Blarghman

Toronto wins on ballot one!!! Great news! Toronto 33 Lima 11 Bogota 6

According to the Star's blog, counting of the first round ballots is already underway, which doesn't fit with the timelines I'd seen previously

Yeah, I thought the presentation was pretty good, we certainly haven't done anything to hurt our chances. I've got a good feeling, but fingers crossed nonetheless.

Looks like the Toronto presentation has started, can be watched at CBCsports.ca

Not sure if it's been mentioned, but another online source to follow tomorrow: Article Also, another article from the Toronto Star: Here's hoping things go well tomorrow!

Looks like more information will be coming tomorrow. Announcment I'm a little nervous about whether it'll end up too spread out, but looking forward to seeing what they finally decide upon.

I don't think the naming thing really can be too closely linked to the location of the individual events. You may very well be right that things will be centralized, but I think it has been generally accepted since the bid's birth that it would be the Toronto 2015 Games. Money for Toronto is just about the worst way you can sell something in federal and even provincial politics, but everyone involved knew that if you throw away the Toronto name you lose any advantage of being a global city. That being said, Hamilton will surely get something significant. There was some talk very early in the process of getting a new Ivor Wynne Stadium and the aquatics facilities, which would be a complete joke in my mind. At this point, I'm not sure what Hamilton gets that gets them a new stadium, as I can't imagine Toronto giving up the athletics, the premier event. Still, it seems to me, the Games have been sold with the stadium in mind, so they will surely demand something. Copps Coliseum could be used to host the basketball or volleyball finals, but that's not as high-profile as it would be in the Olympics. Where I live, in Markham, about 30-45 minutes north of Toronto, has been a proposed site for a major regional sports institute, and will definitely be pushing hard for aquatics, along with some other indoor sports like badminton and table tennis. The Markham aquatics centre was part of the 2008 Olympic bid, but not as the main aquatics venue, so it'll be interesting to see how they use it here. This is the main potential problem with the bid. Too spread out, and the bid is complete sh*t. Too much in Toronto, and all the nearby municipalities complain about how much Toronto gets. If the bid loses, I think failing to strike the right balance is how. And one way to do that would be to have neither athletics or aquatics in Toronto itself, which other municipal governments seem to expect. All that's clear to me right now in terms of venue placement is Tennis at the National Tennis Centre, and rowing in St. Catharines. Also, the general location of equestrian, if not a specific location.

As to the CBC stuff, the network broadcast did have the usual sort of introduction to the games, starting at the 7 am time mentioned, with interviews with athletes and some segments on Beijing, usual CBC opening broadcast fare. This was about an hour long, leading into the ceremony. A couple of nights before, a more general preview was made from the regular Olympic Sports studio in Toronto with similar content, but less of a Beijing focus (since, obviously, it wasn't in Beijing). The pre-ceremony was the only thing on for about half of it's total length, as you probably already can see from the schedule. As to one of your points about the delayed v. live events for NBC, the moment that summed up NBC coverage for me was the first night (in Canada, morning of Day 1 in Beijing). I turn on the TV, flip to NBC and see Yao Ming during the opening ceremonies, something already on CBC twice that day. Flip to CBC, and I saw the American men's gymnastics team doing preliminaries, while NBC pretended that all the sport would start the next afternoon/night. I understand protecting their rights to earn huge ratings, but I feel bad for hardcore Olympic fans in the US (at least live streams are making this somewhat more bearable)

And to further add on The teams already known to be in the Olympics tournament are Canada, USA, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and Russia. Also for some context for the Bulgaria-Slovakia game, this was the first international tournament Bulgarian women have ever competed in, and they will make their World Championships debut in Division V (33rd-37th in the world) later this year. Slovakia, on the other hand, while not at the level they are in men's hockey, are in Division I, and just missed promotion to the top group last year, so like 12th in the world. It was an expected blowout, their previous games were 0-41 and 1-30, but it is the largest blowout in an IIHF event (not the largest international hockey blowout, though, Korea-Thailand Asian Under-18s: 92-0 Korea)

Yes, but only by a few months, as last time they didn't start 'till November 2004 (for Torino 2006). Essentially, part of the reason is that for the first time the women have a 'pre-qualifying' segment, with the winners then advancing to the normal qualifying in November. The men will play three rounds of qualifying, starting in October in Turkey.

I'm not sure if this is like Athens, but I did watch probably around 10 minutes of what was listed on CBC as the Pre-Opening Ceremony Show, though I don't remember it much. It was hosted in a stadium (I am assuming it was the Bird's Nest, but I'm not 100% certain), and had group of 2 or 3 presenters, and if I recall correctly a singing act, along with dancers on the field below where the presenters were. While this isn't really helpful, I can say that it was a direct stream of some sort of Olympic-related event occurring in Beijing, meaning that it wasn't like a CBC preview show, or a news/interview show. This was some sort of unfiltered, un-commented upon Olympic event, and was the same in style, to my recollections, as the other non-commentary cbcsports.ca streams. I don't know if that's helpful at all, but I did want to mention that I watched at least part of this stream.