Olympian Blog

2010 in review

Matthew — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 07:48:37 +0000

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.

Crunchy numbers

The Leaning Tower of Pisa has 296 steps to reach the top. This blog was viewed about 1,200 times in 2010. If those were steps, it would have climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa 4 times

In 2010, there were 163 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 182 posts. There were 233 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 52mb. That’s about 4 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was February 15th with 87 views. The most popular post that day was Bilodeau strikes gold at Cypress.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were obama-scandal-exposed.co.cc, newsbird.wordpress.com, mail.live.com, en.wordpress.com, and student-loan-consilidation.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for yikki yanofsky, megan aghosta, dale bagg-smith, olympian blog, and rick hansen play.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Bilodeau strikes gold at Cypress February 2010
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Paralympic Ceremony celebrates spirit of Games March 2010

All Gold Medal pictures March 2010

Rick Hansen play is a perfect intro to the Paralympics March 2010
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9 days to go February 2010
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Goodbye World

Matthew — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 01:11:07 +0000

This will officially end my Olympian blog after about a year of writing. Back in Spring 2009 I had no idea what a big hit my blog would become, particularly during the Olympic and Paralympic Games themselves. Just today I recieved a letter from VANOC thanking me, Declan (the artist) and Jonah (assistant writer) for doing this. Thank you VANOC for the letter and Olympic goodies and I hope you all enjoy a well earned break.

What a Games it was, from the Opening Ceremonies to the Gold Medal Hockey game and everything in between. And then the Paralympics. Even if the Sledge Hockey team did not win Gold as predicted the rest of the Canadian team made up for it by winning a record amount of medals for Canada. After this I suffered because I was bored, I had nothing to do because apart from school, the Olympics and Paralympics had become my life. I am glad to say however, that I am now injoying the soccer World Cup and have gotten over the boredom.

So look back through all the stories and remember that time between February 12th and March 21st when Vancouver and Whistler got the world’s attention. Goodbye to everyone!!

Huge OT win gives Vancouver division title

Matthew — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 01:13:47 +0000

The Vancouver Canucks defeated the Minnesota Wild by a score of 4-3 in a very exciting game. Canucks defenceman Sami Salo scored the winner in overtime, which gives Vancouver the Northwest Division title and home ice advantage heading into the playoffs. Henrik Sedin is still in first place in the NHL points race with a 4 point lead on Alexander Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals who play Boston tonight. The Canucks will play the Colorado Avalanche tomorrow but from now on in it’s all about the playoffs!!!

No easy games for Canucks

Matthew — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 17:13:58 +0000

With the NHL season almost at a close the Vancouver Canucks are looking very good. They are five points ahead of the Colorado Avalanche in the Northwest Division which is very important because the top team in the division qualifies for home ice advantage in the playoffs automatically. But they still have some mountains to climb before they can capture that prize.

Tonight they will face the Phoenix Coyotes, who sit in fourth place but have more points than Vancouver, who are in third. This is because the Canucks are top in their division while Phoenix is behind the San Jose Sharks, who have 104 points while the Coyotes only have 100. The game tonight is at GM Place at 7.00pm on Rogers Sportsnet.

Jones and team defeats Denmark to stay unbeaten

Matthew — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:04:30 +0000

Jennifer Jones and her Canadian team at the World Women’s Curling Championships defeated Denmark 9-6 to improve to 6-0. After a huge win against China yesterday the Canadian team look ready to face the United States in their game tonight. The Round-Robin portion of the tournament finishes on Thursday with the final on Sunday. Go to www.tsn.ca/curling for more.

Canada takes cup with win over Mexico

Matthew — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:14:07 +0000

The Canadian U17 Women’s Soccer team were victorious in the CONCACAF (North and Central American Soccer Federation) Cup with a 1-0 victory over Mexico. They shocked the American team in a shootout to reach this game and didn’t look back. This is a good start to something great for the Canadian Soccer Association which is still coping with the National Team’s failure to reach the World Cup this summer. The tournament was held in the beautiful Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago.

