History

Eight cities offered bids to host the 2010 Winter Olympics, including that had previously hosted the games: Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, and Salzburg, Austria. Salzburg was one of the three finalists, with Pyeong Chang, China, and Vancouver, Canada.

On July 2, 2003, the International Olympic Committee chose Vancouver in two rounds of voting. Salzburg was eliminated in the first round and Vancouver edged Pyeong Chang, 56-53, in the second round.

Vancouver is the most populous city ever to host the Winter Olympics.

The actual sports venues were spread over a wide area around Vancouver. Alpine skiing events were held on Whistler Mountain and Nordic events were staged in the Callaghan Valley, near Whistler, which is a major winter sports resort about 75 miles north of Vancouver. Bobsled, luge, and skeleton events were held at Blackcomb Mountain, also part of the Whistler resort complex. Cypress Mountain in West Vancouver hosted freestyle skiing and snowboarding.

GM Place, the home of the Vancouver Canucks of the National Hockey League, host the Olympic competition, but the name had to be changed to Canada Hockey Place because the IOC doesn't allow commercial names on venues.

Unseasonably warm weather created problems even before the Vancouver games opened. Trucks and a giant helicopter were used to bring snow from the higher areas of Cypress Mountain to the snowboard and freestyle skiing course. The warmth turned the downhill course to slush, forcing the postponement of training and racing for a couple of days and squeezing the Alpine skiing schedule into seven days instead of ten.

A few hours before the opening ceremony, Nodar Kumaritashvili of Georgia was killed during a luge practice run when he was thrown from his sled while trying to negotiate a turn. Lugers had been complaining that the course was too fast and too dangerous, but organizers decided to go ahead with the event as scheduled after making a few changes to lower speeds and increase safety.

There was an awkward glitch in the flame lighting, the culmination of the opening ceremony. The plan called for four columns of flame to be lit individually by hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, basketball star Steve Nash, and two former Olympic champions, skier Nancy Greene and speed skater Catriona Lemay-Doan. However, a lift that was supposed to put one of the columns into place malfunctioned, so Lemay-Doan could only stand helpless while the other three athletes lit their flames.

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