Vancouver Olympics Countdown 2010

With only four weeks to go until the first Saturday of the Olympics, the buzz is a bit overwhelming. It's everywhere, on every channel. You can't run, you can't hide.

Apparantly not a single Canadian has ever won an Olympic Gold Medal on home soil in the history of the games. I hope that changes, specifically with Men's Hockey.

When I planned my ticket attack almost a year ago I thought I had it figured out. My thoughts were that at least one of either team Canada or team USA would be playing on a Saturday (Feb 20th). Of course, being the gambler that I am I was cold decked. Instead, Lola and I are attending two preliminary games on that date:

Latvia vs. Slovakia 2pm
Germany vs. Belarus 9pm

We'll spend the entire day downtown sqeaking in a nice dinner with family in between events.

Bat Beat - Canada AND the USA play their respective games on Sunday... obviously. Stupid random draws without knowing the actual schedule prior to my lottery entry. Probably a blessing in disguise as we can now watch both of those games from the comfort of our own living room (Actually we'll probably head over to a friends for beers and good times - oh and they have a super sized tv...)

However, I am very happy to have received any tickets at all. The Gold Medal game would have been nice... but at almost $1000 a ticket... that's a wsop lottery ticket in itself.

If you're looking for a place to watch the games and are in a jam (i.e. - at work) check out the following options:

CBC Sports : free viewing for Canadian residents, with excellent quality and coverage designed for Canadians.

Watch Olympic Games is a paid subscription channel. It costs $99 for the duration of the Games, and there is a brief pre-games window during which the price will be down to $49.95 until some time tonight. The quality and national bias of the feed are unknown.

NBC Olympics is a state-of-the-art site with excellent and clear statistics, but will not stream live content into Canada. NBC has also placed other restrictions on its coverage; no events scheduled to be televised on normal NBC channels will be available online until after they are seen on TV.

YouTube, a special channel for random clips. The IOC supplies the footage, about 500 to 800 segments over the duration of the Games. You watch for free, but YouTube will sell advertising around the channel, but only be to official Olympic sponsors. Not available in Canada.

Enjoy the games everyone!