Feb
28
2010
4 Medals, Russia and John Furlong
Author: supsonToday begins the final leg of my Whistler volunteer experience with 3 shifts in a row. I’ll start today’s adventure off with one of Whistler’s best kept secrets, Austria House. It’s off the beaten path a bit, but what makes it so great is not this metal mouse (what is up with that?) but their free beer. Yes, that’s right. Anytime they win a medal (which has been almost every day) they have free beer for anyone. No pictures of that of course, I’m not supposed to do that while in uniform 
Once I arrived at work for my shift I was surprised to learn of the feature for that day’s “Sneak Peak”, which is the newsletter for all the volunteers that gets printed and handed out everyday. If you look at the bottom of the page you’ll see none other than yours truly, hard at work on a critical technical issue.
Another amusing item in our work space is a growing To Do list where we’ve come up with as many different ways as possible to explain what we do. Hey, it’s a good thing when nothing is breaking down! However, I do realize that I haven’t actually explained what it is I’m doing…one of these days I’ll elaborate on that mystery.
As we geared up for the HUGE game against Russia we heard the stat that the Canadian team won Gold Men’s Hockey in Salt Lake City 8 years ago today, which proved to be a good omen. And speaking of good omens, just before the game started John Furlong (the CEO of VANOC) came by to thank us volunteers for our contributions to the games. He seemed like an incredibly warm and genuine individual, I was quite impressed with him.
Then onto the game. We were all hunkered down in our bunker glued to every second of action, and before we knew it is was 3-0 and we were yelling like a bunch of maniacs. In fact, yelling so loudly we got “shoosh-ed” by the international press who could hear us out in their common area of the Media Centre. What do they expect, they must be Russians!!! I actually felt a bit sorry for Nabokov, but Bryzgalov didn’t do much better. Periodically throughout the game I had to explain to some of the IT guys from India why everyone kept “booing” Luongo All in all, what an amazing night -- it looks like that extra game against Germany is what they needed to get the line of Crobsy-Stall-Iginla firing and dangerous. I think that 1st period might be the best 20 minutes of hockey I’ve ever seen, and I imagine the Russians must be feeling like we did in 2006 at Turino when we crashed & burned in 7th place, and looked forward to Vancouver 2010 for redemption. You know Ovechkin is already counting down the days to Sochi 2014. Bring on the winner of Sweden/Slovakia!
Then we booked it over to the Medals Plaza as quickly as we could, just in time to catch this classic track from Aussie rockers Jet. I was especially amused by the official “Mosh Pit” sign you can make out in the bottom of the video. Only at the Olympics.
And we close out the evening with one other highlight from the show…dudes in beaver costumes. That takes some real dedication.
Another incredible day where Canada pulled down 4 more medals to add to the growing totals. Keep up the amazing work!
