Vancouver Olympics: So many things going wrong

This Winter Olympics started out on such a bad foot, what with the young luge competitor being killed in trials, the day before it opened.

Horrible.

And from there, it hasn't gotten worse, certainly, but it's definitely gone badly.

In the opening ceremonies, the fourth pillar of the Olympic cauldron failed to lift, screwing up the all-important introduction to it all.

Then, the rest of the world seems covered in snow--including Dallas, Texas, for pity's sake--but Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada didn't have enough snow for the games for a while.

Does that make any sense?

China has too much snow. Washington, DC, the list goes on.

What a bad break.

Let's see, what else has gone wrong?

Yesterday I heard a report about the mountainsides being groomed by people with shoes (wth?), which made the course rough, uneven and slow.

Then, the Alpine race schedule for the Vancouver Olympics had been revised--again--after the postponement of Tuesday’s men’s super combined and the women’s events were rearranged last week (though there were no new revisions to the women’s schedule this week).

Next, check this out--first, not enough snow, then this: "Tuesday’s Olympic men’s super combined has been postponed because of heavy snow on the top of the Whistler Creekside racecourse and soft snow conditions brought on by snowfall at the bottom of the mountain. The cold temperatures that helped bring about a smooth men’s downhill on Monday after two days of weather delays turned what had been a forecast of light rain for Tuesday into a significant snowstorm overnight. Tuesday’s women’s downhill training was also canceled."

I don't think I ever remember an Olympics with such problems.

But wait. There's more. This from last week:

"Vancouver Olympic organizers announced Tuesday that 20,000 tickets would be canceled for events at Cypress Mountain, including high-profile sports like men’s and women’s halfpipe and ski cross. Warm weather and rain have created unstable conditions in some spectator areas at Cypress, organizers said. They previously had canceled 8,000 tickets for snowboard cross events this week."

Finally, yesterday, it seems the Zamboni-type machine on the men's speedskating course broke down . (I say Zamboni-type because it wasn't a Zamboni. Somebody thought they'd save money by getting a cheaper one from another company. Anyone ever hear of "you get what you pay for"?).

How embarassing.

It seems the officials "stood looking sheepish as a small technical crew scratched their heads and tried to solve the problems."

Not good.

If this doesn't change, these may go down as the "bumbling, non-working, Socialist Olympics."

Man, let's hope not.