50 Fun Facts About 2010 Winter Olympics (Vancouver)

Which Canadian scored the overtime goal that beat the USA in the 2010 Olympic men's ice hockey final?

Sidney Crosby scored 7 minutes and 40 seconds into overtime. About two thirds of the country was watching, the largest television audience Canada had ever recorded.

Which country's men's curling team became a hit at the 2010 Olympics for its loud diamond-patterned trousers?

Norway wore the harlequin golf trousers all the way to the final. Thomas Ulsrud's rink lost it to the hosts and went home with silver medals and worldwide attention.

Which hockey great rode on a truck through downtown Vancouver to light the outdoor 2010 Olympic cauldron?

Wayne Gretzky had already helped light an indoor cauldron in the stadium. Organisers had secretly built a second, permanent one on the waterfront.

Which country won the most medals overall at the 2010 Winter Olympics, a then-record 37?

The United States took 37 medals, one more than the previous Winter Games record. Its nine golds, though, ranked only third.

Which snowboarder landed a Double McTwist 1260 on a victory-lap run after winning 2010 Olympic halfpipe gold?

Shaun White had gold secured by his first-run score, so the second run was a lap of honour. He ended it with the new trick, which he named the Tomahawk.

Which figure skater won 2010 Olympic gold with record scores after a short program to music from the Bond films?

Yuna Kim set the highest short program, free skate and total scores yet recorded under the judging system. All three went into Guinness World Records.

Jon Montgomery was filmed gulping a fan's pitcher of beer after winning 2010 Olympic gold in which sport?

Skeleton champion Jon Montgomery was handed the pitcher as he walked through a crowd singing the national anthem. He later became host of The Amazing Race Canada.

Which Montreal-born actor joined Michael J. Fox for comic monologues at the 2010 Olympic closing ceremony?

William Shatner riffed on beer, part of a show that sent up national clichés with giant inflatable beavers, flying moose and dancing Mounties.

Which 2010 Olympic snowboard venue near Vancouver needed snow flown in by helicopter after an unusually mild winter?

Cypress Mountain was almost bare just before the Games. Trucks and helicopters carried snow down from higher ground so the snowboard and freestyle events could go ahead.

Which skier became the first American woman to win Olympic downhill gold at the 2010 Winter Olympics?

Lindsey Vonn won by 0.56 seconds despite a badly bruised shin. Warm weather had pushed the alpine races back, giving the injury extra days to heal.

Which moguls skier became the first Canadian to win Olympic gold on home soil at the 2010 Winter Olympics?

Alexandre Bilodeau won the men's moguls on the second day of competition. Canada had hosted the Games in Montreal and Calgary without a single home gold.

Which country's team wore black armbands at the 2010 opening ceremony to mourn its luger Nodar Kumaritashvili?

Georgia's athletes entered to a standing ovation with a black ribbon on their flag. The whole ceremony was dedicated to their 21-year-old teammate, who had died in training that day.

Which Leonard Cohen song did k.d. lang sing at the 2010 Winter Olympics opening ceremony?

Hallelujah was sung while images of doves, the symbol of peace, rose from the stadium floor to the roof. Singer and songwriter were both Canadian.

Which Black Sea resort city received the Olympic flag at the 2010 closing ceremony as the next Winter host?

Sochi's mayor took the flag from the IOC president. The handover show sent giant zorbs rolling across the stage while an orchestra played live from Red Square.

Which country finished second in the 2010 Winter Olympics gold medal table, four golds behind the hosts?

Germany won ten golds, two each from biathlete Magdalena Neuner and alpine skier Maria Riesch. Its 30 medals also ranked second in the overall count.

Amy Williams won which country's only medal of the 2010 Winter Olympics, a gold on the sliding track?

Britain had waited 30 years for an individual Winter Olympic champion. The last had been figure skater Robin Cousins at Lake Placid in 1980.

Which cross-country skier won five medals at the 2010 Winter Olympics, more than any other athlete?

