harryt's blog

T.C.

Who said the Cold War is over? Certainly not the members of the Russian fourth estate, who are still seeing red after last night’s thrilling shootout victory by a team of pesky Americans.

The postgame press conference was loaded with questions aimed at Russian head coach Zinetula Bilyaletdinov about some of the sneaky, underhanded tricks the Americans used to snatch victory away from their beloved and beleaguered Russian hockey team.

If you are what you eat then right now I feel like I’m a McNugget shy of a Happy Meal.

The way I’ve been eating here in Sochi has left me tired, irritable and not smelling particularly well.

And to top it off, now I read that the U.S. Women’s Olympic Hockey Team has better diets than I do.

Welcome to Sochi, Russia, where phishing is quickly become the newest Olympic sport.

The U.S. State Department warned Americans coming here that they should have “no expectation of privacy,” even in their hotel rooms.

There's a scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy and her traveling companions stumble upon a sign at the edge of the Haunted Forest that reads "I'd Turn Back If I Were You." Of course they pay no heed and we all know where the story goes from there.

Well, I gotta admit that I'm starting to feel a little like Dorothy, with a little Cowardly Lion thrown in for good measure, and I haven't even reached Oz yet.

In a couple of hours, every Canadian will wait with baited breath for Jacques Rogge to say the words that mean so much to every Olympic host country.

They will gather inside BC Place, at home in front of their television sets or near movie screens set up in locations around the city, eager for the IOC president to declare the 2010 Winter Games to be the best Olympics of all time.

The other night I had my first and probably only brush with greatness on the streets of Vancouver. No disrespect to the U.S. Men’s and Women’s hockey teams, which have been great in their own right.

I was getting off the train line, weaving my way through the crowd while dodging raindrops, when I almost walked right into Vince Vaughn. 

I used to work with a guy at a newspaper who would grimace every time the news editor would ask him to write a headline that involved squeezing big blocked letters into very small spaces.

He would shout across the newsroom to the editor who designed the page, "When you die and go to hell, and trust me you will go to hell, I hope you have to write these ridiculous headlines all day long."

I feel the same way about the genius who dreamt up the concept of the Olympic mixed zone, where mosh pit meets the media.

To borrow a phrase from Al Bundy, the Olympics are no time for regrets. That’s what anniversaries are for.

(Apologies, of course, to my beautiful wife.)

“Citius, Altius, Fortius” is the Olympic motto for Faster, Stronger, Higher. In this era of instant gratification and intense media scrutiny, some skeptics would have you believe a better Olympic motto would be “woulda, coulda, shoulda.”

And that’s too bad because they’re missing a good game.

Monday was a beautiful day in downtown Vancouver. The birds were singing, the sun was shining and the temperatures were hovering in the mid-50s.

Still, there was a dark cloud hanging over the city, and all of Canada for that matter.

Those pesky Americans, the team that has flown under the radar for most of the tournament, had its coming out party in a 5-3 shocker over the mighty Canadians.