Olympic Update

It's been a while since I posted something Olympics related, but not much had happened yet for Canada until Sunday, when synchronized diving pair Emilie Heymans and Jennifer Abel captured Canada's first medal of the London 2012 games with a bronze in the 3m competition.

One of the disadvantages of working the midnight to noon shift, is that I miss most of the live competition, and end up just seeing the NBC primetime show as it is played back to New York. 

Beach Volleyball is one of the few venues that gets started early in the morning, so I do get to see some of that (no, really, that's why I'm watching Beach Volleyball...) and in fact it is still on live when I get back in at midnight.

Anyway, in keeping with the Olympic theme for this post, I though I would introduce you to London's Olympic and Paralympic mascots, "Wenlock" and "Mandeville".

I've seen statues of these guys around town, and I have to tell you, they are a little bit creepy looking:

The mascots were not well received when they were introduced, as you can tell from the link above, and apparently there was controversy about the London 2012 logo also.  It is ugly (in my opinion), but I think the the conspiracy theorists are out to lunch (as usual) on this one.  Essentially, the pieces of the logo (which kind of look like a crumpled up piece of paper) are just stylized digits that form the number 2012.

Now, there is another controversy brewing over the placement of the Olympic flame.  Obiously, I (and everybody else here) was wrong when I guessed that the flame would end up atop the Orbit structure just outside the Olympic Stadium.  Instead, it appears the flame will remain inside the Olympic Stadium, out of site to all Olympic visitors, except those with tickets to a Track and Field event.

And despite a stretch of truly beautiful weather in the week leading up to the Opening Ceremonies, it has rained the past couple of days, and the rain is predicted to continue for the next while (primarily in the afternoon, according to the forecasts, which is my only available time for site-seeing)!

Let's hope the weather isn't much of a factor for the games (or my site-seeing), and that we can forget all these "controversies" and just enjoy the games.  The British press seem to be pretty hard on their ahtletes and medal expectations are high.  I'm just looking forward to seeing some of our Canadian athletes do their thing and hope for the best.