Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games

The XXI Olympic Winter Games opened in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on February 12 and closed on February 28, 2010. To celebrate the Games, Britannica is pleased to offer a broad selection of information on Vancouver and the Olympics, including a video highlighting the city’s history and geography; an interactive map of the Olympic venues; a brief history of the Winter Olympic Games and past Canadian Games, with tables featuring International Olympic Committee (IOC) presidents, sites of the Olympic Games through the years, and medal winners of 2006; a colourful photo gallery; and daily highlights of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

Vancouver’s Olympic quest began in 1998, when the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) selected the city over Calgary and Quebec for Canada’s bid to host the 2010 Winter Games. The bid was technically a joint venture between Vancouver and the Coast Mountains resort town of Whistler, which lies about 70 miles (110 km) north of Vancouver and was the proposed site of most of the Games’ skiing and sliding events. The Vancouver bid to host the Games was shortlisted along with those from Bern, Switzerland, P’yŏngyang, North Korea, and Salzburg, Austria, in August 2002. Bern withdrew its bid one month later after a referendum indicated that most Bern voters did not want to pay for the Games. On July 2, 2003, the final vote of the IOC was held in Prague. In the first round of balloting, P’yŏngyang captured 51 votes, while Vancouver trailed in second place with 40 and Salzburg received 16. Salzburg was eliminated for the second round of voting, which Vancouver won 56 to 53, bringing the Olympic Games to Canada for a third time (Montreal had hosted in 1976 and Calgary in 1988).

Vancouver City Information

Vancouver lies between Burrard Inlet (an arm of the Strait of Georgia) to the north and the Fraser River delta to the south, opposite Vancouver Island. The city is just north of the U.S. state of Washington. It has a fine natural harbour on a superb site facing the sea and mountains.

Vancouver was originally a small sawmilling settlement, called Granville in the 1870s. It was incorporated as a city in April 1886 (just before it became the western terminus of the first trans-Canada railway, the Canadian Pacific) and was renamed to honour the English navigator George Vancouver, of the Royal Navy, who had explored and surveyed the coast in 1792. In 1929 two large suburbs to the south, Point Grey and South Vancouver, amalgamated with Vancouver, and its metropolitan area became the third most populous in Canada. By the 1930s Vancouver was Canada’s major Pacific coast port. After World War II it developed into Canada’s main business hub for trade with Asia and the Pacific Rim.

For more Britannica coverage, see Vancouver.

Notable Events from the Vancouver Winter Games

• February 12:

  • Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili died after crashing during a practice run hours before the Vancouver Olympic Games were set to open.
  • Technical difficulties caused delays at the opening ceremonies—the first Olympic opening ceremonies held indoors—which featured Canadian Olympic greats such as skier Nancy Greene, ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky, and basketball player Steve Nash.
• February 13:

  • Simon Ammann of Switzerland was awarded the first gold medal of the Vancouver Olympics after winning the normal hill ski jumping event.
  • Slovakia’s Anastazia Kuzmina won the first Winter Olympic gold medal in her country’s history by scoring a surprise victory in the women’s 7.5-km biathlon sprint.
  • Short-track speed skater Apolo Ohno took the silver medal in the men’s 1,500-metre race, which was his sixth career Olympic medal, tying speed skater Bonnie Blair’s record for the most career Winter Olympics medals won by an American.
• February 14:

  • Skier Alexandre Bilodeau won the men’s moguls event and thus became the first Canadian to capture a gold medal in an Olympics held in Canada.
  • In response to the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili, an attempt was made to make the luge track slower and safer by shortening it. Felix Loch of Germany took the gold medal when the men’s singles luge event was held this day.
  • France’s Jason Lamy Chappuis edged out Johnny Spillane of the U.S. by four-tenths of a second in the Nordic combined normal hill event, the closest finish at a Nordic combined event in Olympic history.
• February 15:

  • The husband-and-wife team of Zhao Hongbo and Shen Xue from China won the pairs figure skating gold medal—the first figure skating gold in China’s Olympic history and the first time since 1960 that a team not from the U.S.S.R. or Russia captured the pairs gold.
  • The men’s downhill final was won by Switzerland’s Didier Défago, now the oldest men’s downhill Olympic champion, age 32 years 136 days. Défago’s winning run was only 0.07 second faster than that of silver medalist Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway and 0.09 second faster than that of American Bode Miller, who took the bronze.
  • American Seth Wescott took the gold in the first snowboarding event of the Games, the men’s snowboard cross.
• February 16:

  • One day after her countryman Mo Tae-Bum won South Korea’s first long-track speed skating gold medal in the men’s 500-metre race, Lee Sang-Hwa captured the gold in the women’s 500-metre event.
  • Maelle Ricker of Canada took the host country’s second gold medal of the Vancouver Games by finishing first in the women’s snowboard cross.
  • The women’s luge event was won by Tatjana Hüfner of Germany.
• February 17:

