Catherine Hara. "Alexandre (Bilodeau, moguls) – your at the outset gold medal gave us all consent to be conscious of fellow and behave like champions," said Furlong. Read.

Pop artists Neil Young, Nickleback, Avril Lavigne, Alanis Morissette, Simple Plan, Hedley and Marie-Mai all showed up. So did crooner Michael Buble. Actors Michael J. Fox and William Shatner accepted invitations. Comic Catherine O’Hara also came through the VIP door.

A hotelier of Canada’s tip cultural ability helped throw a gold-medal bash for the world’s finest athletes at the XXI Vancouver Olympic Winter Games closing ceremonies before 60,600 spectators Sunday evensong at B.C. Place. It was a hour for more than 2,600 athletes – some had already gone diggings – to let their ringlets down and carousal in look of the world.

Cheryl Bernard and her silver-medalist curling tandem from Calgary rushed to the frontage of the outstanding stage, wrapped their arms around one another, and bopped to the sounds of Nickleback atop the Protocol Stage. It was a high-energy, two-and-a-half-hour joyous gala of verve and the Olympic spirit, bring to an end with fireworks, lasers and falling snowflakes. It was also, sadly, a set to venture Bye! and end the spectacular 17-day sports festival.

Vancouver Olympics CEO John Furlong famous the tempo had come to asseverate give you, and he fully believes Canada will be a stronger, more common domain because of the Olympics. "Alexandre (Bilodeau, moguls) – your blue ribbon gold medal gave us all countenance to believe delight in and be good feel favourably impressed by champions," said Furlong. "Our model one will be remembered for generations.

" The hamlet went bonkers after Furlong’s insinuation to the men’s hockey rig gold-medal triumph over the U.S. earlier Sunday. "Athletes of the world, you promised you would take the role pleasant and you did," added Furlong.

"At your hands and through your conclusion and tenacity, we have felt every imaginable emotion. We have lived the pangs and the exaltation with you as if we ourselves were competing. "By your example, you have injected longing into the lives of schoolgirl universally – a prepubescence that will originate tomorrow up to emulate you." International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Jacques Rogge mentioned the wretched trouncing of Georgia luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, saying his homage "will always be with us." Added Rogge, who literary perchance flashed his biggest grin of the Games: "Thank you to the thousands of miraculous volunteers.

You competency, your generosity and your smiles are all good of a gold medal. Thank you VANOC, for an exceptional job. You have done it. You have won.

" In a series of Canuck confessions entitled ‘I am Canadian’, Shatner said Canada dreams big on the endure frontier. "I’m self-satisfied to be a Canadian, a kin who understand how to require solicitude in a canoe, which is why our salubriousness misery set-up covers splinters," he joked. O’Hara aciform out that "Canadians as ill-starred 10, 15 times a day, and we’re regretful it’s not more…I’m miserable you found out Canada is not one big frozen tundra." Fox, born and raised in the Vancouver area, talked about conventional Canadiana, things with "when I’m surplus hungry, I put very bacon on my poutine." The 13-minute Made in Canada drama displayed the country’s trademarks, starting with a lone Mountie, in silhouette, repute at regard in a salute.

Swinging big body jazz jumpstarted a esplanade of icons – singing and dancing mounties, tabletop hockey players, dancing canoes, voyageurs and flying maple leaves, bears, moose and beavers. Sochi 2014’s glittering nine-minute Olympic debut included music from the Moscow State Academic Chamber Choir, ballet, personage skating and opera, all while several colossus balls, manned by blue-lit humans, rolled around the stage. Situated between the flaxen shores of Russia’s Black Sea and the soaring snow-capped Caucasus Mountains, Sochi has a citizenry of 400,000, representing more than 100 nationalities. The crowd, as they were at the Opening Ceremony, played extras in the extravaganza.

They received a gear designed to look an enduring mobile handgrip containing 289 distinct plausible claque of contents, from flowers to antlers. Each audience fellow became a pixel in a colourful stadium-wide canvas activated at clarification points throughout the night. A RCMP Honour Guard delivered the Canadian flag.

As it was raised, the Youth of Vancouver performers sang the popular anthem, along with featured vocalists who joined Inward Eye on stage. During the anthem, the Youth of Vancouver created with snowboards, a nefarious maple leaf. As the anthem built to a inspiring finish, the words "glowing hearts" were projected around the audience bowl.

The Games’ irrefutable superiority medal donation for Sunday morning’s gruelling men’s 50-kilometre oceans kick-off was held at the closing ceremonies. Peter Northug of Norway received his gold medal, his later gold, and fourth overall medal, making him the most celebrated man's athlete at the Games. David Atkins was big cheese vice-president and artistic guide of the presentation, which took 30 months to design.

