Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony

February 12th, 2010 marks the beginning of the 2010 Winter Olympics game held by Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. As a Canadian, I'm definitely proud of this moment. Although, I did wish I had a cup of Tim Hortons hot chocolate with me to celebrate this occasion. Unfortunately, that desire wasn't fulfilled.

For the opening ceremony, VANOC (Vancouver Olympic Committee) focused on cultural diversity, the First Nations and the vast land of Canada bringing together more than 33 million Canadians living on the world's second largest country by landmass. There were performances by great renown Canadian performers like Nelly Furtado and K.D. Lang along with a plethora of other Canadian artists which unfortunately I don't know of.

Although the Olympics ceremony seemed to be doing well with beautiful imagery and uplifting poems and speeches, I found this opening ceremony one of the longest and slowest ceremony I've ever watched. It wasn't bad but if they cut it shorter to the Olympic cauldron lighting I'd be much happier. I didn't like the fact that it ended at 12:30 AM. By then I was thoroughly tired of watching the rest of the ceremonies. To make matters worse, one of the four beams of the "interior torches" had a hydraulics failure which is indeed a great embarrassment. However, since I work with a lot of electronics, I wouldn't blame VANOC for said failure because these things happen but it couldn't have picked a worse time to happen.

Tonight's ceremony was dedicated in memory of Nodar Kumaritashvili from Georgia who died earlier in the day during a practice run on the Vancouver 2010 luge course. It is with great sadness to see an athlete die for the sport that he loves. I believe that every Canadian and world athlete will support the games in honour of his spirit. Below is a video from CBS describing the day's unfortunate event including an excerpt from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) press conference over the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili. May our thoughts be with him and his family. Note that this video does contain disturbing images for some viewers. Viewer discretion is advised.

*This video is from a US broadcaster, thus Imperial measurements have been used; 50F = 10C.