Great Games

The 21st Winter Olympics proved to offer the best highs and worst lows of any Winter Olympics. From the death of the luger at the start to the thrilling Canadian overtime victory at the end, these were memorable Games.

All is right with the world tonight in Canada. They are the best in ice hockey.

Highlights of the Games include:

Kudos to local athletes of Torin Koos (Nordic), Tommy Ford (Alpine), Chris Klug (Snowboarding). They didn't medal but put in great efforts. Being called an Olympian is a major league accomplishment.

Canadian figure skater Joannie Rochette wins bronze after her biggest fan and best friend, her mother, died suddenly from a heart attack just two days before her short-program skate. The greatest achievement of the Games. A French-Canadian unites a nation in British Columbia.

Lindsey Vonn, with nothing but pressure including the sexy cover of Sports Illustrated, won gold in the premier ski event: the downhill. She's the first American woman to do so.

Also, an American won gold in a cross-country event for the first time. Bill Demong won in Nordic-combined (ski jumping and cross-country skiing) and Johnny Spillane won this third silver at these games in the same race. Remarkable.

It was also amazing to watch the finish of the women's 30K (18-mile) Nordic race. The Polish and Norwegian skiers were stride for stride at the very end with the Polish skier capturing Poland's first-ever gold in a cross-country event. Fantastic.

Americans won a record 37 medals. A tremendous achievement considering the last time the Winter Games were held in Canada in Calgary 1988, the Americans won just 6 medals.

Apolo Anton Ohno won 3 medals to make him the most decorated American Winter Olympian ever with eight.

Special props to the American 4-man bobsled team which captured gold for the first time in 62 years. The driver, Steve Holcomb, had eye surgery two years ago so he could see again. They rode their sled, "Night Train," to glory.

The Canadians may not have "Owned the Podium," but they owned the platform that matters most to the rest of the world outside the U.S. - gold. They won a record 14 gold medals. Call it a Yukon gold rush. And to think that Canada hadn't won a gold medal in two previous Olympics on its own soil. Hats off to Canada. The U.S. came in third in the gold category with 9. The Germans won 10.

Stephen Colbert's "Vancouverage" and the Colbert Nation's $300,000 support of the U.S. speed-skating team added a golden and humorous luster to the Games.

On the downside, it was painful to watch all the wrecks on the slopes and on the bobsled/luge/skeleton track. The worst mistake was the lost gold medal for Dutch skater Sven Kramer whose coach steered him onto the wrong lane and ultimate disqualification with only a couple of laps to go in the 10,000-meter race. Brutal.

Another loser was NBC, the only network in the world to tape-delay the Games. That's pathetic. Here's hoping that ESPN outbids all other American networks to broadcast the next two Olympics. They promise to broadcast the Games live. This could be the last Olympics where viewing them is dictated by the networks. The convergence of the TV and the Internet means that, finally, viewers can choose what to watch when they want to watch it. I can't wait. Eurosport in the Internet proved to be a popular alternative this time around for watching events as they unfolded.

Also, the Vancouver area suffered from its worst winter warm spell, thanks to El Nino. The weather wreaked havoc on all the outdoor events. But hey, that's what happens when you depend on the weather. The British press pushed the theme that these were the worst Games ever. Please. We still have the 2012 Summer Games in London.

As for the Winter Games, it's on to Sochi, Russia, in 2014 for the 22nd Winter Olympiad. Let's hope the U.S. doesn't boycott these games like it did the Moscow Summer Games in 1980.

If anyone is looking for better weather in Sochi (Feb. 7-23, 2014) than was found in Vancouver, well, look again.

The average February highs in Sochi are 50 degrees. The average lows are 38 degrees. Sochi has a humid, subtropical climate and is the unofficial summer capital of Russia. It became fashionable among the Russian elite under Stalin, who built his favorite dacha there. It's bordered by the Black Sea on one side and the snow-capped peaks of the Caucasus Mountains on the other. With a population around 400,000, Greater Sochi claims to be the longest city in Europe as it sprawls along the Black Sea coastline.

As they say in Russian for good luck: udatshi.