Tinkerblue

Google Doodles for London 2012

Have you been paying attention to the Google Doodles for London 2012?

I like the hurdle one they had up yesterday.

http://www.google.com/doodles/hurdles-2012

Usain Bolt Wins Gold in Lego

 

 

Unofficial London 2012 Olympic Souvenirs

Mmmm, as someone who has worked in licensing and merchandising for an Olympics I am well aware of the restrictions around who can produce Official Retail Merchandise. That means I shouldn't even be giving the products below a second glance, but... they make me smile.

 

Dieter Braun London Print

 

Olympic Flame Print

 

London Calling Print

 

Tote Bag

 

Not quite sure what to call this headpiece, it won't give you much protection from the sun.

How about some biscuits? You can have either a sports tin or a London icon tin.

 

How about some regal egg cups?  The directors of the company are in court trying to keep the egg cups for sale, so you should buy them soon.

 

A double decker London bus for my Pandora charm bracelet.

 

Olympic Smurfs. There are 10 in total.  Swimmer, weightlifter, beach volleyball player, rider, gymnast, relay runner, winner, sprinter, shotputter, and javelin thrower.

The winner is cute, look at him gazing at his medal.

 

My favourite has to be the javelin thrower with his eyebrows scrunched and his tongue hanging out.

 

London 2012

When I'm not cooking breakfast, cleaning rooms, gardening or kayaking this is where I'll be. In front of the TV. Watching the Olympics.

Athletes or events I'm most looking forward to seeing:

Pretty much any event with Aussies in it. Although between CTV, NBC, TSN, etc etc there's not much coverage of the Australians.

Kohei Uchimura - mens gymnastics. An awesome gymnast from Japan who was favourite to win 5 gold medals. He didn't get off to a good start falling of the bars.

Oksana Chusovitina - women's gymnastics. At 37 this is her 5th Olympics She also competed in the 92, 96, 2004 and 2008 Games, winning Team Gold in 92 and Silver on the vault in 08.

Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh-Jennings - Beach Volleyball. Gold medal winners in 2004 and 2008. Can they threepeat?

Roger Federer - one of the greatest tennis players ever. He's never won Olympic gold in the men's singles in three previous games (2000, 2004 and 2008).

Track and Field and the Marathon - I don't know many (if any) of the Australian team anymore. But it's still my favourite sport.

Sally Pearson - Australian hurdler. Current World Champion, silver medalist in 2008. Until recently she was undefeated in 2012.

Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake - sprinters from Jamaica. Or will another sprinter take them both out.

Roman Sebrle - decathlete. Silver medalist in Sydney 2000 and gold in Athens 2004. First decathlete to score over 9000 points. Suffered a potentially career ending injury in 2007 when a javelin punctured his shoulder.

My favourite events to watch:
Swimming
Diving
Track and field
Hockey
Gymnastics
Beach Volleyball
Canoe Slalom
Cycling - track and road
Rowing
Tennis
Water Polo
Anything really.

Patriot Hearts by John Furlong

Published on Saturday February 12th, 2011 to coincide with the anniversary of the Games, Patriot Hearts is John Furlong's story of the Games from the bid phase to the memorial service for Nodar Kumaritashvili.

Hubby and I went along to the flashmob thingy on Thursday on the skytrain. In exchange for reading the book on the skytrain between Columbia and Waterfront Stations for an hour or so, we each received a  copy of the book, and John was there to autograph them.

 

I finished reading the book on Friday. John is a really good story teller.  He also doesn't hold back and there is some critism of governemnt officials. It's a good read. 

 

If you'd like a copy it's available from Chapters, Amazon or your local bookstore.

 

 our shelf full of Vancouver 2010 related books.

 

Sochi 2014 Announces 5 Mascots!

5 mascots! I remember when VANOC announced that we had 3 and a sidekick. One of the criticisms was that 3 was too many. So now Sochi has 5.

The Hare, the Polar Bear and the Leopard are the Olympic mascots.

The Ray of Light and the Snowflake will be the Paralympic mascots.

http://sochi2014.com/en/sochi-live/news/38689/

I like all 5 better than the London 2012 Mascots. Not a big fan of those.

 

Vancouver Street Banners

Remember the street banners that were on all the lampposts in and around Vancouver?

 

You can still buy one or a pair for your own memorabilia collection. We have a big pink Sydney 2000 fence wrap and after the Games we bought a pair of Vancouver 2010 street banners, and they will eventually all hang in the hangar.  Can you guess which pair we bought?

 

 Yep, the set with the airplane on them!

Avaialable from the Flag Shop in Vancouver. The banners were donated by the City of Vancouver. Funds raised from the sale of the Street Banners will benefit the Tradeworks Training Society and the Fab Shop. 

Available in sets or individually, and if you so chose some are available autographed by John Furlong, Kristi Richards, Tom Velisek and Justin Lamoureaux.

Prices start at $34.95 and up. Get them here.

 

 

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.

 

 

Sochi 2014 Mascots - A Rabbit? A Snowflake? Or Maybe Even Santa Claus?

Vancouver 2010 had Quatchi, Miga and Sumi.

www.vancouver2010.com

 

London 2012 has Wenlock and Mandeville.

www.london2012.com

And Sochi 2014 has...

The Organising Committee for the Sochi 2014 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games have released the 11 finalists for their mascots. And Russians get to vote by text message. The winner will be announced February 26th.

The finalists are:

Polar Bear

or Brown Bear

  Father Frost or Rabbit

Bullfinch

or Dolphin

 

Fire Boy

or Sun

 

Snowflake

or Leopard

 

Matryoshka Dolls

 

 

My thoughts?

Both bears are very similar to Mischa, the mascot from the Moscow 1980 Summer Olympics.

Father Frost is Santa Claus and the Rabbit reminds me of the Easter Bunny. 

Bullfinch kind of looks like the Twitter logo or one of those pig smashing Angry Birds.

Dolphins, I associate more with swimming and water and summer. Not the Winter Olympics.

Fire Boy goes well with the Snowflake character, but won't he melt the ice and snow?

The Sun - kind of the enemy of the Winter Olympics, No?

The Snowflake is kinda cute. Fire Boy and Snowflake look like they are supposed to be a pair.

The Leopard would look good as a speed skater, snowboarder, skier, luger, bobsledder, hockey player etc.

The Matryoshka Dolls, a pin with all 4 of them will be so big!

Which one would I vote for? No idea. Probably the Matryosha Dolls. Good thing I don't get a vote.

 

The Changing Face of Whistler Celebration Plaza

I spent several hours a day at the medals plaza in February.  It looked something like this.

 

 Photo Krista Leesment

 

As of Tuesday it now looks like this: