Olympic thoughts – Week One

In no particular order

• The IOC needs to prune the number of events. Too many of them dilute the impact, confuse viewers and make the experience feel like work. Please, sim-pli-fy!
• Same thing with the opening ceremony, trim it down, save money!
• The Games are taking valuable skiing time away from me
• For the past two evenings, NBC must have gotten the message and has done a much better job in reporting about skiing.
• After seeing the half-pipe girls fidgeting with their iPod in the starting gate and giggling at their losses, the little respect I had for snowboarding is headed south...

• Not all medals should be the same size; Aksel Svindal or Evan Lysacek's medals should be much bigger and of purer metal than those of any snowboarders, curling or skeleton champions
• Shame on Canada, the host country for overtly wanting to garner as much gold as possible. It's as if friends invited you for a barbecue and made a point of grabbing the best pieces of meat for themselves.
• Involuntarily, Whistler has made clear to the world what I have found out for quite sometime; its weather sucks and the US Rockies are a much better choice for a ski vacation!
• NBC seems to have a tough time selling its prime time advertising spots
• I'd love to see a carbon footprint breakdown per Olympic competitor, parents, friends, fan clubs, support teams and officials and see how much “greener” these Vancouver Olympics are...

That's it for the week. Please, stay tuned.