Short Track Speed Skating - Victory Ceremony 26Feb2010 at Pacific Coliseum

Guest Blogger Keri

I'll mostly let these photos speak for themselves. Imagine, if you will, lots of tears, excitement, screaming, singing, and joy.

Here is Charles Hamelin and Francois Tremblay getting their medals and watching our flag raised in song.



And here is the 5000m relay teams

Short Track Speed Skating - 26Feb2010 at Pacific Coliseum

Guest Blogger Keri, here again.
This was one of the events that I never imagined I'd get to attend. Not only is it an amazing sport, it was the medal event and Canada had a shot in two of the events.
We arrived to find the longest lines of people wanting to buy tickets that I've seen so far. I learned that Americans love their Apolo Ohno (with good reason, the man is amazing) and scalpers tickets were going for $2000 but in this case capitalism wasn't going to win out.
There were three medal events, but I'm only going to write about two of them.

We had awesome seats. Surrounded by Americans in what was an international crowd. When the announcer listed off countries, it was pretty much evenly split between Canada, USA, Korea, and China. As we sat down the ice was being prepared. Knowing nothing about Speed Skating, I wondered why there seemed to be no barrier. I turned to the man sitting next to me and asked if he knew anything about speed skating, and he replied that "Yes he did". Then I found out that he was the father of Francois Tremblay!!
The first event was the Men's 500m. How did NBC put it? "It's well established that Short Track is a crazy sport, and the craziest event within this crazy sport is the 500 metre...For pure entertainment sake, this is one of the most enjoyable events at any Winter Olympics."

The volume at the Coliseum was deafening as the men raced around the track. When two Canadians made the medal race we couldn't have been happier. It was too fast to even be a nail biter but it ended with Charles Hamelin with Gold and Francois Tremblay with Bronze. Lot's of hugs and kisses with with the Tremblay's, you can be sure.
Last was the men's 5000m relay.
I've never seen anything like it before. It was five teams of four skaters racing in a traffic jam of bodies. How they even kept track of their teammates and of their positions is amazing. In fact a few of the teams missed a few of the changes to varying results. In the end, Canada were undisputed Gold winners, with Apolo Ohno squeaking out a bronze finish for his American Men.

On Route To Short Track

We waited downtown for an express bus but after four of them cruised passed us w/ a sign saying "bus full" we took off looking for a cab. We found one right away and it was the best $16 I ever spent.

Sinclair Centre

We were directed to the sponsor entry b/c it had the shortest line.

A glee club singing ABBA's "Thank You For The Music". Very cool!

I love the lifeguard chairs with the volunteers yelling directions & greetings into their bullhorns.

Short Track Speed Skating

Short track was nuts! I loved it!!!! Our seats were pretty high -- I don't normally have a fear of heights but I do at the Coliseum. I'm terrified of falling down the super steep stairs so once I get to my seat I refuse to leave until the event is over. Then I need some Valium and someone to talk me down the steps (actually I just kept a death grip on Marshall's arm). I was also out of breath by the time I got to the top. I seriously needed a sherpa.

No, that's not a zamboni. It's an Olympia ice-resurfacer!

Yup, that's a DJ spinning.

I LOVE YOU, MUKMUK!!!!!

1000m Men's Heats

This was meant to be a picture of Charles Hamelin stepping onto the ice but I was pleasantly surprised by the shirtless German eye-candy that made it into the pic. *swoon*

Charles Hamelin set a new Olympic record. It only lasted until the next race but it was very cool to see!

This baby got so much use during speed skating.