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My thoughts on the 2010 Winter Olympics

Raymond Parade

Five years ago, the Vancouver Organizing Committee announced the “Own the Podium” programme, designed to create world-class olympians ready to compete in Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympics, a process that normally takes a decade.

The idea was that if we create many such athletes, we could dominate the olympics in total medal count, which would of course been a record-breaking event for Canada.

The bad news is we didn’t succeed.

But wait. There’s good news.

It was still a record-breaking olympics for Canada:

  • The first time we won a gold medal as host country
  • The first country to reach double-digit gold medals in these games
  • The highest number of gold medals in these games
  • The highest number of gold medals of any country in any Winter Olympics
  • The first time we have had a three-gold-medal day
  • The first time in nearly 50 years we beat the Russians at men’s hockey at the Olympics
  • The highest number of total medals we have ever won at any Winter Olympics

In addition, of the top 10 countries these games, Canada was one of only 2 countries to have more than half of their medals as golds.

Well done, Team Canada.

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By Kim Siever

I live in Lethbridge with my spouse and 5 of our 6 children. I’m a writer, focusing on social issues and the occasional poem. My politics are radically left. I recently finished writing a book debunking several capitalism myths. My newest book writing project is on the labour history of Lethbridge.

I’m also dichotomally Mormon. And I’m a functional vegetarian: I have a blog post about that somewhere around here. My pronouns are he/him.

4 replies on “My thoughts on the 2010 Winter Olympics”

Oh… were we supposed to own the WHOLE podium? I’m quite happy with just the top of it. 🙂

Just shows that it’s better to aim for the moon and hit the trees than to aim for the manuer and hit it!

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