Disorganised and Unfair Olympics
The Winter Olympics in Vancouver have come in for a lot of criticism. I’m not going to be too outspoken, as we have the Summer Games in London coming up, but it does strike me that the Canadians have made some fundamental mistakes, that with hindsight could have been avoided.
They could have done nothing about the lack of snow, unless of course they could have found a way to move Europe’s and the United States’ unwanted snowfalls to where they were needed.
But to me one thing stands out. The Olympic flame is the centrepiece of any Games and they have surrounded their’s with a fence, that obscures it to the public. They say they were worried about vandals and the like, but it would not have been beyond the wit of the designers to protect it with say a moat and a low safety rail. I suspect if they’d asked the keeper of the monkeys at Vancouver Zoo, he would have had a much better idea!
They got a lot of others things wrong, like the finances, but then they did in Montreal too.
I would also criticise them for giving their own competitors more time to try out the tracks and courses, in the hope of winning more medals. I hope we don’t adopt the same attitude for 2012 as Games should be remembered for fairness not cheating.
But lastly, I will criticise them for one small thing, that would have been so easily overcome by a small amount of replanning. The medal ceremony for the ladies’ skeleton bob was held at three in the morning UK time, which was an absolutely wonderful idea for a once-in-thirty-years event for the UK. As it was 24 hours after the event, they could and should have scheduled it for a convenient time for the UK’s news networks.
But then they had expected a Canadian to win!
As I have said many times before, all major projects and events are often judged by the attention to detail by the organisers. Canada has failed with the details.
London 2012 must take note. According to this blog on the BBC, they are!
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The Anonymous Widower 
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