Have You Ever Been to the Olympics? | Page 2 | Golden Skate

Have You Ever Been to the Olympics?

KKonas

Medalist
Joined
Oct 31, 2009
I attended 6 Olympic Winter Games, worked 5 of them. Spent 3 weeks in Calgary, 5 weeks in Albertville, 5 weeks in Lillehammer, 5 weeks in Nagano and 3 weeks in SLC. All were memorable.
 

dorispulaski

Wicked Yankee Girl
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
Country
United-States
Why the regret for 1992 Worlds?

AFAIR, I have never seen so many falls in an event in men's & ladies. It was more like a who's still standing competition rather than a skating event. The rink seemed quite narrow, and I'm sure that did not help, particularly as skaters had to have been focussing on filling up an Olympic size rink that year.
Plus, at the time, I had to spend more than I had for any previous competition, and taking the subway to Oakland and back from San Francisco was not the greatest, either.
 

pitterpatter

On the Ice
Joined
Oct 25, 2012
When the 2010 Winter Olympics rolled into Vancouver, I was an 18 year old highschool student with no income, so I was quite limited in what I could attend. I ended up selected a single event, the Ladies Short, and purchased tickets for myself and my family for ~50$ each. This was my third live event after the 2008 Nats and 2009 4CCs which were also in Vancouver. Being in the crowd was pretty awesome, and it was interesting how the majority of the attendees in my section (cheapest seats) didn't know much at all about figure skating but were still so enthusiastic about each performance. I also remembering crying after Joannie Rochette's skate, and being incredibly excited over Yuna's performance.

One funny thing was, on the day of the Mens Gold medal hockey game, my sister and I ran into Brian Orser randomly downtown. No one else around us recognized him, but he was nice about taking a picture with us.

The best memory I have though is of the atmosphere in the city during the event. In public, I find Vancouverites often keep to themselves and go the route of 'mind your own business', but for those two weeks, you couldn't walk down a street in the city core with a dozen people high fiving you, and on every other skytrain/bus people would randomly start singing the canadian anthem and cheering. It was really heart warming to see everyone in my city really buying into the Olympic spirit, even those who couldn't afford tickets would participate by attending the live public viewing of the hockey games or buying a pair of the $10 mittens or something like that. The schools in the city also made an effort to get students involved, I remember there was a draw for a good 20 or so tickets for students to attend the opening ceremony. I unfortunately wasn't one of the lucky ones, but a number of my good friends who wouldn't have been able to afford to go to an Olympic event otherwise were able to attend. The whole school also went out to see the olympic torch passing through, and they organized for a winter olympic athlete (can't remember who) to visit the school and interact with the students.

Overall it was a really great experience for me, from the perspective of a youth in the host city.
 
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