But this week, the spotlight’s on Sochi, the Russian city that will host the next winter Olympics in two years.

Wednesday was the first time athletes were allowed to train on the Olympic downhill skiing course in Sochi.

Reporter Julia Barton says many Russians are hoping the 2014 Winter Games will make Sochi a must-see international destination.

“Sport? I suppose it’s our great distraction, but it’s also the great sort of bonding of Australian society, and people and culture,” said Sean Gorman, an academic from Curtain University in Perth.

I went to an Australian Rules Football Game in Melbourne with Gorman to try to find out why Australians love sport so much. “It’s a hard question to answer, but… it goes straight to our identity and the way we do things here in Australia.”

And the way they do things, Gorman insisted, is more intense than any silly old American baseball game or Brazilian soccer match. “Without a shadow of a doubt. When you talk to people from overseas, they are gobsmacked at just how popular this game actually is,” said Gorman.

I was myself gobsmacked at how passionate Gorman and others were in making their argument. To prove his point, Gorman even went through the personal humiliation of trying to sing his team’s fight song. He supports the lowly Fremantle Dockers.

I also got to hear the fans of the Melbourne Demons sing their fight song, a rousing ballad sung to the tune of George M. Cohan’s patriotic American song “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” The Demons’ lyrics: “It’s the emblem of the team we love.” (By the way, when I told people at the game their fight song was an American knockoff, they looked at me in disbelief.)

There are many theories as to why Australians cherish sport so much. First there’s the climate and space theory.

“It’s much easier to engage in sport in Australia because it has good weather and it has lots of room,” said David Rowe, a professor of cultural research at the University of Western Sydney.

Makes sense. Then there’s the theory that sporting culture in Australia is different because it’s not dominated by one or two main sports.

“You’ve been to Britain I’m sure, you know, (they’re) football mad, Italy is football mad, South America is football mad. But, not sport mad,” said Rowe. “What distinguishes Australia is a broader commitment to sport.”

I’d buy that. Australians seem to like just about anything with a winner and a loser.

Then, there’s the theory that Australians are just trying to get their mother’s attention.

“The British take notice of us because we bash ‘em up at Cricket,” said John Coates, the president of the Australian Olympic Committee.

Coates did issue a correction. “Or, we used to (bash ‘em up at cricket).”

And lastly, there’s the chip on the shoulder theory, as explained by Clive Allcock, an Australian psychiatrist who also writes about horse racing.

“Americans have got the rightful position of being one of the big nations in the world. And our competitiveness says we’d like to be up there, but obviously, we’re not so big, we haven’t got such a strong business culture. We can do well in sport. Being a smaller country, we can take on the world in sport and succeed, and succeed beyond sometimes our wildest expectations.”

Olympic Glory

In the unofficial medal table, Australia finished in 4th place at the Summer Olympics of 2000 and 2004. In those Games, the Aussies took home about half the medals that the Americans did. Not too shabby for a country with only 1/14th the population. Australia’s incredible success was no accident.

“Between 1980 and 2000, we imported 200 coaches, largely from Eastern Europe and Asia, in diving, in gymnastics, in rowing, in canoeing, in archery,” explained John Coates, the AOC president.

In just eight years, Australia more than doubled its medal haul. But then, the wheels fell off the bus. At the Beijing Summer Games in 2008, Australia dropped to sixth place. Newspapers depicted a country gripped by an identity crisis.

“The Brits beat us,” said Coates.

I offered: “It wasn’t like it was a disaster.”

He countered: “It was.”

Coates said that won’t happen in London next year. He said finishing outside of the top five is “not good enough.”

Coates told me the old Olympic ideal of just participating is “not the Australian ethos. We are very much about winning.”

At What Cost?

This determination to win at all costs is starting to be questioned among ordinary Australians. Taxpayers are paying an awful lot of money to train their athletes to win all those medals.

“Various people have tried to come up with calculations of the cost per gold medal,” said David Rowe at the University of Western Sydney. “One (calculation) I saw was $48 million per Australian, per medal, something of that nature.”

