These Were Our Games

So after 17 days the Winter Olympics drew to a close. Someone told me the other day my blog and twitter feed was now all about sports. Well, what do you expect? :-) The games are in Canada and we have done exceedingly well. And to cap it off with an Olympic hockey gold in overtime was the icing on the cake.

To me of course, while the hockey gold will be the most valued, one that we would sacrifice any other gold to get, the Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir gold would remain the most beautiful.

The moments of the Games are many - Alexandre Bilodeau winning Canada's first Olympic gold medal at home, the demolition of Russia in hockey, Joannie Rochette's brave ice skating after losing her mom, Virtue and Moir's ice dancing gold, the speed skating triumph near the end, the curling (yes, curling). Oh, how sad was I when Cheryl Bernard chocked to silver, but what a performance by Kevin Martin and his rink. Over all, as Canada tops the Olympic medals in gold (14 overall, a record!) and beats its previous performance in total medals (Turin) by 2, it was a wonderful time of the year.

I would come home everyday and switch on the TV (much to my wife's chagrin who secretly also loved to watch the Games with me) and it would not be off until midnight. I watched everything! From luge to skeleton to hockey to curling to ice dancing to figure skating to skiing to snowboarding. And also followed it online!

The sending of status messages on Facebook peaked Sunday at 2:29 pm PST and 2:54 pm PST during two significant goals in the Olympic hockey finals: when the U.S. tied and Canada won. More than 3.5 million status updates were sent during the time frame of those key plays, twice the pace of the rest of the day.

And what a display of Canadian patriotic pride we have seen over the last two weeks. It was fascinating, the whole country united and welcoming. Even the British, who tried to say these were the cursed games, ended up by musing that these were the best games ever!

I actually feel sorry for those whose countries do not play sports or which are not good in anything so they don't have anything to cheer for!

So now, we return to our normal lives.

Until South Africa 2010!