It's March. The medals have all been handed out. The visitors are on their way home. Vancouver airport had its busiest day ever today. The thing that has been a big, big deal in this city for the past seven years is over. Truthfully, I am relieved.
Don't get me wrong: I had a great time, and I'm tremendously glad I was here for this, but by the end I was fatigued. The atmosphere here was exciting and fun, but it's hard to maintain such a high level of energy and emotion for 16 days. I revelled in it as much as I could, but I eventually reached a point where I just wanted the crowds to disperse, the lines to disappear, the roads to re-open, and the city I call home to get back to normal.
Vancouver is such a great place year round, no matter what's going on here. The things I enjoy most about this city happen with or without the Olympics. Yes, I might miss the experience a bit, but I am consoled by the fact that I get to spend the rest of the year enjoying all the wonders this city has to offer by default.
It makes me wonder how all the athletes and visitors will feel when they get home. I'm sure many of them are from places that are just as remarkable. I'm also sure this experience will lead them back here again, possibly permanently. I think that's great, and I quote Catherine O'Hara's monologue in the closing ceremony: "you're all welcome to come back and visit anytime ... just not all at once."
The latest issue of the New Yorker has a piece by Nancy Franklin in which she says "Vancouver 2010 won't be remembered as a great games; it will be remembered for the senseless death [of luger Nodar Kumaritashvili] that occurred before the competition even began." I cannot disagree more; in fact, I think it is shameful to presume that such a tragedy can overshadow such a fine event. Everyone was shocked and saddened by Kumaritashvili's untimely death, but like all deaths the sadness soon faded into the background in the hearts and minds of everyone here. To dwell on it would have been a great disservice to everyone who worked so hard to make the Vancouver Olympics what they were: exciting, astounding, and fun.
I was particularly impressed with the work done in two areas: security, and transportation. The security, though at times overzealous (having to go through an airport-style baggage scanner and metal detector to get into a hockey game seemed to be extreme overkill) was on the whole even-handed, serene, and non-intrusive all things considered. In my travels around the city, I saw quite a lot of police, and noticed fairly early on that not all of them - in fact, few of them - were Vancouver PD. Cops from around the country were in town, wearing their home uniforms and walking a beat as though it was their own. I saw cops from North Bay, Kingston, Saskatoon, and Edmonton, along with RCMP from who-knows-where (no Calgary PD unfortunately). If I had known in advance, I would have made up some Police Bingo cards and passed them out. "Oooh! There's a Halifax cop! All I need now is OPP and I have Bingo!"
If you read back to my first Olympic-tagged post, you will see me worry about what will happen to transit during the Games. I can say right now that the worst fears never came to pass, and Translink deserves kudos for that. An unprecedented armada of Skytrains was deployed to keep the crowds flowing through the metropolis at a pace that was no worse than the middle of rush hour. Of course, part of my Olympic fatigue came from the fact that it seemed like rush hour all day, every day, but that was hardly a surprise. I'm sure the system was pushed to the limit, but it never seemed incapable of handling the burden.
On the whole, I think we hosted the Olympics tremendously well. Reports around the web have nothing but nice things to say about Vancouver. The city looks damn good on TV, and people love it even more when they visit. As far as hosting the Olympics goes, all we had to do was not make people miserable and it would have been well received. I think we did a lot more than that.
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