VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The Olympics that started under the cloud of an athlete’s death ended Sunday, much more joyously than they had begun. A victory by the Canadian men’s hockey team over the United States in the final competition of these Games spurred throngs of fans onto the streets, where they celebrated a gold medal — and an Olympics — that united this nation. In waves of their red and white Canadian hockey jerseys, they waved flags and shouted “Go Canada!” to mark the country’s record 14th gold medal here. “I knew the Games would be a success, even though in the beginning they were a bit gloomy, with legitimate issues and teething pains,” Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, said on Saturday, referring to the shaky start, which was marred by unexpected problems, including unseasonably warm weather. “But I knew they would come back.”
On the night of the opening ceremony 16 days earlier, flags were lowered for the 21-year-old Georgian luge athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili, who was killed in a practice run earlier that day on a luge track that had been criticized for its excessive speeds.
His death prompted race organizers to modify the start positions and the track, in part, they said, to ease athletes’ anxieties. While traveling at about 90 miles per hour, Kumaritashvili had lost control of his sled and hit a pole.
Rogge, a doctor, took the death particularly hard, he said.
“The Games started in a way that was an extremely difficult thing, and we won’t forget this in the Olympic movement,” Rogge said. “Personally, I feel grief and pain about what happened. This is something I will never forget. I will never forget the Israeli athletes in Munich, where I was also a competitor.”
Rogge competed for Belgium in sailing at the 1972 Munich Olympics, where 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were killed by terrorists. He said he had thought about pulling out of those Olympics because of what he called the “horror and grief.” Instead, he chose to remain in the competition out of the respect for the people who had supported his training, though he did so without any joy.
He said those Games taught him that the Olympics endured, no matter what tragedies or setbacks occurred. So when Kumaritashvili died, Rogge vowed to push forward. A panel will conduct an inquiry into the accident once the Games are done.
“It is not an issue of guilt, and it is not an issue of judicial responsibility,” Rogge said. “The judicial responsibility will be established by the inquiry. It is our moral responsibility that these things not happen in the future. My pledge is that I will do whatever I can to avoid such a thing in the future. It is our duty.”
Rogge said the I.O.C. had already contacted the organizers of the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, and told them that their track for sliding sports needed to be safe.
If the speeds need to be slower, they have to be slower,” he said. “At times, athletes have been daredevils. It is our task as more mature people to say, you’re going too far.”
It was not until the third day of competition that the glory of gold medals started to pour in for the hosts.
Alexandre Bilodeau won the men’s moguls event, becoming the first Canadian to win a gold medal in an Olympics held in Canada.
“That’s when the mood changed completely,” Rogge said.
From there, the Canadians were on a roll. Their gold medal total ended up being the best.
The performance of the United States team was also historic. It won 37 medals here, more than it had ever won in a Winter Games.
“No matter what our projections were, it would be hard to deny that we’ve exceeded that,” Scott Blackmun, the chief executive of the United States Olympic Committee, said. “The team performed fantastically, but we expected them to perform fantastically. They did better than we even thought they would.”
Apolo Ohno, a short-track speedskater, won three medals — a silver and two bronzes — to become the most decorated American Winter Games athlete in history. Bill Demong won the United States’ first gold medal ever in the Nordic combined. But he received an arguably bigger prize later. He had asked his longtime girlfriend, Katie Koczynski, to marry him, and she said yes.
Some American athletes, including the Alpine skier Lindsey Vonn, failed to meet expectations. Vonn came into the Olympics with a goal of winning five gold medals, but ended up winning just one gold, in the downhill. She still called these Games her best yet because of the welcoming atmosphere.
“There’s definitely been some ups and downs,” Vonn said, mentioning the injuries and on-hill crashes that made these Olympics trying for her. “At the end of the day, I came into these Games happy because I gave it everything I have.”
Vonn did have a few days more to rest a shin injury because of bad weather in the mountains. Fog and rain caused some postponements. The site for snowboarding and freestyle skiing at Cypress Mountain had an even bigger problem: lack of snow.
As the Games approached, warm weather prompted organizers to scramble and think of ways to bring winter to these Winter Games. By truck and helicopter, tons of snow was hauled in. Still, 28,000 standing-room-only tickets had to be refunded because the ground conditions were too dangerous for spectators.
“When you have outdoor sports, you are bound to be influenced by the climate,” Rogge said, recalling that 70 events were postponed at the 1988 Calgary Games because of bad weather and that the 1984 Sarajevo Games were plagued by too much snow.
But the competition at Cypress went on, with the American Shaun White winning the gold medal, again, in the men’s halfpipe.
And, despite the problems with the sliding track, where many a sled flipped over, the United States’ four-man bobsled team won its first Olympic gold medal in 62 years.
What marked these Games the most, Rogge said, was Canada’s performance. Nothing, he said, makes an Olympics better than when the host country finds success. That is why Bilodeau’s victory in the moguls proved so momentous.
“Canada woke up, the Games and the rest of the world woke up,” Rogge said of Bilodeau’s victory.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/sports/olympics/01ceremony.html
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