Did you know? Bell’s Fast Facts Fridays – Olympic Edition
The 2010 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XXI Olympic Winter Games or the 21st Winter Olympics, kicked off this morning in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The games run from February 12–28, 2010, and more than 80 nations are competing in 15 winter sports events. At least 10 of these sports require participants to wear helmets, including ski jumping, snowboarding, speed skating, luge, and bobsled. Canadians, Olympics groupies and winter sports enthusiasts alike have been anticipating today and the next two weeks since 2003 – when Vancouver was announced as the host city. If you are unable to make the trek to the Pacific Northwest to cheer on your country’s athletes, we’ve assembled a few facts and resources to help you stay up to date on the games from the comfort of your home.
1) Let’s start with some figures: there are roughly 2,500 volunteers at the games, there are more than 10,000 media members at the games, and there are about 5,000 officials and athletes participating. (GoVancouver.About.com)
2) Up-to-the-minute information about the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics is at your fingertips thanks to special coverage sections and search features on Bing, Yahoo! and Google. Bing.com is the official search provider for NBCOlympics.com, where Bing will provide Instant Answers for popular athletes, sporting events and medal counts, as well as updating the homepage daily with videos and images. Yahoo! Sports created “Fancouver” which is a live broadcast studio and entertainment center where visitors can enjoy a free hot cocoa bar, free WiFi, appearances by athletes, a live streaming “fan cam”, games and giveaways and much more. Google has created an international landing page where you can Explore The Games with Google equipped with Google Maps that track medal counts by country. They’ve also created special “Street View” coverage with the use of a snowmobile to get around the games’ event venues. (SearchEngineLand.com)
3) For traditional media coverage the host broadcaster will be Olympic Broadcasting Services Vancouver, a subsidiary of the International Olympic Committee’s new in-house broadcasting unit Olympic Broadcasting Services. 2010 Olympics marks the first games where the host broadcasting facilities will be provided solely by CBS. In the United States, Associated Press (AP) plans to send 120 reporters, photographers, editors and videographers to cover the games. AP’s coverage includes a microsite with web widgets facilitating integration with social networking and bookmarking services. (Wikipedia.org)
4) Speaking of social networking, as mentioned above Yahoo! created a special Olympics site, and they also have a special twitter handle to send updates from their broadcast studio. Follow @YahooFancouver for coverage of the games form Yahoo! Sports. Twitter has a list of verified athletes from the Olympics who will be tweeting. The IOC also has an official Olympic Games Page on Facebook where people can share stories about what the Olympics mean to them. Use Facebook to become a fan of athletes and Olympics teams, and share photos. (WebProNews.com)
5) Of course the 21st Winter Games have their own Web site with news, photos, videos, information on athletes, schedules and results. They also offer a spectator guide and other special sections with tons of useful information. (Vancouver2010.com)
6) Be on the lookout for Easton sponsored, two-time Olympian Natalie Darwitz, who is serving as the captain of the 2010 U.S. Olympic Women’s Ice Hockey Team. (EastonHockey.com)
Do you have a favorite Web site or resource to get info on the 21st Winter Olympics? Let us know by leaving a comment below! And don’t forget to enter our giveaway contest for your chance to win a Bell Hawk Helmet AND Tony Hawk: RIDE for Nintendo Wii – contest ends 02/14/10! Check it out here.
