20 minutes of the game were a bit of a nail biter, but then our boys pulled it together. And that hat trick by Iginla was amazing!! It took the volunteers quite a few minutes to get all the hats of the ice.

The later game gave me some hope that the Russian threat can be maintained. Latvia played them pretty well and even managed to score two goals on Nabokov.

For today’s games I’m positioned up in the first row of the 300′s. There aren’t usually many photographers around for the less viewed games, so I’ll get to watch most of the action. I am working the press conference after which should be pretty cool too.

I hope everyone is enjoying watching the Olympics, and hopefully there are another couple medals in the stars for Canada today!

The Golden Boy

Honestly, if you didn’t have the slightest tear in your eye, or the smallest lump in your throat yesterday when Alex Bilodeau’s brother was cheering at the end of that run, you might not be human. What a story! 

The city of Vancouver was going crazy yesterday when the news broke that Bilodeau had ended Canada’s draught of a gold medal on home soil. I wish I could say I was watching the coverage live when this happened, but sadly Team Sweden was on the ice practicing, so I was in one of the photo positions. (I know you can’t feel too sorry for me though…) 

I was able to watch a lot of the interviews he did after he won, and what I loved most about them was how he talked about the rest of the athletes competing for Team Canada. Bilodeau will go down in history for that gold medal, but he really downplayed it by insisting that his gold would not be the only one, and that this was just the beginning for this country. Modesty. A great characteristic, and one that defines many Canadians. 

Yesterday, before the Swedes practiced (including Peter Forsberg), the Russians were on the ice. We were all trying to guess who would be there based on the NHL’s schedule that day. Washington didn’t play, but we weren’t sure whether Ovechkin would show up or not. He did and it was pretty cool to see him up close.  I was able to snap a couple of not-so-great shots yesterday, so I’ll post them below. 

Today is my day off! I’m doing the tourist stuff and thankfully it’s not raining. Hopefully I’ll have some nicer non-hockey pictures for you tomorrow. 

Ovechkin takes a shot as Team Russia practices

Peter Forsberg and a teammate during Team Sweden's practice

18-0

I officially have the best possible job as a volunteer at the Olympics! Yesterday while other “blue jackets” were conducting traffic at skytrain stations or checking tickets in the rain outside the venues, I was sitting at ice level watching the Canadian women’s hockey team slaughter the Slovakian team. 

My job is to supervise the photographers and run their memory cards to the photo desk. Since I only had one in my section yesterday, and he was hooked up to a direct feed, I was able to watch the entire game. Actually, I really only got to watch the second period since I was sitting at the end where the Canadian goalie played the first and third. 

Canada vs Slovakia - Second period

Despite the extremely lop-sided score I thought the Slovaks played well, especially their goalie. Although she let 18 get by her, she managed to stop 49 of Canada’s shots. In the press conference after the game the Slovakian coach stated that she was his best player. 

What I loved most about yesterday’s game was how much the Canadian fans cheered for Slovakian team as they left the ice. I think it showed true Olympic spirit. I hope this trend continues, but I’m thinking the boo birds might come out when the men’s tournament starts on Tuesday. I’ll keep you posted…

Let the Games begin!

I don’t really want to talk about the technical difficulties at the end of last night’s ceremonies. It was a little heartbreaking to stand there, watching  it happen, and know that millions around the world were seeing the same train wreck. It was an unfortunate mar on what was otherwise (as far as I’m concerned) an amazing show. 

I loved how they managed to capture so much of what makes Canada, Canada in only three hours. From the welcome of the Four Host First Nations to the spoken word poetry performed by Shane Koyczan; from Orcas (my favourite part!) to life on the prairies; from the Group of Seven to the Rockies;  it was all such a great reminder of the amazing things Canada has to offer. 

Other than the whales, the performances were the highlights for me. Bang the Drum performed by Nelly Furtado and Bryan Adams had that infectious pop quality that stayed with me long after the show was over. I thought Sarah McLachlan’s Ordinary Miracle was gorgeous, and the dancers accompanying this piece were beautiful. Everyone I’ve spoken to said k.d. lang mastered Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. The performances by all the fiddlers, and Ashley MacIsaac in particular, had the entire stadium on their feet clapping along. 

The parts that were kept secret to the very end were the names of those who would carry in the Olympic flag and the one who would have the all important duty of lighting the torch. I got a bit of a sneak peek at these names when I went to hand out the “top-secret” insert to the photographers just one minute before the start of the show. I thought VANOC made some great decisions by selecting such well-respected Canadian flag bearers and, as it turned out, multiple torch lighters. I suspected Wayne Gretzky would be the last torch bearer and I was happy to find out I had guessed right! 

One of my other favourite parts was watching the Canadians walking in at the end of the parade of athletes. They all looked so excited and the audience was going crazy! 

I have to take off to work my first shift at Canada Hockey Place now – the Canadian women are playing Slovakia – so I’ll leave you with some pictures I took from with my phone last night. 

Team Canada enters the Opening Ceremonies

The Olympic Torch is lit

 P.S. Today at 7:18 and 7:30 (10:17 and 10:30 EST) Canada has a good chance to win our first gold medal on home soil. I hope everyone will be watching!