Winter Olympics turning into the Great White Warm

VANCOUVER, B.C. — Snow, white and deep, powdery and plentiful. I've always believed it should play an important role in the Winter Olympics.

Seriously, I mean without snow — and, again, this is just my opinion — what you have is, well, maybe, the Summer Olympics.

The Winter Olympics should have a pervasive, up-in-the-mountains village feel to it. Hans Brinker meets Jean-Claude Killy. It should be "Dr. Zhivago" meets "Hot Day: The Movie."

When I walk out of my hotel — or, in the case of Lillehammer, Norway, my pre-fab log cabin — I like to sink knee deep in snow.

But Thursday morning, when I left the St. Regis, I sunk knee deep in Seattle. A steady rain was falling. The streets were slick. It was the kind of day that made you think about a bumbershoot, not a bobsled.

Call me a whacky traditionalist, but I like snow with my Winter Olympics. Snow outside my window. Snow that makes the sidewalk feel like a luge course.

A lot of snow, like Sarajevo in 1984 or Lillehammer in 1994. Snow that falls all day and night, a magic carpet of snow that covers the city, the race courses, the streets.

I want the snow falling from pillows of clouds overhead, not from helicopters clattering from above, as has been the case at Cypress Mountain.

I want the majesty of eagles — or at least hawks — soaring over the evergreens every day, not the squawking of seagulls outside the Main Press Centre.

But for Vancouver 2010, the Great White North has become the Great Warm North.

Every morning on CNN we watch the Northeast United States digging out from another record-setting dumping of snow and wonder if the Games shouldn't be moved to Washington D.C.

Imagine a cross-country course that winds its way past the Capitol, the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.



On Tuesday here, it was so balmy you thought the pitchers and catchers, not the skaters and skiers, should be reporting for training.

These are supposed to be the greenest Games ever. They may become the brownest.

Olympic officials assure us there is plenty of snow both at Whistler Mountain and Cypress. The Games will go on. But their nervousness has been palpable.

Remember the Word Cup stopped coming to Whistler in the late 1990s after every race had to be cancelled for three straight years because of weather-related disasters? (After downhill practices were wiped out Thursday, the men's downhill scheduled for Saturday, could be postponed.)

I want these Games to be frozen. I want to see my breath.

Hunched against the rain, like a long-time Seattleite, and desperate for the feel of snow Wednesday afternoon, I heard rumors that a storm was heading for Cypress. I jumped on a bus and took the 55-minute ride to the mountain.

As we made our way along the winding road to the venue for snowboard and freestyle skiing events, which is at about 3,000 feet, something that looked vaguely familiar — white, wet and persistent — was falling from the sky.

It was snowing at Cypress, a scene so rare this winter, you would have thought this was Cypress Gardens, not Cypress Mountain.

The snow lightly covered the mud and the outcroppings of rocks that bordered the mogul course. It dusted the pine trees to give at least the temporary feeling of winter. Still, this looked like a mountain in trouble.

It looked as if Canada was preparing for War Games, not the Olympic Games. Tons of snow was trucking in from passes three hours away.

Orange helicopters that had been scooping snow from one part of the mountain and dumping it on another part, were parked in the lot, temporarily grounded by the storm.

Dump trucks rolled past security gates, unloaded snow that bulldozers then pushed toward the race courses.

The snow lasted for a few hours, but it felt more like a tease than a trend. The forecast for the next few days is a mix of snow and rain and shrugs from meteorologists.

Cypress could get whiter, or it could get wetter.

Of course, weather isn't everything with these Games. When Apolo Ohno is on the ice and Shaun White is in the halfpipe, Ted Lighty is on the hill and the Canadian hockey team is on the power play, nobody will care if these Olympics don't look postcard perfect.

I can't wait for the Games to begin. I'm just wishing it felt more like winter here. More white, less wet.

Source:seattletimes.nwsource.com/