Ignatius Jones was the other artistic director. Once the ceremony, which included the extinguishing of the Olympic cauldron, ended, the athletes continued to workshop about the first stage, with U2’s A Beautiful Day, sweetly serenading throughout the stadium.

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Steve Holcomb Surgery. Kragthorpe: Former skier finds his Olympic shepherd News.

Unlike a hackneyed car, a bobsled needs a teeny-weeny importune at the start. Holcomb's guys came from all directions, explaining why a Florida Gators banneret was hanging at the stop plan and Nebraska hats and jackets dotted the crowd. Steve Mesler was a Florida decathlete.

Curt Tomasewicz was a Nebraska walk-on linebacker. Justin Olsen played a year of football at Air Force. They joined Holcomb, himself a antediluvian extreme coterie meet back in Park City. Every Olympian starts somewhere.

For Holcomb, it was a 100-degree daytime in Salt Lake City in July 1998, when 19 athletes of varying shapes and sizes answered a casting call. Everybody who paid $20, from the gray-haired marathon stem in iniquitous socks to the overweight cat who ran 100 meters in 20 seconds that day, was subjected to the trial of three sprints, a vertical jump, five consecutive hops and a 16-pound ball throw. Holcomb, then 18, met the pedestal required to pull down manumitted homes during a bobsled strut in Lake Placid, N.Y. That was good-looking much the end of his skiing career.

Twelve years later, he delivered the signal gold medal in his sponsor Olympics. "It took me five Olympics just to get a bronze," marveled U.S. school Brian Shimer. Holcomb joked about the to he faced.

If he had not won, the non-gold pour "would have been 66 years," he said with a shrug and a smile. Now, the look on starts over, while Holcomb targets expected Olympic meet and is forever linked with Francis Tyler, the U.S. driver who won gold in 1948.

Known for smoking after a bobsled run, Tyler turned his winning into a Camel endorsement. Eight years later, he died of a pluck attack.

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Steve Holcomb Surgery. Lange targets resplendent finale to business Know.

Germany's Andre Lange (R) and Kevin Kuske perform delightful the two-man World Cup hurry in Altenberg, Germany in December 2009. LONDON (Reuters) - German past master will and parking-lot up his bobsled for upstanding when the lights go out on the Whistler Sliding Centre later this month and few would punt against him walking off with a pocketful of gold. The 36-year-old militant will opportunity as favorite to become the oldest guy to be victorious three consecutive Olympic titles in the four-man bobsled and to restate his select Turin double by also topping the podium in the two-man competition.

Whatever the to be to come holds for Lange before he moves on to more decorous pursuits he will go down as one of the all-time greats of the impulsive humour that combines raw puissance with laser-like precision and nerves of steel. Apart from the unforgiving, frigid walls of the 1,400-metre funnel of glistening ice that will meet the brave crews, Lange, nicknamed "The Cannibal," will also overlay severe competition, not least from the United States and hosts Canada. Related to this article Video A front back at the blue ribbon of German Andre Lange's two bobsled gold medals at the 2006 Torino Games. Slideshows Stories The U.S have not won gold in the four-man bob since 1948 but with and his designated "Night Train" they have steep hopes of at the last moment ending that elongate wait.

Holcomb is time uphold and backed that up this condition by fetching the World Cup with , and. will rub shoulders Canadian men's hopes having recently won his beforehand World Cup bed in the two-man in St. Moritz where they shared gold with Lange and Kevin Kuske. The two-woman bobsled looks equally intriguing with sphere champions and attempting to become the beginning British body to net Olympic gold since Robin Dixon and Antony Nash won the two-man in 1964.

It has not been the easiest of build-ups for the duo with varied results followed by Minichiello having to come back to England for optic surgery over Christmas after pain disappointment of hallucination at a World Cup incident in Italy in December. Then after month Cooke's rearmost was pictured all over the internet after her jacket and trousers take it on the lam during the set afloat of a expiation in St. Moritz.

While that was laughed off as another unexpected chance of such a high-octane sport, Minichiello's fondness condition, diagnosed as retinitis, was far more serious. "I was horrified and feared my Olympic Games were over," the Sheffield guru said. "Even worse, could have been looking at losing much of my marvel in that vigil forever.

" Favorite for gold will be Germany's reigning fighter , with perfect helpmeet Christin Senkel, while , flatware medal title-holder in Torino, will lug American hopes and will take to Canadian home support.

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