Victory Ceremonies

One of the most moving parts of the Olympics was going to the Victory Ceremonies that they hold every night. They have two separate ceremonies one in Vancouver and one in Whistler that they hold at the same time and then patch together with TV so that both ceremony locations get to watch each other's presentation of medals. Dina and I went to two different Victory Ceremonies.

Each VC has a a different theme that was a specific province. Before the medals were presented and people were being seated, they had various entertainers from the province like dancers and drummers. They all had great costumes and put on a really splendid show. Most of the crowd was pretty indifferent since the main reason we were was not to be entertained. We were all there to stand proud and honor the athletes who had triumphed to the highest level of their sport that day.

The house favorites were clearly the canadian athletes and

the crowd was more than prepared

to sing along when 'O Canada' was being played. The entire stadium singing together in unison was so incredibly cool, I got chills from it. Maybe a few tears too. When the American anthem was sung, I sang along too, although more quietly, since it was more like a solo (not a lot of Team USA choir members out there). Getting to see the happiness on the athletes faces and the pride on the fans faces was so moving.

After the medals, they had a small concert that featured a bigger named singer. The first night we got to see Nelly Fertado, the second one was a country singer whom I'm not familiar with. This portion of the VC was kinda lame. The stage was pretty far away and only the VIP guests got to dance in front of the stage. Most people were not impressed and the crowd pretty much emptied out of the stadium after that. Dina and felt it was kinda lame and left early as well. Whistler for sure seemed to have the better VC, that one was outside and had everyone as part of the crowd and it seemed like a big party. Ski town are like that. We weren't too disappointed though, we had come for the medals and and emotion.