The Glitch Games

[Captain Awesome]

oh man - bashing the Bennett Bridge? What? How is that even possible? Why? To what end? Thoroughly ridiculous if true.

I guess you've never read Cateyes's posts. He's an engineer so he knows everything about designing bridges, tracks, buses and cauldrons. He also an experienced businessman, so he knows how to properly raise revenue and save money, create jobs and stimulate economy. He's also a professional organizer he knows exactly how to organize Olympics. He can also predict weather, fight ninjas, and bake some delicious cookies.

[animal lover1]

Just so you don't all think it is only Europe, this is from the Drudge report today-(pretty sure several million people follow this daily):

A glitch for every gold at the Vancouver Games




Feb 16, 10:13 PM (ET)

By ERIN McCLAM


VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) - From fire to ice, nothing seems to be going right at the Olympics.

The torch malfunctioned. Warm weather turned the slopes and the event schedule to slop. A Zamboni had to ride to the rescue from Calgary following a meltdown at the speedskating rink.

By Tuesday, the Glitch Games were in full swing: 20,000 standing-room tickets for the snowboarding venue were voided because fans had fallen between the bales of hay under the melting layers of trucked-in snow.

Want to take a picture of the Olympic cauldron? Make sure that camera is pressed up against the chain-link fence - provided there's room to squeeze in and a Vancouver 2010 banner isn't in the way.

Organizers expect to unveil a plan Wednesday to address the rising public outcry and bring people closer to the flame, the most distinguished and enduring symbol of any Olympics.

"Perhaps," conceded Renee Smith-Valade, a spokeswoman for the organizing committee, "we did underestimate the degree to which people would want to get close to it."

Perhaps. At a press conference, a Canadian TV reporter asked organizers why the flame was hidden behind "a ratty-looking prison-camp fence." And the Globe and Mail newspaper chose to allude to another Olympic city - Berlin.

Addressing the head of the Vancouver Games, the paper cried: "Mr. Furlong, tear down this fence!"

Of course, no scheduling or logistics issue - or sporting event, for that matter - seems significant in light of the death of a Georgian luger on the first day of the Olympics.

And, to be fair, there have been bright spots. Moguls skier Alexandre Bilodeau gave Canada its first gold medal in three home Olympics. NHL superstar Sidney Crosby has the Canadian men's hockey team looking for gold. NBC ratings have been strong.

But aside from that, it's been one problem after another for a games governed not so much by the Olympic creed as by Murphy's Law. Shades of Atlanta.

The canceled tickets at Cypress Mountain - 28,000 in all - mean about $1.5 million in lost revenue for the games, and disappointment for people who spent $50 to $65 to see events like the halfpipe and snowboardcross.

They'll get refunds, although anyone who bought secondhand may be out of luck. Fans whose tickets were still good, and who went up the mountain Tuesday to see events, were treated to blinding snow.

Athletes weren't spared, either. Timing foulups marred both biathlon events Tuesday. A Swedish woman was held up at her start gate for 14 seconds, and two of the men went off too early. Officials later corrected for the errors.

"It is embarrassing," said Norbert Baier, the International Biathlon Union's technical delegate. "Why do we have this incompetence?"

The competition schedule, meanwhile, looks like it's been run over by a bobsled.

On Tuesday alone, the men's super-combined, up in the mountains at Whistler, was postponed because of an overnight snowstorm. The snowboardcross finals were rescheduled. Women's downhill training was canceled.

This after downhill training was postponed repeatedly earlier in the Olympics because of wet weather that messed with the snow. It's been so mild that locals have jokingly called it the Vancouver Summer Olympics.

"It's getting ridiculous, for sure, how much changing of the schedule and shuffling around has been happening," said Thomas Vonn, husband and coach of Lindsey Vonn, a multimedal favorite.

Then again, each day of canceled training gives Vonn's badly bruised right shin more time to heal. For everyone else, the delays are a mounting annoyance.

"On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 the worst, this is a 10. That's for sure," said Patrick Riml, head coach of Canada's women's Alpine team.

"Wouldn't mind racing already," American Alpine skier Ted Ligety tweeted.

Even the little things are going wrong. A spigot went off at the luge track, spraying a section near the finish as a German racer was getting ready to start her run. She had to wait two minutes, then slid to a bronze.

Indoors, it's the ice escapades. At the Richmond Oval, the speedskating venue, the resurfacing machine went on the blink Monday. Instead of a track as smooth as glass, it left piles of slush and pools of water.

