Tinkerblue

Own a Piece of the Podium

Just in time for today's one year anniversary of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, you can own your own very tiny piece of the podium.

 

5 of the podiums used during the Games have been cut into pieces and packaged up. There are 20,100 pieces in all.   Pieces have been taken from the Gold, Silver and Bronze section of each podium.  You can't choose which piece you want, it's all random. But you may end up with a piece from:

• Podium #4 - Vancouver Olympic Centre - Curling (Team)
• Podium #9 - Whistler Olympic Park - Ski Jump (Team)
• Podium #10 - BC Place - Victory Ceremony (Individual)
• Podium #12 - Richmond Olympic Oval - Speed Skating (Team)
• Podium #22 - Whistler Olympic Park - Cross Country Skiing / Biathlon / Nordic Combined (Team)

 

After you have purchased your piece of the podium you can register it's unique code on the piece of the podium page, and it will tell you which Victory Ceremonies the podium was used in and which atheletes stood on your piece of the podium.

 

$39.95 per piece. You can get yours from HBC Vancouver, HBC Toronto, HBC Online or from the Official Piece of the Podium Store on Ebay.

 

 

All Things Victory Ceremony - medal trays, podiums, uniform, flowers

10 days to go.  10 very short days.  There's not much left to surprise us all with - who will be the final torch bearer, who will perform at the Opening and Closing ceremonies... Today Vancouver 2010 released the details of the podiums, medal trays, flowers and medal bearer uniforms.

© VANOC/COVAN 

The Podiums are inspired by the snow-capped mountains of Vancouver and Whistler. Each one is assembled from over 200 pieces of precision cut wood from BC Forests.  Built by new trained inner city workers at the Rona Vancouver 2010 Fabrication Shop. 23 podiums will be used in 86 Olympic and Paralympic Victory Ceremonies.

© VANOC/COVAN

Ergonomic wooden trays, matching the design of the podiums, have a non slip surface to protect the wavy medals. Both the podiums and the trays were designed by VANOC's late design director Leo Obstbaum and industrial designer James Lee. I really like them both. Beautiful in their simplicity. I'd like one of the trays please.

 © VANOC/COVAN

Athlete bouquets contain green hypercium berries, green spider mums, leatherleaf fern, monkey grass and aspidistra leaves. They're pretty but why aren't there any native BC plants or flowers in the bouquets.

 

Volunteers will carry the medals and flowers on those lovely trays and escort the athletes while wearing their Aritzia produced costumes.  The costumes are in shades of blue to represent the sea to sky palette.

The outdoor uniform is a cocoon parka in hues of blue inspired by the night sky.

The indoor uniform is a handmade coat, each one is unique and hand knit. A silk scarf is embroidered with complementary hues representing the flags of all nations competing at the Games.

The athlete escort uniform features a vintage ski coat in shades of blue, flocked with with the same Aboriginal artwork of an orca and raven found on the medals. 

I'm not really keen on the uniforms, and I assume all the medal volunteers are female, can't see too many men wearing these outfits.  If I had to pick one, it would be the athlete escort uniform.