Montreal 1976: Canada's Summer Olympic City The 1976 Olympics, the ones, were held in Canada's Largest city (at the time), Montreal. Canada's first taste as host of an Olympic City! It is mostly remembered with the "Stade Olympique", where the Expos play (but they're moving aren't they?), which cost a bundle and isn't yet paid off, and wasn't even finished on time anyway. It has the highest inclinded tower in the world. (Canada has the weirdest records, I mean the CN Tower is the "highest free-standing structure". What the hell is that? It's not a building, but since there is a taller structure it is the heighest one without cable. Well that's good to know! Woop-dee-doo, but what does it all mean Basil? I mean who cares, its nice and all as an Icon, but its damned ugly!) Anyway, back on the Olympics... Among the great things that happened at Montreal in 1976 is Gymnist Nadia Comeneci perfect 10 score. Also there was the boycott of 30 countries because New Zeland had done a rugby tour in South Africa. Many countries demanded that New Zeland be banned from the Olympics but the IOC refused because it said it wasn't affiliated with New Zeland's rugby team, so well the games were boycotted. Okay, I don't have any info really, but Its called procrastination so, don't expect me to expect this to be a good article at least you get to hear me be bitter.
Calgary 1988: Canada's Winter Olympic City Canada hosts its Winter Games! Where better than in Calgary. Far from Montreal. Where temperatures reach minus 40, where the mountains are pretty close by... Where better, indeed. Perhaps the flat-high temperatured Vancouver... 57 nations gathered at Calgary for the XV Olympic Games (Compared to an expected 80-85 at the Salt Lake City games in 2002). As usual the men outnumbered the women 1,270 to 364. Now that's a big difference (I guess you can tell when I fill these articles with researched facts). The Winter Games were once again dominated by the Soviets. In fact Canada placed a disappointing 4th place for Hockey. The most incredible thing happened in these special Games. Jaimaica (an Island very close to the Equator, well quite relatively close) was represented by a four-man bobsled team. I can thank Disney for telling me about this fact with their movie, 'Cool Runnings'. Not like I'd like to have to thank Disney, but it was their movie, right? There were at the time 7 sports (well there still are) and 46 events (68 in Nagano), and 7 more events than at the previous Winter Games. Except for the Jamaicans and the failure of Canuck Hockey, there was the tight figure skating competition between Canada's Scott Orser and the States' Brian Boitano. It ended up going to Brian Boitano, Canada getting the silver. Oh well better than nothing. Well that's enough of that then.
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