Marit Bjørgen took three golds, a silver and a bronze. Only one other athlete at the Games, a Chinese short-track skater, matched her three golds.

Which Dutch speed skater lost 10,000 m gold at the 2010 Olympics after his coach sent him into the wrong lane?

Sven Kramer finished first, then learned he had been disqualified. Coach Gerard Kemkers had shouted the wrong instruction at a lane change late in the race.

Vancouver won the 2010 Olympic host vote by 56 to 53 over which city, later the 2018 Winter host?

Pyeongchang led the first round, in which Salzburg was eliminated, but lost the run-off. It was the closest Olympic host vote since Sydney beat Beijing for 2000.

Mukmuk, the popular sidekick to the 2010 Olympic mascots, was based on which rare Vancouver Island animal?

Marmot Mukmuk was the only character based on a real animal. Fans staged a mock protest at the Vancouver Art Gallery demanding he be promoted to full mascot.

Canada led the 2010 gold medal table, a feat no Winter Olympic host had managed since which city's 1952 Games?

Oslo 1952 was the last time the home team had finished top. Canada got there with 14 golds, at the time the most any country had won at one Winter Games.

Canada's 14 golds at the 2010 Olympics beat a Winter Games record of 13 first set in 1976 by which team?

The Soviet Union won its 13 golds at Innsbruck. Canada's 14 then stood alone as the record until 2018, when two countries matched it.

Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir became the first North American Olympic champions in which figure skating event in 2010?

Ice dance gold had gone to European couples at every previous Olympics. Virtue and Moir were also the first ice dance team to win the title on home ice.

Which basketball star helped light the indoor cauldron at the 2010 Olympic opening ceremony in Vancouver?

Steve Nash, a two-time NBA Most Valuable Player raised in British Columbia, took the flame from a speed skater and passed it on to skier Nancy Greene.

Which speed skater had nothing to light at the 2010 Olympic opening ceremony when one cauldron arm failed to rise?

Catriona Le May Doan stood by while three others lit their arms. At the closing ceremony a mime pretended to repair the fourth arm so she could finally light it.

Which short-track skater passed Bonnie Blair at the 2010 Olympics to become the most decorated American Winter Olympian?

Apolo Ohno won a silver and two bronzes in Vancouver. That took his career haul to eight medals, two of them gold.

Biathlete Anastasiya Kuzmina won which country's first Winter Olympic gold as an independent nation at the 2010 Games?

Slovakia's only earlier Winter champion, figure skater Ondrej Nepela, had competed for Czechoslovakia. Kuzmina went on to win gold at the next two Games as well.

Which freestyle skiing event made its Olympic debut in 2010, with Canada's Ashleigh McIvor its first women's champion?

Ski cross sends four racers at a time down a course of jumps and banked turns. The IOC voted it onto the programme in November 2006.

Vancouver's NHL arena became Canada Hockey Place for the 2010 Olympics, dropping which sponsor's name?

General Motors Place lost its name because Olympic venues cannot carry corporate sponsors. Its ice stayed NHL-sized, about four metres narrower than the usual international rink.

Which TV satirist's viewers bankrolled US speed skating after its main sponsor went bust before the 2010 Olympics?

Stephen Colbert was later named the team's assistant sports psychologist. His viewers stepped in with donations after a Dutch bank's collapse left the skaters without their main sponsor.

Which resort town north of Vancouver staged the alpine skiing, sliding and Nordic events of the 2010 Olympics?

Whistler's mountains had featured in Olympic bids since the 1960s, when the area still lacked proper roads, electricity and drinking water.

Which American skier won a medal of each colour at the 2010 Olympics, taking his first gold in the super combined?

Bode Miller took bronze in the downhill, silver in the super-G and then gold. Four years earlier he had started five Olympic races and won no medals.

Which singer joined Bryan Adams to perform Bang the Drum at the 2010 Winter Olympics opening ceremony?

Nelly Furtado, who grew up in Victoria, British Columbia, sang it with Adams. He co-wrote the song as a tribute to the athletes in the stadium.

