Making a Difference at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver! (Part 3)

What an awesome 2 weeks for Canada with the final touch being the Gold Medal Hockey Game where Canada beat the US by just one point in overtime! Canada came out of the games with the highest ever number of gold medal wins for a Winter Olympic Games host country! (Not bad considering everyone was so nervous about Canada never winning a gold medal on home soil before, eh?)

Heather has been very busy volunteering at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver and has just sent us a new update to help keep the Olympic excitement alight!

Saturday February 20th was the day before the men’s ski cross event so we were resetting fence for the new course after it had been toned down for the skiers. The weather was still great with the sun shining and no rain. The men trained on the course and we sat out on the hill with our sunglasses and sunscreen and watched them fly by. During the training runs the guys are getting a feel for the course while taking it easy on their speed. Sunday was race day and it was our earliest day for the whole schedule. It was a 5am start so that meant you were catching the bus at 4:10 so that also meant that you were out of bed by 3. It really was not as bad as I had expected but I did have to be in bed by 9 on Saturday evening.

Race day was crazy as usual and the qualification and training rounds seem to go so slowly but once the heats start it is over before you know it. The ski cross racers only got 1 qualification round compared to 2 for the snowcross participants. They took the top 32 racers and they are put into heats of 4. 4 skiers race down the course together, fast and close together and there is a very good chance that there is going to be a crash or 2. It's faster paced than snowboard cross although I enjoyed the snowboard cross more. There was one particular corner on the course just above the big jump before the finish line that caused a lot of grief for the skiers. From where we sat on the hill we could see about 3 banked corners and 3 jump features. As the skiers came over the one set of jumps there were a lot of arms and legs flailing in the air and as they disappeared from view with us, we knew that they were landing on their backs, butts or worse and you just kind of shuddered as if you could honestly feel them hit the ground. One of those crashes was a Canadian who until that moment looked like he was definitely going to win a medal.

The next day was training day for the women’s ski cross and as we were sitting out on the hill a blonde girl in a Canadian uniform came along and was just checking out a certain part of the course with a few rollers on it that was causing her grief. We realized that she was a Canada team member but really had no idea who she was. She talked to us about being at the X Games so we came to the conclusion that she was probably the girl who was the World Cup champion and that is who she ended up being. Ashleigh McIvor from Whistler is our new Gold medal champion. The girls are not quite as fast as the guys but they still fall into the crazy category. One of the girls slid out on the corner by us and ended up tangled in our fence and broke off a couple of poles. We then had to run out and fix the fence before the racing could continue. I have one of the fence clips involved in that incident and it is going to become an ornament on my Christmas tree. As soon as the ski cross was over, all of the fencing on the hill had to come down as the course needed to be completely taken down so that it could be rebuilt for PGS, parallel grand slalom.

The day that we started setting up for PGS, the weather changed and the rain returned. The sun was gone and the forecast for the next week was not good. The course for PGS is easier to set than any of the other courses. It just a large rectangle down the hill, 2 raby side around gates/flags. It's fast paced but totally different than the other events. There are no jumps to hit, the racers never leave the ground; they just race flat out down the hill to see who can get to the finish line first.

We did a lot of cleaning up the ski cross course, taking down nets and moving extra nets and poles to the bottom. It was really foggy and wet and you are always chilled and damp. It snowed close to a foot in those couple of days coming up to Friday and Saturday race days. The snow is heavy and wet and packs like cement. It is nothing like soft fluffy Rocky Mountain powder. The PGS racers do not practice on the real course so a training course is set up on another run on the hill and that is where they teams get time to practice. We were sent over to the practice area on Thursday to do side slipping down the course after each racer goes to mow down the grooves they make around each gate. It was super foggy and just about zero visibility. It was so difficult to find your way back after you got off the chair. It was so out of my comfort zone. The Russian coach kept offering us all a cup of tea from his thermos. He had a thermos and about 20 paper cups in his bag and was quite sure we should have tea with him.

I had Friday the 26th off and Darla, my sister in law, had flown in the night before. A friend that we had both gone to high school with came and picked us up and we went back to North Vancouver with her and did a walk through Lynn Canyon with her and her dog. We then went back to her house and had tea and caught up on the years. Darla has kept in contact with her through the years but I had not seen her since our 10 year high school reunion. I missed the PGS women’s event on my day off and it was won by a Dutch skier. Ben, the crew chief we had from Holland, was hysterical. The rest of the crew were still laughing about his reaction the next day and I honestly was sad I had missed it. He had Saturday off and we all thought that he was probably still celebrating the whole day.

Saturday was most everyone’s last shift. The day started early at 6:30 and it was pouring rain. We were out on the hill before 7 and chilled and damp instantly. It was the worst day we had. By noon we were all wet and cold and grouchy and just wanted it all to be over so that we could do the take down and go home to get dry and warm. That is a poor attitude when you are at the Olympics but I do believe that most of the spectators, some who had been in the stands since 8am, felt the same. It was foggy as well so most of the course was out of view. We were standing about 20 feet downhill from the start gates and would lose sight of the racers after about 3 gates.

I never did do the gate judge job; I kept my job as net crew for all my shifts. One of the young girls on our crew and I were told by the crew chiefs, who all worked regularly as trail crew at Cypress Mtn, that we could come and work with them anytime as trail crew guys. We had proved ourselves and made the cut!!

The quarter final heats started about 1 o’clock and by this time I had water running down my legs into my boots and my boots literally squished when I walked. We had a couple of Canadians who we knew could be medal contenders and I have photo of Jasey- Jay Anderson in the start gate for his gold medal run and another one with him about 10 feet out of the gates on his way to winning gold. It was amazing and you could always tell from the reaction of the crowd how well Canada had done. When we realized that we had won gold, we all cheered, hooted and hollered and then immediately got started on taking down all the fence so that we could be done and finally dry. As soon as we started working, we started to warm up.

We could hear that they were going to do the medal ceremony right then at Cypress and I had never been on the hill while a medal ceremony was done. All of a sudden we could hear the national anthem being played and we all stopped and just stood there. You could honestly hear the spectators singing all the way up the mountain. The rain, fog, cold and squishy boots were instantly forgotten. It was my teary eyed moment and those few minutes were the perfect ending to an amazing adventure. It was the ultimate moment and I knew then that it was over and it was time to go home to my very missed family.

Love Heather