  • Alpine skier Lindsey Vonn became the first American woman ever to win a gold medal in the downhill event.
  • Shani Davis of the U.S. successfully defended his 1,000-metre speed skating title from the 2006 Winter Olympic Games. In so doing, he became to first man to win back-to-back Olympic gold medals at that distance.
  • Russian cross-country skier Nikita Kriukov beat countryman Alexander Panzhinskiy in a photo finish in the 1.6-km sprint event.
  • Snowboarder Shaun White capped off a banner day for the U.S. Olympic team by winning the men’s snowboard halfpipe event in dominant fashion.
• February 18:

  • Evan Lysacek of the U.S. won the men’s figure skating gold medal over favourite Yevgeny Plushchenko of Russia, the defending gold medalist.
  • Biathlete Tora Berger won the women’s 15-km individual event, garnering Norway’s 100th all-time Winter Olympic gold medal, the most in the history of the Games.
  • Germany’s Maria Riesch took gold in the women’s super combined Alpine skiing event.
• February 19:

  • Amy Williams of Great Britain prevailed in women’s skeleton, becoming the first Briton to win an individual Winter Olympic gold medal in 30 years.
  • The men’s super-G Alpine skiing event was won by Norway’s Aksel Lund Svindal, giving the reigning World Cup overall champion his first Olympic gold.
• February 20:

  • Swiss ski jumper Simon Ammann won the individual large hill event, seven days after capturing gold in the normal hill event. Ammann’s double win gave him four career individual Olympic ski jumping golds, the most of all time.
  • South Korea’s Lee Jung-Su captured his second gold medal of the Games by winning the 1,500-metre short-track speed skating event. U.S. skater Apolo Ohno placed third, and his bronze medal gave him the most career medals (seven) in American Winter Olympics history.
  • The women’s super-G event was won by Austria’s Andrea Fischbacher. In winning Austria’s first Alpine gold medal of the Vancouver Olympics, she reversed a disappointing start to the Games for the historic skiing power.
• February 21:

  • Germany took the gold medal in the two-man bobsled event. It was driver André Lange’s fourth career Olympic gold, the most of all time for a bobsled driver.
  • U.S. skier Bode Miller captured the first Olympic gold medal of his career by winning the men’s super combined event.
  • The newest Olympic event, ski cross, made its debut with Michael Schmid of Switzerland taking the men’s gold medal.
• February 22:

  • Canada’s Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir took the ice dancing gold medal, the first win in the event for any North American country.
  • Austria dominated the team ski jumping competition, easily beating Germany for the gold medal.
  • The women’s and men’s cross-country team sprint events both had close finishes and were won by Germany and Norway, respectively.
• February 23:

  • Carlo Janka of Switzerland captured his country’s first giant slalom gold medal in 26 years. Norway’s Kjetil Jansrud took silver, and his countryman Aksel Lund Svindal won bronze.
  • Austria won the Nordic combined team gold medal for the second consecutive Olympics.
• February 24:

  • Canada took both the gold and silver medals in the women’s bobsled, and the United States won the bronze, while Germany’s women’s bobsled teams were denied a medal for the first time in Olympic and world championship history.
  • Lydia Lassila of Australia won the gold medal in women’s aerial skiing, four years after she was felled by a devastating knee injury in the same event at the 2006 Winter Games.
  • China was awarded the gold medal in the women’s 3,000-metre short-track speed skating relay after four-time defending Olympic gold medalist South Korea was disqualified during the final.
• February 25:

  • Kim Yu-Na of South Korea easily captured the women’s figure skating gold medal after posting a world-record total score of 228.56 for her short program and free skate. Sentimental favourite Joannie Rochette of Canada—whose mother had died suddenly four days earlier—finished with the bronze.
  • Alexei Grishin of Belarus triumphed in the men’s aerial skiing final to secure the first Winter Olympic gold medal in his country’s history.
  • Canada’s women’s ice hockey team won the gold medal by defeating the U.S. by a score of 2–0 in the event final.
  • The men’s individual large hill event was won by Billy Demong of the U.S. It was the first Nordic combined gold medal ever won by an American.
• February 26:

  • Maria Riesch of Germany captured her second gold medal of the Vancouver Games by winning the women’s slalom.
  • The Swedish women’s curling team won its second consecutive Olympic gold medal, defeating Canada 7–6 in the event final.
• February 27:

  • The U.S. won the four-man bobsled gold medal for the first time in 62 years, soundly defeating the German team led by André Lange.
  • The men’s curling gold was captured by Canada, which became the first curling team in history to never lose a match during an Olympic competition.
  • The women’s and men’s team pursuit speed skating gold medals were won by Germany and Canada, respectively.
• February 28:

  • The last event of the Vancouver Games was the men’s hockey gold medal contest between Canada and the U.S. Canada won the highly anticipated match 3–2, with Pittsburgh Penguins superstar Sidney Crosby scoring the gold medal-winning goal in overtime.
  • The U.S. finished the Vancouver Games with 37 total medals, a Winter Olympics record, and Canada’s 14 gold medals were the most in the history of the Winter Games.