Joannie Rochette and Petra Majdič won a 2010 Olympic award for courage named after which Canadian athlete?

Terry Fox set out to run across Canada on one leg in 1980 to raise money for cancer research. His mother, Betty, helped carry the Olympic flag at the opening ceremony.

Which American became the first man to defend the Olympic 1,000 m speed skating title, at the 2010 Games?

Shani Davis also repeated as 1,500 m silver medallist. His win was the only long-track gold his country's skaters took home from Vancouver.

Which country won six golds but no silver medals at the 2010 Olympics, two of them from ski jumper Simon Ammann?

Switzerland placed sixth in the gold medal table with six golds and three bronzes. Ammann swept both individual hills, just as he had in 2002.

Which Edmonton skip went unbeaten through the 2010 Olympics to win men's curling gold for the host nation?

Kevin Martin won all nine round-robin games, then the semi-final and final. Eight years earlier he had lost the Olympic final on a missed last shot.

Which 18-year-old scored both goals as Canada beat the USA 2–0 in the 2010 Olympic women's hockey final?

Marie-Philip Poulin went on to score in each of the next three Olympic finals too. She was the first player, male or female, to score in four straight.

Which Chinese short-track skater won three golds at the 2010 Olympics, in the 500 m, 1,000 m and relay?

Wang Meng shared the Games lead in gold medals with one other athlete. She had also won the 500 m four years earlier, so she left Vancouver a four-time Olympic champion.

What was the name of the funding programme set up to make Canada the top medal-winning nation at the 2010 Olympics?

Own the Podium also gave home athletes priority for practice runs at the Olympic venues, which some former Olympians called unsportsmanlike.

Which American won 2010 Olympic men's figure skating gold without a quadruple jump, edging Evgeni Plushenko?

Evan Lysacek won by 1.31 points, the first American men's champion since Brian Boitano in 1988. Plushenko, the defending champion, publicly criticised the result.

Which snowboarder crashed on her first run of the 2010 Olympic women's halfpipe final, then won gold on her second?

Torah Bright had carried Australia's flag at the opening ceremony. She qualified first for the final despite suffering two concussions in training beforehand.

Steven Holcomb drove a sled called Night Train to the USA's first Olympic gold in 62 years in which event?

Four-man bobsleigh gold ended an American wait going back to 1948. Holcomb had been diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease that came close to ending his career.

Petra Majdič won a 2010 Olympic sprint bronze with broken ribs and a collapsed lung, skiing for which country?

Slovenia's star had fallen into a three-metre gully during the warm-up. She still raced four times that day, on broken ribs that an early hospital scan had missed.

Which Governor General of Canada, a Haitian-born former broadcaster, declared the 2010 Winter Olympics open?

Michaëlle Jean opened the Games first in French, then in English. One month earlier an earthquake had devastated the country of her birth.

Which forward led the 2010 Olympic men's hockey tournament in goals and set up Canada's overtime winner in the final?

Jarome Iginla scored five goals, three of them in Canada's opening game. He was an alternate captain of the team for the second Olympics running.

The 2010 Olympic emblem, a colourful figure named Ilanaaq, took the form of which traditional structure?

An inukshuk is a stone marker built by the Inuit of the Arctic. Some local First Nations objected that it had little to do with the cultures around Vancouver.

Which event's athletes sued in a British Columbia court after being left off the 2010 Olympic programme?

Women's ski jumping stayed off the programme after the court ruled against the jumpers. The event finally made its Olympic debut four years later.

Which snowboarder became the first Canadian woman to win Olympic gold on home soil, in snowboard cross in 2010?

Maëlle Ricker had finished fourth in the same event four years earlier, after a heavy crash in the final that put her in hospital with a concussion.

Which American won 2010 Olympic gold in Nordic combined, his country's first title in any Nordic skiing event?

Bill Demong proposed to his girlfriend the evening he received his medal. The same day he learned he would carry the American flag at the closing ceremony.