Canada had plenty of supporters on hand to root for their riders at the men's snowboard cross event.
Ok … so I’m not being terribly original with my subject header tonite. Sue me! Been a longggg day at the Men’s Snowboard Cross event at Cypress Mountain.Was it an exciting day? You bet. I must say, though, that the qualifying rounds (there were 2 of them) got a bit boring by the second round. Oh, sorry … I should explain how this works. We start out with 35+ riders dropping down the course one by one (and this is a very long course at that) with lots of twists, turns and jumps. From 2 runs for each, the riders with the 32 best times pass through to the elimination heats.
Now it gets fun! Four riders, in rank order, ride at one time down the slope. You can believe that there is plenty of jostling for position and wipe-outs are a common occurrence. The top two from each heat pass through to the quarter finals, then to the semis, and eventually we have the final 4 riders taking the course together. Today’s final consisted of 2 US men — Seth Wescott and Nate Holland — along with Canadian Mike Robertson and Tony Ramoin of France. For virtually the entire race, Mike Robertson led … and the Canadian fans all round us set up a deafening roar, sure that another Canadian gold was soon to be theirs. But at the very end — and yeah, I mean the very end — Seth Wescott nosed ahead to take the gold. Now how exciting is that!
No pretty graphics could cover up the fact that the snowboard venue at Cypress Mountain was about as user-UNfriendly as Olympic venues go.
On the flip side … and yes, there is a flip side … the Cypress Mountain venue was a great disappointment. For so many reasons, VANOC really blew this one. First, they should have anticipated potential problems with weather. Snowboard (and the adjacent freestyle skiing facility) need snow and plenty of it. The absurdly warm weather has left the organizers scrambling to haul in sufficient snow for the course. In the end, they couldn’t provide the areas for general admission spectators to safely stand resulting in 4,000 canceled tickets for our session alone. There were many very unhappy snowboard enthusiasts when they discovered that they no longer had valid tickets. Multiply this by at least 3 additional sessions in which standing room tickets have been canceled.
Second, the facility itself required totally unrealistic physical stamina by visitors. The grandstand required one to climb 200+ steps just to get to the lowest rows of the spectator area. Imagine another 100+ steps if you were in the nosebleeds! And forget about visiting the portapotties … they were all the way down the hill from the grandstand (yes, another round trip up and down those stairs). Feeling cold? The single warming tent available held about 50 people. How many spectators were slated to use this venue at any one time? 10,000!
VANOC, acknowledging the problems with the lack of snow at Cypress Mountain, characterized the venue as a “special needs child”. I would have called it something quite different.
You may have noticed that there is absolutely NOTHING philatelic in my report today. Well … we left at 7:20 in the morning and returned at 6:00 pm. Needless to say any post offices we could have visited were long closed. We’ll see what tomorrow brings after our trip to Whistler for the Men’s Alpine Combined Downhill!
From Vancouver … voyez-vous bientôt (see you later)!
