Vancouver, BC — Thursday, February 18, 2010
Some more serious philately today, followed by our big event in the evening: the long program (finals) of Men’s Figure Skating.
Hudson Bay Company's (HBC) main Vancouver store all togged out with images of Canadian athletes housed the Olympic Superstore.
Atmosphere: Ever since the start of the Games, downtown Vancouver has been hoppin’! Everywhere you go the crowds are out having a great time. Vancouverites (or is that Vancouverans?), especially younger ones, were having a ball at all the free events around town. It’s amazing to me how long people are willing to wait in line for something free. I had heard (don’t know how accurate it was) that lines to enter the Sochi 2014 pavilion at times reached 10,000 during the first weekend! Judging from the daily block-wrapping queues from 8 a.m. to midnight at the HBC Olympic Superstore, I can believe it.
A terrific registered cover using the new Olympic gold medal sheetlet of stamps with the Figure Skating event cancel and Vancouver Olympic City postmark on Feb. 18, the day of the men's finals!
Philately: Managed to hit two more philatelic locations today — the Richmond post office which offered the speed skating postmark, and the Vancouver Station “D” post office on Pine Street. As with the Vancouver Main facility, the clerks were extremely helpful. There were no lines at either; I rather doubt the average person even knew special postmarks were available. I keep forgetting to mention that it is possible to mail your postmarked covers and cards without having them defaced with additional machine cancels. Just ask the clerk for the yellow “hand sort” piece of paper that you wrap around your mail and secure with a rubber band. So far, this system has worked for me.
"Let the Games Begin" slogan machine cancel used across Canada.
One more suprise. Since around the time of the start of the Games, mail processing facilities across Canada have had the option of using a special Olympic slogan in their ink-jet machine cancelers. The slogan reads: “Let the Games Begin! / Place aux Jeux!” in two lines. From reports I’ve been receiving from other collectors, the clarity of the imprint varies with portions of the slogan missing on occasion.
Sports: As exciting as Monday’s snowboard cross event was, it couldn’t hold a candle to the finals of the men’s Figure Skating competition at the Pacific Coliseum. Twenty-four competitors took to the ice in four flights, with the best six in the final group. The draw within each group was by lot. The top American, Evan Lysacek, skated first, while Russia’s best, Evgeni Plushenko, skated last. I guess there are both pluses and minuses to being in either spot.
Evan Lysacek midway through his long program.
Based on what I saw, Evan’s program, while not as complex as Plushenko’s (Evan did not throw a “quad”), was technically much better. I don’t claim to be a figure skating expert, but to my untrained eye Plushenko’s more difficult skills were not executed to the same level as Lysacek’s. Plushenko clearly had to fight to land at least three out-of-kilter jumps. A less athletic skater would have ended up on his keester!
Despite this, I was almost sure that Plushenko would manage to eek out a gold. But with the new scoring system where perfection is rewarded (as it should be), Evan captured the top spot on the podium by a convincing 1.31 points. As expected, the Russian media hollered “FOUL,” but I doubt they had much ammunition to justify the claim when the breakdown of technical marks were released. In a subsequent interview, NBC’s Bob Costas asked Evan if he’d be back to compete in 2014 at the Sochi (Russia) Olympic Winter Games. Evan’s reply: “I don’t know if they’ll let me in the country!”
Until tomorrow … до свиданиядо (Do svidaniya! — Goodbye in Russian)