That’s at the very high end of spending, per capita, compared with other countries. Rowe didn’t think that’s an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars. He said that money could be better spent on community ball fields and local resources. That was also the conclusion of a well-publicized national report in Australia, referred to as “The Crawford Report.”

I met with Australian water polo Olympians Rebecca Rippon and Alicia McCormack and asked them if money should be spent on community sport or elite athletes? The two women said both are necessary.

“If you don’t put (money) into grass roots, then you’re not going to support those athletes enough as a grassroots athlete to come up and be an elite athlete in a high-performance sport,” said McCormack.

Rippon added, “If you want to people to aspire to do things, and there’s nothing for them at the end, then it’s really hard for them to continue and wonder why they’re putting in the work.”

Regardless, both women don’t buy the idea that they’re coddled elite athletes. The women get some money to train, but funding “really doesn’t even add up to your rent,” said McCormack.

And being an Olympic athlete requires long, long, long hours of training, with little glory and glamour for most Olympians.

“The only people that really know that you’re an Olympian are either people that you’ve grown up with, or if you come from a small community, people from there may know, or people within the water polo community. It’s not like I’d be walking down the street, and someone would say, ‘Ahh, there’s an Olympian,’” said McCormack.

But once the Olympics are on TV, McCormack and Rippon know they become role models. And the two women said that matters.

But investing in role models and national sporting prestige is no longer resulting in widespread public participation. People aren’t getting off their couches. Australia has an alarming obesity problem among its young people.

Still, for the time being, that hasn’t put a dent in funding elite sports. Last year, the Australian government boosted the budget for training top athletes by more than 20 percent.

So, Australians remain as obsessed as ever about sports: just watching them, not playing.

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Marco Werman: The Palestinian national soccer team, today, played it’s first competitive  game on home soil. The team played Thailand in Al-Ram on the west bank, near Jerusalem. In sporting terms the soccer match was a qualifier ahead for the Olympic games in London next year. It was much more than that in political terms, though. The Palestinian prime minister, Salaam Fayyad, was in the stands, he called it “a historic day”

Salam Fayyad: It’s a historic day for the first time playing a home game, international competition, one that counts, it’s official, we’re all reassembled. One side representing a country that has been around for a very long period of time, ah another one, we’re working on becoming a country.

Werman: The BBC’s Jon Donnison is in the West Bank at the Faisal Al-Husseini Stadium in Al- Ram. Jon, First of all, what’s the score of the match? It just ended.

Donnison: Well everyone’s left pretty deflated, actually, because after what was a pretty good game, ah, the Palestinians actually won after normal time, one nil, but that only evened things up from the first leg which the Thais won, so the game went into extra time, it then went to penalties, six five, the Thais won on penalties. So huge groans, and I’ve actually just seen one of the Palestinian players who missed a penalty tramping off in tears, a few friends trying to console him.

Werman: What to you think was the Thai team’s main asset?

Donnison: Well, to be honest, they took some pretty good penalties, uhm, they didn’t seem to have a single fan among the seven odd thousand people watching this game, but they remained calm, they weren’t put off by all the jeers and whistles as they took their penalties and they put the first five of them all away. They eventually missed one, but they ended up winning.

Werman: And do you think the Palestinians looked pretty good throughout the ninety minutes?

Donnison: Yeah, they’re not bad, I mean, the Palestinians are rated, I think, a hundred and seventy eighth in the world in the FIFA world rankings, and the Thais are a hundred and twentieth, I think. So the Palestinians are not a great team, but I think certainly my overall impression of the evening was just the enthusiasm for football here, and you know, the first competitive game played on Palestinian territory.

Werman: Given the stall in peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, are there people in the media who are saying sports might be able to succeed where, you know, politics has not?

Donnison: No. There aren’t really many people saying that. Palestinians, at the moment, are incredibly skeptical about the peace process. Of course president Obama re-launched direct peace talks with Israel and the Palestinians September last year and it came to nothing within a matter of weeks, so , I think people tonight frankly were enjoying themselves, and probably forgetting a bit about politics. But I certainly don’t think they see this really significant in terms of the peace process at all, no.

Werman: Now, for the Palestinian soccer team, what next for them? I mean, will they be able to improve their ranking, which right now ain’t too great?

