Looking Forward To The Winter Olympics

On the Today show this morning NBC was previewing the 2010 Winter Olympics, and in no particular order, here's a few of the things that were interesting to me:

This is the third time Canada has hosted the games, and it's the only country that has never won a Gold medal at their own home games. The two previous Canadian Olympics were the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal and the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary. Everybody in Canada really hopes Canada wins a Gold medal this time. Their best bet? Hockey.

Vancouver is the largest city ever to host the Winter Games.

I've always loved the opening theme song that NBC plays at the start of each Olympic program. The song was actually introduced by ABC, back when they were the main network televising the Olympics. When I was in college, the school band would play that song at home football games as our team ran out onto the field at the start of the game. Go Wildcats!

NBC highlighted some of the American athletes who are expected to win gold, including skier Lindsay Vonn and speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno. If Ohno wins two medals, he will have a total of eight, more (winter) Olympic medals than any other American. The current record-holder is Bonnie Blair, who has seven.

In the entire Olympic preview segment there was no mention of figure skating, which is usually the biggest of the big deal events at the Winter Games. What that really means is that this year there is no hotshot It Girl American skater who is considered to at least have a shot at the Gold medal. As I'm writing about this, I realize that even though I watched the U.S. national figure skating championships a couple of weeks ago, I don't remember the name of the skater who won, much less who came in second. That's not good news for NBC, which can usually count on skating events for the highest ratings of the games. That's not going to happen if the American skaters aren't doing well.

Finally, to get us all in the mood to watch the Opening Ceremony this coming Friday night, NBC showed some highlights from the last OC, which was Beijing in 2008. For me, that brought back memories of the other "breaking news" story that was happening the same night - do you remember what it was? Here's a hint: John Edwards confesses. That's right, his big "Yes, I had an affair" interview was on Nightline at the same time that NBC was showing the lavish events from Beijing. According to news reporting at the time, Edwards specifically decided to do the interview that day, and insisted to ABC that it be shown on Nightline, because he was hoping all the Olympic hoopla would drown out his news and nobody would notice. Unfortunately for Edwards, the interview was taped earlier in the day and ABC began promoting it that afternoon. By dinnertime everyone on the planet was talking about it. We now know, of course, that pretty much everything John Edwards said that night was a lie, and with hindsight it would have been so much better (for him) if he had just come clean and told the whole truth. If he had, we wouldn't still be talking about it now.