So the Olympics, which has a sponsorship deal with Olympia ice resurfacers, had to call in a replacement - a Zamboni from a whole province over in Calgary, specifically designed for the size of a speedskating oval.

Vancouver organizers say they're responding as best they can to problems mostly out of their control.

"It's a little like losing your luggage," Smith-Valade said at a press conference where she was bombarded by questions about all that's gone wrong. "It's not whether the luggage gets lost - it's how you deal with it."

All this started on Friday night, at the opening ceremony, where the traditional climax, the lighting of the Olympic flame, was a bust because of a hydraulic failure.

One of the four legs of the indoor cauldron failed to rise out of its trap door in the floor, leaving the structure weirdly unbalanced and one of the final four torchbearers standing around awkwardly with nothing to do.

It's been enough to draw comparisons to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the gold standard of glitchy games. The press in Britain - which gets the next Olympics, in London - has questioned whether these are the worst games ever.

The International Olympic Committee insists it has no second thoughts.

"If we had the decision again, we would take the same decision," IOC spokesman Mark Adams said. "It would come to Vancouver."

[LoneWolf_53]

Now it's just getting to where various news outlets are latching onto the same stories and regurgitating the same stuff.

To me it almost adds another layer of controversy to the whole concept of Olympic games that have been tarnished by drug scandals for years now, not to mention crooked judges, bribed officials etc.

I guess now they can add sour grapes by those who in all likelihood couldn't pull off such an event any better though it's easy to pretend they could from the comfort of an easy chair.

I'm willing to wager that the one and only reason there was far less such negativity in years past is because there was no internet, skype, twitter, and so on to instantly *bleep* around the globe.

Regrettably that isn't likely to change.

[Liberty and Truth]

Now it's just getting to where various news outlets are latching onto the same stories and regurgitating the same stuff.

To me it almost adds another layer of controversy to the whole concept of Olympic games that have been tarnished by drug scandals for years now, not to mention crooked judges, bribed officials etc.

I guess now they can add sour grapes by those who in all likelihood couldn't pull off such an event any better though it's easy to pretend they could from the comfort of an easy chair.

I'm willing to wager that the one and only reason there was far less such negativity in years past is because there was no internet, skype, twitter, and so on to instantly *bleep* around the globe.

Regrettably that isn't likely to change.

I also sense that there is a bit of jealousy out there too from the world press - and there should be - wouldn't you rather live here than pretty much anywhere else in the world? Having been around the world a bit I can honestly say there is no better place. We just don't know how lucky we are here for the most part, and also some people just like to *bleep*. Such is life.

[Cateyes]

Now it's just getting to where various news outlets are latching onto the same stories and regurgitating the same stuff.

To me it almost adds another layer of controversy to the whole concept of Olympic games that have been tarnished by drug scandals for years now, not to mention crooked judges, bribed officials etc.

I guess now they can add sour grapes by those who in all likelihood couldn't pull off such an event any better though it's easy to pretend they could from the comfort of an easy chair.

I'm willing to wager that the one and only reason there was far less such negativity in years past is because there was no internet, skype, twitter, and so on to instantly *bleep* around the globe.

Regrettably that isn't likely to change.

Oh yea just regurgitating the same old......20 or 30 things. Just focusing on the negative itty bitty things like cancelled events blowning fuses, ruined ice, dead athletes. Just minor things.

[Nebula]

animallover, the most telling phrase in the story you posted is "shades of Atlanta."

[Cateyes]

I don't know much about luge but I do know something about physics and geometry. Hurl an object at a curve fast enough without something to stop inertia from doing what it does and it was very much predictable. Don't know who you choose to listen to but I have read many stories from luge teams saying it was a safety oversight and the track is dangerously fast.

Exactly! You don't know much about luge...actually you know NOTHING about luge. Go read my prior post that explains what the actual luge athletes think and then get back to me...or just shut your festering gob, because you are obviously trolling or talking out of your *bleep*.

People, take note of what the actual athletes said about the incident...not what some *bleep* in Kelowna on a forum is saying.

So tell me luge expert. Which of these lugers you speak of said "'I will either win or die"?

[Liberty and Truth]

*removed - Jennylives

[Cateyes]

Here is what really irritates me about this. It didn't have to be this way. If Vancouver didn't try so hard to impress and oversell this thing by throwing money at every problem that came up it could have turned out much different and I would be more of a supporter.

Look at Salt Lake city. They pulled it off without cost overruns or massive debt from what I remember. I think Turino did ok as well. I think the main difference there is they didn't try too hard and took the minimalist approach. I remember people commenting positively at the mimimalism of Turino and Lillehammer.