Donnison: No, it isn’t great. A hundred and seventy eighth in the world, as I say. I think they will be looking to continue and look forward to world cup qualification in future, they also play in various asian football tournaments and they will be looking to play more games at home. They’re actually in the process of building a new stadium just up the road in Ramala [sp], which they hope to get open to play some of their games. And, you know, I think most fans will be hoping that this is not the last time they’re going to see their team play on home soil.

Werman: And Jon, on the bright side, I guess the Palestinians must somehow feel that hosting an international event like this brings a sense of normalcy to their lives.

Donnison: It does. And that was the message I got, not only from prime minister Salam Fayyad, but also from the president of the Palestinian Football Federation, Jibril Rajoub, who I was talking to earlier today, and he said: Look, this is a small step, but it is another step toward normalcy, it’s another Palestinian institution, if you like, and the Palestinians are seeking statehood and every step that puts them on the international stage as the state of Palestine, as country, which I guess when you represent Palestine in a football tournament, you kind of do,they see that as a step forward, albeit, as I say, a small step.

Werman: Well, it’s not a win, but it’san encouraging night for Palestinian soccer, the BBC’s Jon Donnison in the West Bank at the Faisal Al-Husseini Stadium, thanks so much

Donnison: It’s a pleasure.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

5. Multi-lingual Shakespeare. All of Shakespeare’s 38 plays will be performed next year in London, each in a different language. Hosting this 6-week season — part of London’s 2012 Cultural Olympiad — is the reconstructed Globe Theater. The environs may be authentically Elizabethan, but no-one back in the 16th century would have seen Titus Andronicus in Cantonese, The Tempest in Arabic, Love’s Labour’s Lost in British Sign Language, or The Taming of the Shrew in Urdu.

Given the diversity of languages and, presumably, styles of stagecraft, it’s surprising the Globe isn’t presenting these plays at a diversity of venues. Putting on plays at the Globe is all about conjuring up a specific time and place in English history. This season of plays seems designed to do the opposite. Think of all Shakespeare-inspired foreign language movies, like Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood — based on Macbeth — that transport you worlds away. That’s when you get a sense of the universality of Shakespeare. I’m not sure if the setting of Globe for all these plays will convey that.

4. Texting surprises. Two new studies on texting are out. The first focusses on literacy acquisition, and the scond on the texting habits of Australians. In the first, a group of children in the UK were given mobile phones to text to their hearts’ content. Their literacy acquisition skills — reading and spelling — did not suffer as a result. In the second, Austalians, and men in particular, expressed disatisfaction with texting shorthand (even the Aussie-specific stuff like totes (totally) and redic (ridiculous). Also — this is really surprising — more than 75% of Australians age 65 years and older send at least one text a day. Those elderly Australians are totes techno. Redic!

3. Eliminating an unwanted language. In these times of language disappearance, it’s not often you hear of an effort to willfully eliminate a language. That, though, it what’s happening in South African. The language in question is more like pidgin. It’s called Fanagalo, and it’s like a simplified version of Zulu, with some Xhosa, Afrikaans and English thrown in. During colonial times, it was used as a language of instruction in the mines. Colonial bosses would issue orders to workers in Fanagalo. Over the years, it acquired quite a few technical mining phrases and so it is still used today. Now, there’s a debate in South Africa over its usefulness, even as there’s widely-held distaste for the way in which it came into being. The National Union of Mineworkers is pushing to have Fanagalo abolished — which has set South Africa’s Chamber of Mines thinking about how exactly to do that.

2. Keeping Russian and Chinese pure. Efforts are underway to keep Russian and Chinese free of English words and acronyms. Here are two languages that developed largely in isolation during large parts of the 20th century. Now that Russia and China are more connected, Russian and Chinese are having trouble incorporating (or resisting) Anglicisms. Some new Russian words include steyk-kholdery (stakeholders), autsorsing (outsourcing), riteyl (retail) and franchayz (franchise). New Chinese words often derive from English-language acronyms: NBA, CPI, WTO, GDP.

