Day 15 - Hockey Gold Medal Game Decided

February 26, 2010

There are two Men’s Hockey Semi Finals today and I have tickets for one of the games. Unfortunately it wasn’t the Canada game, we saw USA vs Finland. You would think that at a semi final level, the teams would be pretty evenly matched. This didn’t seem to be the case in this game. USA came out in the first period and got 6 goals, some within mere minutes of each other. To my amateur eye, it seemed like Finland wasn’t prepared to put up a good fight against the powerhouse USA team. I was hoping for a good game, close score and evenly matched to keep the game interesting. It was kind of boring though. After the first 4 goals, people weren’t even getting up to cheer anymore.

The crowd rallied behind Finland, giving them encouragement and chanting “Go Finland Go” but it didn’t seem to do much good. They were able to score 1 goal in the last period which wasn’t going to do them much good at that point.

So USA moved on to the Gold medal game and later in the day we found out that Canada will be their opponent. I think there are a lot of people who wanted the Gold medal hockey game to be a USA/Canada showdown.

At night we attended our first Victory Medal Ceremony, the last of these Olympic games to be held at BC Place. In Vancouver they awarded medals for the Men’s Aerials and a cross country event. As we were heading into BC Place for the medal ceremony, hockey spectators were heading into Canada Hockey Place for the Canada vs. Russia semi final. There were a lot of people going through security and it is probably the longest I’ve had to wait in a security checkpoint here.

There weren’t any announcements made on the Canada game for awhile. We were lucky that a guy in the row in front of us was regularly checking the score and shouting it out to the people around him. If people didn’t hear it, we passed on the message.

After the medal presentations, Great Big Sea took the stage. It is the first time I have seen them perform and they were awesome as people told me they would be. I moved my brother over to my seat so that i could dance in aisle. We were sitting in almost the last row of our section so there weren’t too many people behind me so I could dance the night away without blocking anyone’s view. I don’t know if it was because we were so high up or because the stadium is like that, but it was really hard to make out what was being said when people were talking on the microphone. I was at BC Place for the Opening Ceremony and didn’t notice a problem. This was set up a bit differently and that may have been why. The concert was over around 8:30 pm and was way to short! If Great Big Sea comes to Toronto again this year I’m going to go even if it means going by myself.

I wanted to see the Olympic Cauldron and the Olympic rings in the water at Coal Harbour at night all lit up so we headed there after the Victory Ceremony was done. I’m glad we went. The Cauldron is impressive during the day and it is even more stunning at night all lit up. It looked like it was glowing. Night was also a good time to go because it wasn’t as crowded. I was able to get some really good pictures. It was harder to get good pictures of the Olympics rings because they are out so far but I think I managed to get a few good ones. My brother and I were recruited to take some photos of groups of people and in return they took some of us. My favourite was a girl who pulled a Quatchi out of her bag to hold in the picture. I could have stayed there all night looking at the Olympic Cauldron and rings. Call me a sap but I took video of the burning Cauldron to watch later on after the flame has been extinguished. I’ll loaded the video onto YouTube and inserted it below. I have a feeling I won’t be the only who wants to see it.

By this time it was known that Canada had beat Russia and were moving on to the Gold medal game against the US. To say people were in a good mood is an understatement. People were shouting out “Go Canada” and “We want Gold” or they were high fiving strangers in the street, on the Skytrain, basically anywhere you went. When we were at the Olympic Cauldron we could hear people yelling in the streets. It is amazing to see the pride of Canadians during these Olympics. I wasn’t sure we were capable of such grand displays of patriotism and now I know we are! I’ve never seen so many Canada flags in my life or sung our national anthem this many times in one week.

The Vancouver 2010 Olympics are winding down. I’m sad that it is coming to a close and happy that I was able to be here to be a part of it. Tomorrow my Mom and I are going to the Men’s Curling Bronze Medal game. Our Canada Curling team goes for gold tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be glued to the TV for that one.

You can find pictures from today by clicking here.

Canada Medal Results

Women's Curling - Silver medal
Charles Hamelin - Gold in Short Track 500 m
Francois Louis-Tremblay - Bronze in Short Track 500 m
Men's Short Track Team - Gold in 5,000 m relay

What a day Canada!