<p>Anyone else watch the Opening Ceremony? An interesting display of culture and technology mixed with live performance and music, but not as visually stunning as Beijing's in my opinion. </p>
<p>Time to catch up on sports rarely shown live. Luge and alpine skiing look like a lot of fun lol.</p>
<p>Speaking of luge, anyone hear about the Georgian luger Nomar Kumaritashvili? Apparently he died in a training accident after crashing into a steel pole. Considering the speeds he was going at, I'm not surprised. What I'm wondering though is why those poles weren't at the very least heavily padded.</p>
<p>I watched fifteen minutes of it - love the costumes! </p>
<p>the Georgina luger incident is horrible… imagine finally attending the Olympics, which must be close to one of the biggest moments of your life, and then dying just before it happens.</p>
<p>I don’t know if I can watch luge/skeleton tomorrow. If another person loses control, it could easily be a repeat of Nodar Kumaritashvili. I don’t know if I can watch that again. Completely disrespectfully, NBC showed the clip on live television - so disturbing. Watching him fly into that pole at 90 miles per hour and hearing the rattling of the metal pole made me almost throw up. I hear there’s images on Huffington Post that are equally disturbing.</p>
<p>Question: If you are a luger or skeletoner, how can you will yourself to take on that track tomorrow? Can you? I couldn’t.</p>
<p>I pray to God that the engineers are busting their asses throughout the night building higher barriers or padding the steel beams.</p>
<p>As for the opening ceremony, I thought it was kind of crappy compared to Beijing, but then again the Summer Olympics are totally different (more built up) than the Winter. The whole cultural stuff was no where near as fascinating. I found it kind of boring and just flat out strange (the tap dancing/bluegrass stuff???).</p>
<p>EDIT: Wayne Gretzky - the final torch lighter - not a surprise.</p>
<p>I saw a picture of him in midair. Terrifying stuff. I didn’t watch the ceremony - I can’t believe they would essentially show someone getting killed.</p>
<p>I know, when they showed it on the news I was shocked that they would show such a thing. Anyway, people are saying it’s because he was “only 21.” good excuse?</p>
<p>Ugh, they have motion stills of his crash. How disrespectful and inconsiderate can you get? Apparently athletes and officials have been expressing concerns about the track, which if what I read is correct happens to allow for the fastest speeds of all tracks ever built. The fact that non-Canadian athletes had little time to practice on it probably increased the likelihood of injury significantly.</p>
<p>Second cauldron in downtown Vancouver has just been lit. Good thing it’s not raining lol.</p>
<p>Actually it is raining there lol…rain won’t put out that cauldron though. Did anybody see the entire city of Vancouver (basically) sprinting after Gretzsky in his truck as he rode to the cauldron?</p>
<p>Local news just showed the video - what is wrong with people?</p>
<p>I don’t see why people are so upset about the video/pics being shown. Maybe it’s just because it doesn’t bother me to see it, but I don’t understand why its such a big deal.</p>
<p>Short track results: Apollo Ohno, silver medal and 6th career medal I believe. Another American, J.R. Celski, with the bronze. And Korea takes the gold.</p>
</p>
the Olympics.</p>