Both countries are taking ham-fisted approaches: Russia’s anti-monopoly service penalized a Japanese sushi chain which displayed a billboard saying Happy New Menu. It also took action against a sportswear store using the expression new collection. China’s General Administration of Press and Publication issued an edict barring Chinese newspapers, books and websites from using English words and phrases. Neither approach seems likely to work.

1. New book sparks a debate about the staying power of English. Nicholas Ostler’s The Last Lingua Franca makes the argument that one day in the distant future English will cease to be a global language, that most English speakers will be native speakers (right now, an estimated 30% of English speakers are native speakers). Not only that, but it won’t be replaced by any other lingua francas. The world won’t need a common tongue, says Ostler, because we’ll all be able to speak in our own native tongues, and communicate via translation devices. Not surprisingly, Ostler’s theory/prediction has been roundly criticized, by champions of English as well as by techno-skeptics. Still, one of Ostler’s main points, that history has not stopped, and that language evolution has not played itself out, is well taken. And just look at Aramaic, Greek and Latin, all in their days lingua francas.

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MARCO WERMAN:  It would be hard to overestimate the impact Juan Antonio Samaranch had on the modern Olympics.  Samaranch was the former head of the International Olympic Committee.  He died today at age 89.  Samaranch took the helm in 1980 just as the Olympics faced a mass boycott.  The Games were on the brink of bankruptcy.  When he stepped down 21 years later, the IOC boasted millions in assets and the Games were more popular than ever.  His career was not without controversy.  For one, Samaranch served in the government of Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco.  Philip Hersh covers the Olympics for the Chicago Tribune.  He says Samaranch used a number of strategies to revive the Games.

PHILIP HERSH:  He breathed life back into the Games largely with massive global sponsorships, huge television rights, and tremendous commercialization of the Games, all of that following the end of amateurism, which allowed for a lot of that commercialization.  So there is no doubt that financially Juan Antonio Samaranch had an enormous on saving the Olympic Games.

WERMAN: Of course there is a lot of corruption that Mr. Samaranch presided over.  In 1999 six international Olympic committee members were expelled after they were found to have accepted cash and gifts from American officials in their bid for the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, Utah.  Here’s Mr. Samaranch acknowledging what he called the Olympics blackest day.

JUAN ANTONIO SAMARANCH:  The first time we have proof, we react very quickly and in three months we cleaned the house.  Internationally the committee is living in this world.  It is not living in another world, in the idyllic world.  What happens in our society can happen also in the IOC.

WERMAN: That’s the late Juan Antonio Samaranch talking about corruption in the International Olympic Committee.  Note there that he’s not accepting any personal responsibility for the corruption that happened on his watch.  Philip Hersh, why were Samaranch’s feet not held closer to the fire on this?

HERSH: Mr. Samaranch, if you believe what he just said, then I’ve got a bridge I will sell you very, very cheaply.  Mr. Samaranch knew everything that was going on in the Olympic movement.  He immediately turned a blind eye on three matters.  One was doping because had he cracked down more on doping in the eastern block, it would have offended the east block leaders whom he needed to achieve what he achieved in Seoul, which was to get the entire Olympic world back together for a Summer Games.  The other was the corruption which went on well before Salt Lake City.  And the third was that he gave IOC membership to people who represented some of the most despotic regimes in the world.  And not only that, but he also honored some of these despots, Arykarnic, or the President of East Germany, he just wanted to curry East Germany’s favor so he gave Arykarnic the Golden Olympic Order.  At a time when East Germany was doping athletes in such a way that it affected the health of future generations.  And then, of course, there’s the whole issue of what he did in the Franco government.  Some people have forgiven him for that.  Spain has clearly forgiven him for that more than the rest of the world has.

WERMAN: Philip, you’ve covered 15 Olympics, did you ever get a chance to meet Juan Antonio Samaranch?

HERSH: Oh I met Samaranch on many occasions.  Samaranch was a masterful leader, a masterful consensus builder, and on the good side he was responsible for a growth in the number of woman athletes from 18% to 45%.  So you saw that side of him, and yet this is the famous grapefruit incident.  I was at that table when that happened, when he kind of imperiously motioned to an aid to help cut his grapefruit at breakfast at the 1997 World Figure Skating Championships.  He as Machiavellian in both the best and worst sense of that word, I guess.  And in the best sense that he knew how to get things done, and in the worse sense that his ethics were definitely situational.

