Short Tracked

The Pacific Coliseum will be hosting short track speed skating events during the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games. The Vancouver stage of the ISU World Cup Short Track competition was held as a test event for the venue. Learning experience taken from this competition can be applied to the big show so that everything runs as smoothly as possible when 2010 rolls along. Every detail from how the event was organized to the track conditions on ice to the performance of the ice miesters will be painstakingly analyzed to see what can be improved.

Only the lower bowl was opened to the public, with a surprisingly large concentration of Koreans. The rest of the fans had Canadian, American, Chinese, and Japanese origins. Skaters from these nationalities were also the ones in medal contention. There were individual men's and women's races of 500, 1000, and 1500 meters and men's and women's relays of 3000 and 5000 meters. Canada finished with a medal count of 6 (1 gold, 3 silver, and 2 bronze). They narrowly missed out on a gold in the exciting grand finale of the show. Apollo Ohno, the world's most famous short track skater, powered the US team to the slimmest of victories over the Canadians. The fetching female skaters wore form fitting outfits made of cut resistant material. I refrained from doing the same, maintaining a low profile throughout the competition so as not to affect the results.

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"That's the beauty of our sport. On any given Sunday, anybody can win." - Apollo Ohno