After 17 days of thrilling athletic competitions, amazing displays of sportsmanship and magical moments when lifelong dreams were realized, the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games have come to an end.
They have generally been hailed as a success by news outlets and major figures in sports, despite the problems which threatened to overshadow the event early on. Vancouver residents' enthusiasm for the Games, leading to venues packed with cheering supporters, has been one of the best remembered characteristics.
"There was an extraordinary embrace of the entire city of the Olympic Games, something I have never seen on this scale before," said IOC president Jacques Rogge in his closing speech. "This is something that is unique and it gave a great atmosphere for these games."
The Games began under a cloud with the death of Georgian luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili, and the unseasonably warm weather which closed viewing areas and forced organizers to truck snow to some venues, damaging the event's 'Green' credentials. After 17 days of athletic accomplishments, some of the Vancouver 2010 highlights included 86 medal competitions in 15 sport disciplines in the seven winter sports at nine competition venues. Altogether 615 medals were awarded. 96,409 people were accredited for the Games including 10,800 media representatives. Estimated 3.5 billion television viewers are said to have tuned into the Games worldwide while Olympic rights holding broadcasters offered Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games coverage on more than 300 TV stations and on more than 100 websites worldwide. This is reported to represent 47 per cent more global television coverage of the Games than for the Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games, amounting to approximately 24,000 hours of coverage and 50,000 hours of total broadcast hours of the Games across all media platforms around the world.
Moreover, there have been more than 3.3 million pairs of Vancouver 2010 Red Mittens sold, 78 million total unique visitors to www.vancouver2010.com, including a record of 9,185,306 unique visits in a single day - set on February 24. The previous record set during the 2008 Summer Games was 8,797,614 on August 11, 2008. In addition Vancouver 2010 had 14,000 followers on Twitter.com/2010Tweets and recorded 1.1 million Facebook fans, nearly four times the total amount for Beijing at the conclusion of the 2008 Games.