WERMAN: Philip Hersh writes about the Olympics for the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times; greatly appreciate your speaking to us about the late Juan Antonio Samaranch.

HERSH: Thank you very much, my pleasure.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

5. The End of Bo. As repeat readers and listeners know, I’m on the fence when it comes to recording the death of languages. No, it’s not that. It’s really that I can’t come up with a storyline that isn’t just a repeat (in a tediously predictible public radio way) of the last time a language died. You know the drill: elderly speaker of said language passes on, leaving a the very last speaker without a linguistic buddy. Cue scratchy audio of aforementioned last speaker reciting a poem or prayer. That’s certainly also the case with Bo. Boa Senior (pictured left) was about 85 when she died earlier this year. You can listen to the scratchy audio of Boa Senior here. The difference though, with Bo is that it’s far, far older than most languages. Some linguists claim it is among the world’s original languages, possibly 70,000 years old. That’s where in this case, the storyline differs. RIP Bo.

4. Canada’s polyglot Olympics. The Vancouver Olympics were broadcast all over the world in hundreds of languages. But even in Canada they were broadcast in more than twenty languages, including Cree and seven other native languages. (That’s Cree in the picture, rendered in Canadian Aboriginal Syllabic characters). We hear from Cree commentator Abel Charles who must have had occasion to yell Kitahaskwew pitikwataw! (“He shoots! He scores!”) a few times on the way to Canada’s gold medals in both men’s and women’s hockey. Cree is not an economical language: pretty much everything takes longer to say in Cree than in English, so Charles has his work cut out for him.

3. Bilingual Pandas. So two giant pandas that have been on loan to the United States have been returned to China. They were actually born in the U.S. but had to be “returned” to China under an agreement between the two countries. In the U.S. they learned a few words of English. But what good will that do them in China? More importantly perhaps, will the body language and gestures of their Chinese keepers confuse them? Will they feel comfortable enough in the new — and, species-wise, original — environs to think about mating? Pandas being pandas, maybe not.

2. Two disturbing lawsuits. Americans’ appetite for suing each other sometimes takes my breath away. But– I know — there can be good reasons for litigation. Consider these linguistic lawsuits: #1: Nicholas George, an American studying Arabic at Pomona College, California has teamed up with the ACLU to sue the Transportation Security Administration over his detention at Philadelphia’s airport. TSA officers grew suspicious when they saw the student’s Arabic flashcards, which included the words bomb and terrorism. The suit contends that the officers asked George whether he was Muslim or “pro-Islamic.” Lawsuit#2: School secretary Ana Ligia Mateo, hired in part because she was bilingual, is suing the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District in North Carolina. A new principal at Mateo’s school had issued an English-only policy that banned Mateo from speaking Spanish, not just with students but with their parents. Mateo refused to comply with the new policy was “effectively terminated.”

1. Wartime translator. The Pentagon’s research arm, DARPA, is working on that holy grail of handheld translators: a device that can recognize up to 20 languages and translate them with 98% accuracy. Previous attempts have met with mixed success. Remember the Phraselator? The new device will have to do better with dialects: Arabic, for example, has a ton of them. And even though this is military research, its application will be greatly felt in the civilian world.

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• Aboriginal Canadians divided over Vancouver Olympics

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MARCO WERMAN:  The Vancouver Olympics were the first to officially involve native, or indigenous, groups.  Four of Canada’s first nations co-hosted the games.  For them it’s now time to ask that pesky question facing all Olympic hosts:  was it worth it?  Here’s more from The World’s Andrea Crossan.

ANDREA CROSSAN:  It was hard to miss the indigenous influence on these Olympics.  The opening ceremonies highlighted Canada’s native ancestry.  And then there was the Aboriginal Pavilion in Vancouver.  Those are Inuit throat singers performing to a standing-room only crowd.  The Pavilion is one of several places where visitors to the Olympics and Paralympics can learn more about Canadian native culture.  The coalition of aboriginal groups co-hosting the Games is called the Four Host Nations.  Tewanee Joseph is the CEO.  He says that the Games are a perfect opportunity to show the world that there’s more to native communities than poverty and social ills.

