Redbrick

The Winter Olympics: Preview

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Written by Blayne Pereira

The Cana­dian city of Van­cou­ver is cur­rently ready­ing itself for the arrival of many of the world’s finest ath­letes as the 21st Win­ter Olympic Games is set to take place between Feb­ru­ary 12th and 28th. If we are to believe all these recent news sto­ries about cli­mate change, then this could well be one com­pe­ti­tion that has a ques­tion mark over its future. Win­ter Sports are almost entirely depen­dent on the weather and while Eng­land, parts of West­ern Europe and the East­ern USA have expe­ri­enced heavy snow­fall through­out this win­ter, the ever-growing prob­lem is the chang­ing pat­tern of the win­ter weather. Red­Brick will take a look at some of these cli­mac­tic issues that could affect the Van­cou­ver games, and future edi­tions, while also exam­in­ing Team GB’s medal prospects.

As Feb­ru­ary begins, the weather in Van­cou­ver is far from ideal; the tem­per­a­ture is a pos­i­tively scorch­ing ten degrees Cel­sius (or there­abouts). In an ideal world, orga­niz­ers of win­ter sports would love for that fig­ure to have a neg­a­tive sign in front of it. Offi­cials remain con­fi­dent that all events will be able to take place but crit­ics remain scep­ti­cal. Heavy rain has already forced the clo­sure of sev­eral of the Olympic venues through­out this ‘ski sea­son’ and pre­vi­ous com­pe­ti­tions tak­ing place in ear­lier years in the same loca­tions have expe­ri­enced com­plete can­cel­la­tions. The orga­niz­ers say that they will have fake snow to cover for any even­tu­al­ity but, clearly, if the tem­per­a­ture con­sis­tently remains near or in dou­ble fig­ures (Cel­sius), then some out­door events will have their timetable wrecked.

Team GB have been set a tar­get of three medals. “Just THREE?!” I hear you yell out in sur­prise. Indeed. Britain only picked up one medal in Torino 2006, thanks to Shel­ley Rud­man in the Skele­ton – one of the most daunt­ing sports in the world, where you are effec­tively lying face down on a tray as it flies down a bob­sled course. Rud­man, 28, will again be in con­tention for medals and will obvi­ously look to go one bet­ter. Chemmy Alcott, 27, will be our main rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the tra­di­tional ski­ing events (downhill/slalom). She fin­ished 11th in the Torino down­hill event and this will be her third Olympic games, hav­ing also taken part in Salt Lake City as a teenager. A medal might be a bit out of reach for Alcott, but the same can­not be said for our curl­ing teams. Curl­ing; remem­ber that sport which every­one seem­ingly went mad for back in 2002, where the women’s team took a shock gold medal? The men’s team have been in fine form recently, are cur­rent world cham­pi­ons and are out to break into the medals at the very least this time around, hav­ing fin­ished 4th in Torino. The women were only 5th in 2006, and know they can do better.

Our women’s bob­sleigh team is the other hot con­tender we have ready to melt the ice as they fire them­selves down the hill (oh, the cring­ing puns are out in force!). Nicola Min­inchiello and Gillian Cooke are World Cham­pi­ons, so will look to add Olympic Gold to their collection.

Unfor­tu­nately, there won’t be a Jamaican bob­sled team in the Olympics, but Red­Brick Sport will keep you filled in with how Team GB get on dur­ing the Olympics, and also how some of the stars of the Win­ter scene per­form, in a diary-like fea­ture which we have planned – surely that’s much more excit­ing anyway!

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This article was posted on February 5th, 2010 at 7:45 am.