Olympic Spirit



I love this song! I get all excited every time I hear it. Thank you John Williams for composing it. It's a must for the workout playlist on my iPod. And thanks to Trisha Walker, it is also a ringtone on my phone. Thanks for being my Olympic comrade Trisha! In the words of Sanka,
"I am feeling very Olympic today. How about you?"
In this this spirit of Olympicism, (No, this isn't a real word. I just made it up.) I feel that this is a good week for an introduction to the winter Olympics and all they entail. If you are a sad, deprived person who knows nothing, then today is your lucky day. Get excited! And just so you know, if you watched the above video and did not realize these are all summer sports, then you definitely fit in the sad, deprived category.

The most recent winter games took place in Vancouver, Canada, from February 12-28, 2010. The winter Olympics sports are divided into three main categories: (1) ice sports, (2) alpine, skiing and snowboarding events, and (3) nordic events. In each of these sports there are more events. From the total of 15 sports, there were 86 individual events at the 2010 winter Olympics. 86 events! Wow! I didn't even know there was that many. Listed are all the sports in their categories:

Ice Events
Bobsled, Luge, Skeleton, Ice Hockey, Figure Skating (Including Ice Dancing), Speed Skating, Short Track Speed Skating, Curling
Alpine, Skiing & Snowboarding Events
Alpine Skiing, Freestyle Skiing (Aerials, Moguls and Ski Cross), Snowboaring (Parallel Giant Slalom, Halfpipe and Snowboard Cross)
Nordic Events
Biatholon, Cross-Country Skiing, Ski Jumping, Nordic Combined

I think the plan is to highlight one sport each week, along with the opening and closing ceremonies and any other really Olympic item that may come to me. I'm also going to include the pictures Katy and I took during the Olympics this past February. We took one each day, and I'm pretty sure we have one for every sport. They are classic! That's all I have to say.

OPENING CEREMONIES
 
The opening ceremonies are quite often the highlight of an Olympic games. People often remember the person who lit the Olympic cauldron, the performers, epic failures, or classic Olympic moments. Let me just throw out that the Beijing opening ceremonies in 2008 were ridiculously amazing. Wow! One of my favorite parts of the ceremony is when all the competitors get to enter the arena. In accordance with Olympic tradition, the Greek competitors lead the pack, and the remaining countries enter in alphabetical order, with the exception of host country, whose athletes come last. I love seeing all the different countries represented and to hear about the person carrying their nation's flag. This special honor is bestowed by the their fellow athletes who all vote for the flag bearer. What an honor!

I also love the torch relay leading up to the opening ceremonies. I was doing a little research just now, and found out why the flame/torch/cauldron is even included. Apparently, it commemorates the theft of fire from the Greek god Zeus by Prometheus. Its origins lie in ancient Greece, where a fire was kept burning throughout the celebration of the ancient Olympics. The fire was reintroduced at the 1928 summer Olympics in Amsterdam, and it has been part of the modern Olympic Games ever since. The picture to the left is the Marathon Tower at the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam. According to legend, the torch's flame has been kept burning, ever since the first Olympics. I'm trying not to be skeptical about this in honor of the Olympic spirit exuding from this post, but it's difficult.

The torch relay is a much more recent addition. The relay transports the flame from Greece to the various designated sites of the games had no ancient precedent. It was introduced by Carl Diemat the controversial 1936 Berlin Olympics. The Olympic Torch today is ignited several months before the opening ceremonies at the site of the ancient Olympics in Olympia, Greece.

Torch from the Salt Lake City Games at the museum we visited.
 The Olympic Torch Relay ends on the day of the opening ceremony in the central stadium of the Games. The final carrier is often kept unannounced until the last moment, and is usually a sports celebrity of the host country. The final bearer of the torch runs towards the cauldron, often placed at the top of a grand staircase, and then uses the torch to start the flame in the stadium. It is considered a great honor to be asked to light the Olympic Flame. After being lit, the flame continues to burn throughout the Olympics, and is extinguished on the day of the closing ceremony.

The first well-known athlete to light the cauldron in the stadium was ninefold Olympic Champion Paavo Nurmi, who excited the home crowd in Helsinki in 1952. That's him on the right. Other famous last bearers of the torch include French football star Michel Platini (1992), heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali (1996), Australian aboriginal runner Cathy Freeman (2000), and ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky (2010).

Speaking of Wayne Gretzky and lighting the torch...
One of those epic fail moments occured durning the Vancouver torch lighting. Paraolympic gold medalist, humanitarian and activist Rick Hansen carried the Olympic flame into the building. From there, 4 all-time great Canadian athletes were to light the cauldron together: two-time Olympic gold medalist Catriona Le May Doan, basketball player Steve Nash (He's one my NBA boys. Go Steve!), "Canada's Female Athlete of the 20th Century," former Olympic skier Nancy Greene, and last, but certainly not least, Canadian hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky.

The athletes were to simultaneously light the base of the poles, which would then carry the flame upwards to the cauldron. They all walked out together and waited for these poles to come out of the ground. And they waited, and waited... Problem was, only 3 out of 4 poles came out of the ground. A problem with the hydraulic system temporarily delayed the Olympic cauldron from taking its designated place in the center of the arena. Three pillars came up from beneath the stage and Olympic cauldron rested at the apex of the three pillars. Gretzky, Nash and Greene each lit the bottom of a spire while Le May Doan watched, and the flame traveled up the spires to light the cauldron. What a letdown! I can't even imagine, first standing there in front of millions hearing over your earpiece that something is wrong, then not even getting to light the cauldron. I'm truly sorry Catriona!

Just in cased you missed all this live, like our dear friend Sarah, you can watch it right here. Well, sort of. Katy and I held a small gathering in honor of the opening ceremonies. Lauren came over, and we had a small torch relay. Katy had made a torch for us out of her Wii nun-chuck, and we ran it around the loop in our apartment. Yes, we're that cool. We even had our own Olympic medals made from iPod headphones and yogurt tops. After dinner, running the torch, and receiving our medals, Katy and I settled with some hot chocolate to watch the opening ceremonies. We bought cable that month just to watch the Olympics. Sarah was out doing something and didn't get to watch, so we're giving her the play-by-play to watch later. Keep in mind that we are nerdy engineers who love the Olympics, and our reactions are completely real.



Olympic Champion!
Katy bestowing me my medal
Me bestowing Lauren her medal.
Lauren bestowing Katy her medal.
I love that you caught the Olympic Spirit with me Katy!
Singing the National Anthem
Watching the Opening Ceremonies

Because the site of the ceremonies was a domed stadium, Wayne Gretzky was sent via the back of a pick-up truck to a secondary site, the Vancouver Convention Centre, to light a larger cauldron of a similar design as Olympic rules state that the flame must be in public view for the entirety of the Olympics. This was a first for any Olympics, which is kind of hard to do at this point with so many previous ceremonies.



Whew! So much fuss for one night. These countries spend millions to entertain us all for a few hours, but I still love it. It's something I dream about at night. Aunt Kay, Katy, and I were recently at a Texas Rangers game. The stadium was huge, and it was packed. I found myself sitting there imagining myself marching in with my fellow athletes, so proud to represent our country. It was a little overwhelming, to be honest, even just in my imagination. I'll just have to keep dreaming until it becomes a reality.

On a final note, based completely in reality, I returned to Zoom this past week. It was not nearly as horrific as last week. It went really well actually. Coach Kaupp would have been proud of me doing all these crazy exercises. He taught me well during all those years of pain in the K-State weight room.