TEWANEE JOSEPH:  For all too long what you see in this country is despair, distraught, anger, frustration and our young people, what we wanted to do is share with them and celebrate something that’s good because we are good people.  We’re proud people.  And when you look at the images that we put forward in these Games, we want to change the way people view us.  We want to break the stereotypes of the dime-store Indian.  I think it’s a turning point in this country where people need to see what’s good about our culture.

CROSSAN: Visitors to the Games saw symbols of native culture everywhere.  The Vancouver Olympic logo is an Inuit symbol, it’s called an inukshuk.  It’s a stone formation that’s been used for centuries by the Inuit as a guide marker through arctic terrain.  And Olympic medals featured a native design as well.  But some aboriginal leaders say that the organizers just exploited native culture.

GRAND CHIEF STEWART PHILLIP:  Canada, and particularly Vancouver, played the indigenous card and they did so very successfully.

CROSSAN: That’s Grand Chief Stewart Phillip.  He’s the President of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs.  His group represents 80 native communities.  Phillip refused to participate or support the Games.  He admits there may be some gain for Canadian indigenous communities like the cultural centers that are part of the Olympic legacy plan.  But he doesn’t think there will be much else to show for it.

PHILLIP:  The Olympics is very much like the proverbial circus that comes to town and everybody takes time out, goes down and enjoys the rides and glitter and glamour and then it’s gone.  What’s left in its place is the empty lot and the litter and a few memories of the good times that people had when it was in town.

CROSSAN: Chief Phillip says what Olympic visitors didn’t see is the harsh reality of life for many indigenous Canadians.  Well it’s universal throughout this country that first nation’s communities are economically depressed.  There’s massive unemployment.  Health conditions in first nations’ communities is in a state of crisis.  The housing conditions are absolutely atrocious.  The conditions that exist today that will exist tomorrow and next week and next year are really nothing to celebrate.

GAIL SPARROW:  That’s Musquem land; we own that golf course, so it’s a public golf course.  Its 18 holes.

CROSSAN: Gail Sparrow is the former Chief of the Musquem tribe, one of the Four Host Nations.  Those four are the only native communities that will directly benefit from the Olympics.  Each Host Nation gets “legacy money”, lump sum payment of round 18 million dollars.  Sparrow says the Musquem are going to use that money to build a gymnasium.  But she wishes organizers had done more to encourage tourists to visit her community.

SPARROW: Come to our world, listen to our song, see our dancing, look at our carvers and our weavers and our knitters instead of seeing it through a window down in the commercial area downtown Vancouver.

CROSSAN: Sparrow’s community hasn’t had many Olympic visitors.  The Musquem Nation isn’t the neediest of native communities.  Sparrow admits her tribe is fairly well off.  But it still has many of the problems that affect poor reservations.

SPARROW: We may look like we’re better off with our housing, we may be better off with our buildings, but inside those homes, the people aren’t.  That’s where it’s hidden.  I go visit some of those people that say Gail I don’t have any more milk for my baby.

CROSSAN: Given that reality, some argue that there wasn’t enough financial gain for the tribes and that the Games were just a marketing of Indian culture.  But Four Host Nations CEO Tewanee Joseph still sees the Vancouver Olympics as a plus for Canada’s native communities.

JOSEPH: People will leave and want to learn more about our people.  And that’s a turning point, I think, in this country where we’ve been in the shadows on the outside looking in.  Now we’re at the forefront and we’re full partners in the Games and I think Canada will change because of it, because of the new relationships and the openness.  The world will view our people very differently.  I think our people will view the world differently.

CROSSAN: For The World, I’m Andrea Crossan, Vancouver.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

I’m not sure there has ever been a Winter Olympics where spectators were wearing shorts to watch ice hockey and curling. It was an unseasonably warm winter that looked a lot more like spring. But when the rain stopped bucketing down no-one cared. Vancouver shone like a precious gem when the sun came out. Visitors and locals enjoyed the best of both worlds. The Winter Olympics were happening and the cherry blossoms were blooming.