This merely shows the snob factor of Vancouver that anyone who has ever spent time there already knows about. They figured they would just throw money at everything and that alone would blow everyone away. So they got it wrong from the beginning.

Athletes village should have never happened, Convention center tied to the games should have never happened. Cypress should have never happened. Build 1 or 2 new facilities and make due for everything else. There was plenty of history to show whenever you tie a lot of expensive development to the Olympics and get gov'ts involved it always turns into a nightmare.

The one thing I did support was the Richmond oval. Relatively inexpensive to build and probably beneficial to the community. Of course they couldn't even get that right. Cost over runs, engineering problems, and now the ice machines.

And who could not have predicted that that 150million security budget actually ended up being over 1billion. Exact same thing happened in Greece.

[Queen K]

Vancouver-first 3 days

-Hydraulics at opening ceremonies don't work.
-Wayne Gretzky in the back of a pickup in the rain for 15 minutes
-Luger dies in training run
-event postponed due to "wet snow"
-Zamboni pukes hot water TWICE and threatens to ruin (and delays at ??? cost to athletes) the premier event of the winter olympics (500 m)
-28000 tickets Cancelled due to damage to bad venue


I think we can safely say it is embarrassing.

I am not complaining-I Love Sport and I love Canada-this is embarassing-you can't sugar coat it.

In the continuing list of weird things gone wrong we can add:

Two Olympians taken the Vancouver hospital due to crash in Joe Biden's motorcade. Nothing to do directly with the Olympics, but they were there for the Olympics.

Nineteen crushed spectactors at the downtown venue, barricades fall over and hurt people. I felt so sorry for them. Not to mention the musicians who just wanted to play for the crowd, since the whole night had to be cancelled, they waited a long time for their moment and it failed to materialize.

[Cateyes]

Vancouver-first 3 days

-Hydraulics at opening ceremonies don't work.
-Wayne Gretzky in the back of a pickup in the rain for 15 minutes
-Luger dies in training run
-event postponed due to "wet snow"
-Zamboni pukes hot water TWICE and threatens to ruin (and delays at ??? cost to athletes) the premier event of the winter olympics (500 m)
-28000 tickets Cancelled due to damage to bad venue


I think we can safely say it is embarrassing.

I am not complaining-I Love Sport and I love Canada-this is embarassing-you can't sugar coat it.

In the continuing list of weird things gone wrong we can add:

Two Olympians taken the Vancouver hospital due to crash in Joe Biden's motorcade. Nothing to do directly with the Olympics, but they were there for the Olympics.

Nineteen crushed spectactors at the downtown venue, barricades fall over and hurt people. I felt so sorry for them. Not to mention the musicians who just wanted to play for the crowd, since the whole night had to be cancelled, they waited a long time for their moment and it failed to materialize.

Timing problems at biathlon yesterday. Americans left early and one top seed Euro competitor delayed for 14 seconds. Europeans were pi$$ed and said of the organizers that it was amateur hour. Olympics+timing errors=FAIL!

[Queen K]

I did make a post somewhere that these Games are cursed, help me if you know the answer.

One of the key people to bring Vancouver the Games died of Cancer just before an important announcement, I think it was that Vancouver even got the Games. Who was that person? And start the count of cursed events from there.

[Bubalouie]

I beleive it was Powell.............and yes things have gone wrong but things have gone wrong at other Olympics as well.......as a previous poster said, it's the same things over and over...that keep getting brought up. Cateyes, well that is another story in itself......never has a good thing to say about anything.

[Queen K]

No, it was Jack Poole, on the Board of Directors for VANOC. He died of Pancreatic Cancer a day AFTER the flame for the Vancouver Games was lit in Greece.

Okay, start counting closures (think legal aid offices and hospital beds), cost overruns, and other things of that nature from then on and add all the awful things together and we've got the 'curse count.'

[Bubalouie]

But hey, some pot smoking hippy chick won gold in that most prestigious of Olympic events....SNOWBOARDING....so it was worth it.......lol! Unfortunately people with standing room tickets couldn't watch.

PS: Don't know her, seems like a nice person and I am sure she worked hard for it. Just saying, she does give the distinct impression she smokes a lot of pot. Same with the guy who got silver. Just sayin. I wish them all the best and hope they both get lucrative corporate endorsement contracts selling cheetos, pringles, oreo cookies, and maybe get some video games named after them.

I was listening to a talk show last night and funny, they said that the snowboarders and other's that do those sports are as much an athlete as a hockey player, or anyone else participating in the games............they have to train just as hard and be in the best shape.