In no particular order:
- I thought Scott Russell of CBC did a remarkable job as the primary anchor for those of us Canada. He avoided too much gushing and too much turning the focus onto himself. He was SO much better than Brian Williams had been in the past. [disclaimer: Scott was once a student of mine, but that doesn't mean much since I haven't always liked his work in other instances.]
- I don't know what it was like for people elsewhere, but we had pretty decent live coverage of the events. At times it seemed we could choose between CBC, TSN, TSN2, and at least two different Sportsnet channels to watch different events. I really liked that. Most times there were other things to watch than just one event.
- I detest Putin. Clearly he is a demagogue. Yes, he has restored pride in Russia among the Russians, and yes there appear to have been no terrorist attacks in Sochi during the Olympics. As people said about Mussolini, "He made the trains run on time" but he was a murdering demagogue. I put Putin in the same category.
- Despite all the pre-Olympic stories hinting at doom and disaster, the games ran fairly smoothly. Maybe he brought it off by using employers who stiffed their employees. Also see the previous point.
- Where were the rainbow flags? I wished (and expected) more fans there would have carried rainbow flags. Or were the rainbow flags confiscated by Putin's goons?
- Overall, CBC's coverage was better than decent. But their coverage of the closing ceremony was disappointing: too many breaks, too many very long shots from weird angles, too many aerial shots of the area, and too many close-ups so we couldn't get and enjoy the overall picture of what was happening on the entire floor (?) of the stadium.
- I miss hearing the Olympic Anthem that was so prevalent on ABC (and I guess on NBC). It starts out just like "O Canada."
- I'm not all that keen on judged sports. There are always controversies because the judgement involved.
- Although I'm impressed by the athleticism of the people who do aerial/free-style/mogul skiing and snowboarding, I don't much like the sports as a spectator.
- According to something I read but for which I do not remember the citation, Canadians' most prevalent order at Tim Horton's is "double-double" [double sugar, double cream]. The term took on new meaning at the 2014 Winter Olympics as the Canadian men and women teams took gold medals in both curling and hockey.
- As I posted yesterday, I'm intrigued by the lexicographic ordering used to rank countries by medal counts.
- The concluding speech by Thomas Bach (President of the IOC) went on far too long. The minute I saw him on the screen, he reminded me of Anton Gregoriev in the classic BBC mini-series, Smiley's People.