Celebrate!

But that leads me too another complaint I heard a lot. Canucks didn’t know HOW to celebrate. As a nation, they contended, the Canadians are too reserved and understated. They chided us for not reacting with enough enthusiasm when Alex Bilodeau won Canada’s first gold medal on home soil.

Au contraire mes amis (a little shout out there for those who complained that there wasn’t enough French spoken at the opening ceremonies).

There was mad nationalism going on in Vancouver.

The streets were a sea of red and white jerseys. If you didn’t have a pair of those adorable red mittens you couldn’t leave your house. And everyone had the standard issue maple leaf temporary tattoo on their cheeks. Exhibit A would be the photo of myself above!

I was lucky enough to attend the USA-Canada women’s hockey gold medal game. The Canadian fans were wrapped in flags, carrying signs, and shouting out cheers for the home team.

And the crowd was on its feet for the final minutes of the game as Canada beat Team USA, 2-0.

And then came the medal ceremony. The Canadian crowd cheered loudly for the women from Finland, who were ecstatic over their Bronze medal result. And then came the American women’s team, visibly upset by their loss.

The Canadian crowd started chanting. First it was a handful of voices – and then it was thousands. Pretty soon, the entire arena was filled with the deafening sound of Canadian fans chanting:

“U-S-A!
U-S-A!
U-S-A!”

It was a nice reminder of what the Olympics are really about. It’s not about snow, or lack of it. And it’s not about “Owning the Podium.”

And maybe that’s what makes Canadians seem like we lack that fighting, nationalistic fervor. Canadians cheer for everyone.

We cheer the effort as much as the result.

We like our flag plenty, but we like yours too.

• Andrea’s story on Russian radio in Vancouver
• Andrea’s story on Vancouver’s Elbow Room Cafe
• Andrea’s story on Safe-Sex Superheroes in Vancouver

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  Here’s how one headline in a British newspaper read “Vancouver Games Continue Downhill Slide from Disaster to Calamity.”  The article said unfolding events are threatening to make these games the worst in Olympic history.  We might point out here that London will host the 2012 Olympics and so that paper may not be completely impartial.  Daphne Branham is a columnist with the Vancouver Sun.  She says calling the Vancouver Games the worst Olympics ever is overkill.

DAPHNE BRANHAM:  Every Game has some problems.  There were obviously some problems at the beginning of these Olympics but worst Olympics ever?  I mean heavens; there have been many much worse than this.  Atlantic had huge bus problems, people couldn’t get to events.  In Athens, they didn’t have any spectators so no, this is not the worst Olympics by a long, long margin.

WERMAN:  So you say it’s far from being the worst Olympics.  Would you say it is a good Olympics though?

BRANHAM:  Absolutely.  I spoke to an Estonian Alpine coach yesterday, an American, and he said that he’s been to three or four Olympics and he said this was the best one he’s been to.  He said it’s, you know, the transportation works, the venues are beautiful.  He said it’s a great place.  That’s what we’re hearing when you walk around in the streets.  People think it’s fabulous.

WERMAN:  So why do you think some people are picking on BC?

BRANHAM:  You know it’s hard to know why the British press in particular has been so negative.  There’s part of me that thinks that they looked at other Olympics and thought gee, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this and so maybe there’s a bit of that and of course, up here we had the tragedy before the opening ceremonies of the young Georgian luger dying.  That alone put a pall on the opening ceremonies and the beginning of the games.  The other thing, the weather was not very good.  The other thing is I think there is a slight amount of hubris in British Columbia in particular.  We, a few years ago, decided to put on the license plates British Columbia, the best place on earth and I think that’s a little bit of hubris and makes certainly Canadians like me a little bit uncomfortable.  We prefer to be the people saying sorry and one of our Olympians, one of our gold medalists, John Montgomery, he apologized for being too happy about winning and I think that’s more what people expect from Canada.  So I think, you know, some of it is that Canadians, we’re acting somewhat differently than we had in the past with things like Own the Podium which was the program …

WERMAN:  Yeah, I was going to, I mean the Own the Podium kind of concept was to basically, you know, the Canadian team said we’re going to dominate this year, we’re going to completely dominate and did Canada really think they were going to literally own the podium in these games?