Final Medal standings, Day 10

Matthew — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 04:16:19 +0000

Country Gold Silver Bronze Total

1. Russia 12 16 10= 38
2. Germany 13 5 6= 24
3. Canada 10 5 4= 19
4. Ukraine 5 8 6= 19
5. United States 4 5 4= 14
6. Slovakia 6 2 3= 11
7. Austria 3 4 4= 11
8. Japan 3 3 5= 11
9. Belarus 2 0 7= 9
10. Italy 1 3 3= 7
11. France 1 4 1= 6
12. Norway 1 3 2= 6
13. Australia 0 1 3= 4
14. Spain 1 2 0= 3
T14. Switzerland 1 2 0= 3
16. Finland 0 1 1= 2
17. Sweden 0 0 2= 2
18. New Zealand 1 0 0= 1
19. South Korea 0 1 0= 1
20. Czech Republic 0 0 1= 1
T20. Poland 0 0 1= 1

Closing Ceremony short but upbeat

Matthew — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 04:09:54 +0000

Thirty-eight days of celebration came to an end tonight as the Paralympic Opening Ceremony was held in the Whistler Medals Plaza. The predicted rain stayed away and plenty of people came out to celebrate what has been a very fun week of Paralympic sport and it’s triumphs. We saw Chantal Kreviazuk perform and a very interesting performance by throat singer Tanya Tagaq, a native of the Canadian territory of Nunavut who did this while a disabled athlete was getting bounced around on a huge blanket of animal skin which was hard for him because he had no use of his legs.

Sochi’s organisers planned another sample of what to expect in 2014 with a musical performance and a show of beauty by disabled and able-bodied figure skaters. Sochi had also followed Vancouver’s example by allowing a group of Russian kids to sing the amazing but long national anthem of that country while the Paralympic flag was getting passed to the mayor of Sochi from the mayors of Vancouver (Gregor Robinson) and Whistler (Ken Melamed). John Furlong made another speech but mainly stuck to english which was a relief, and Paralympic Committee President Sir Philip Craven’s speech was better mainly because he mentioned the entire world’s accomplishments instead of sticking to Canadian patriotism like Furlong did.

The best part was at the end when a group of Canadian kids that had been part of the dance crew took the Paralympic Torch over to the Russian kids, which really embodies the true spirit of the Games and like Rick Hansen said in an interview with CTV’s Brian Williams before the Ceremony, “this is only the beginning of what will be a truly remarkable time for the spirit of sport around the world.”

Day 10 Review

Matthew — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 03:52:23 +0000

The only event on today was the Cross Country Sprints, where athletes have to get through Qualification and a Semi-Final to have any hope of progressing to the final. Brian Mckeever was the only Canadian medallist, picking up a Gold in the Men’s Visually Impaired after winning all the heats leading up to it. This one medal may not seem to be much but in fact it puts Canada into third place overall, the Canadian Paralympic Committee’s aim. With Ukraine only picking up two medals today the two countries are tied in total medal but Canada gets the benefit of the doubt because they have 10 Gold compared to 5 for the Ukraine. Those Gold’s team that they have beaten their record of 6 that they set in the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City, USA and the 1988 Games in Insnsbruck, Austria.

In the Men’s Visually Impaired Silver went to Nikolay Polukhin of Russia and Bronze to Zebastian Modin of Sweden. The only other Canadian in this event was Alexei Novikov, who did not qualify. In the Women’s Visually Impaired Verena Bentele of Germany added another medal to her collection with a Gold while Silver and Bronze went to Mikhalina Lysova and Liubov Vasilyeva of Russia. Robi Weldon and Courtney Knight finished 5th and 8th in the Qualifying but both went out in the Semi-Finals. Margarita Garbounova finished one spot out of qualification, in 9th and did not go to the semis.

In the Men’s Sitting Sergey Shilov, Irek Zaripov and Vladimir Kiselev took the medals as Russia owned the podium in this event. Canadians included Lou Gibson (29th) and Sebastien Fortier (32nd), both did not qualify. In the Women’s Sitting Francesca Porcellato of Italy took Gold while Olena Iurkovska of the Ukraine and Liudmila Vauchok of Belarus finished 2nd and 3rd respectively. Colette Bourgonje was the only Canadian in the event but finished 10th and did not qualify for the semis.

In the Men’s Standing Yoshihiro Nitta of Japan took top spot while Kiril lMikhaylov of Russia and Ilkka Tuomisto of Finland took Silver and Bronze. Two Canadians, Mark Arendz and Tyler Mosher, competed but finished 9th and 21st so they did not qualify. In the last event, the Women’s Standing Sprint, Oleksandra Kononova of the Ukraine won the Gold while Shoko Ota of Japan took the Silver and Anna Burmistrova of Russia captured the Bronze.

It was a fitting end to a great week of competition!

Celebrating in the rain

Matthew — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 18:48:54 +0000

Tonight the Closing Ceremonies of the 2010 Paralympic Games will be held outdoors at Whistler Medals Plaza. It will be the last Ceremony for VANOC and I am pretty happy about that to. Having to organise four ceremonies in a month and a half is not an easy thing to do, but they have pulled it off with only a couple of problems. Since rain is forecasted tonight it seems likely that the Ceremony will be held in true west coast spirit and that they should be handing out ponchos. It is supposed to be quite a performance and you can now see it live because CTV has stepped in to broadcast it at 7.00pm tonight.