BRANHAM:  I think there were people who wanted to believe that and certainly, you know, if you look at the people who should have medaled and came forth, had they done as they had been expected to do, we probably would be much, we’d be much closer to the United States than we are.  Own the Podium and one of the problems in Canada is that we really haven’t supported our mature athletes in a way that other nations have.  We certainly don’t put as much money into athletic programs as the United States does through both its college scholarship programs, as well as supporting athletes who are the elite athletes.  We aren’t anywhere near to countries like some of the former Soviet block countries and so this was Canada’s way of saying you know what?  We’re not going to be embarrassed on Canadian soil.  We would like to win.

WERMAN:  Daphne Branham, a columnist with the Vancouver Sun.  Thanks so much for your time, Daphne.

BRANHAM:  You’re very welcome.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• Click here to start the slideshow

Eurozone leaders say they will come to Greece’s rescue. But Greece’s Finance Minister, George Papaconstantinou, wants details, as to how exactly other eurozone nations will bailout his country. Papaconstantinou said the 16 countries that use the Euro need to devise a mechanism to help any nation that cannot pay its debts. At the same time, the European Union statistics agency, Eurostat, is saying that Greece falsified its data to hide the extent of its debts. Now the EU has given Greece until the end of February to provide more details of that.

In this podcast, we explore what went wrong with Greece and what it means for the rest of us. Also, an update from Haiti: How to bring jobs to the millions of unemployed. And a small flower shop near Vancouver that is putting together 1,800 bouquets for all the Olympic medal winners.

• BBC coverage of the Vancouver Olympics
• Vancouver 2010 homepage

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: The Winter Olympics in Vancouver officially start tonight.  But the games got off to a terrible start even before the opening ceremony got underway.  There was a fatal accident at the Whistler Sliding Center.  An athlete training for the luge competition was killed.  His name is Nodar Kumaritashvili and he was 21 years old.  The World’s Katy Clark has been following Olympic preparations today.  Katy, certainly not the kind of news anybody wanted as the Olympics get underway.  What happened exactly?

KATY CLARK: Well Kumaritashvili who was part of the Georgian delegation lost control of his sled near the finish line.  He went over the track wall and struck an unpadded steel pole.   They tried to revive him on site then rushed him to a hospital where he was reported to have died and I.O.C. President Jacques Rogas said today issuing a statement saying that the death clearly casts a shadow over these games.

MARCO: Now apparently other athletes have expressed concerns about the safety of the Whistler Sliding Center, that’s where the luge and other similar competitions are due to take place.  Yesterday in fact an Australian woman luger almost lost control in training at that track and said to what extent are we little lemmings that they just throw down the track?  Katy, just how dangerous is this track?

KATY: The track at Whistler has a reputation as one of the fastest and most dangerous in the world.  In recent weeks several teams have raised concerns about it.  And these guys aren’t afraid of the speed so they’re not being wimps about all of this stuff.  And there have been claims that the athletes haven’t had enough time to train on this track and that can also increase the risk of injuries.

MARCO: Awful news indeed.  Presumably the games will go on but let’s move onto some other stuff here in Vancouver before the crash the big worry was the weather.  What’s the forecast now?  What else are people talking about that?

KATY: Oh rain in the forecast through next week so fans, spectators and athletes who are not competing advised to bring their umbrellas along with them.  I mean not that unusual for that area but when you’re hosting the Winter Olympics and you have to truck in snow it’s a little bit strange.  The Canadians are also doing their best to give visitors a big Canadian welcome and they’re aiming to take advantage of being hometown favorites by shooting for a record number of medals.

MARCO: Katie what else are we, should we be looking for on the eve of these Winter Games?

KATY: Well there’s going to be a bunch of African athletes competing, which is very interesting.  Not medalling likely though, and look for Iran’s first female athlete at these games.  She’s an alpine skier.  Pakistan is also making its alpine skiing debut in Vancouver.

MARCO: We’ll leave it there, The World’s Katy Clark.  Thanks very much.

KATY: You’re very welcome.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.