Sunday Salon - Olympics wrap-up

As I write this, I am on cloud nine.  Sure the men's hockey gold medal game wasn't as thrilling as the game in Vancouver, but the important thing is that Canada won the game.  And now we can officially say that Canada is hockey, winning both the men's and women's hockey event.  And we are also curling, by winning both women's and men's events (the Canadian women ran the table and won every curling match that they had during the Olympic tournament, which was a first and even the great Sandra Schmirler, who won in 1998, didn't do that).

While there were events that we had hoped to medal in (namely the short-track), the athletes that represented Canada did really well, whether they were male or female.  I think the most extraordinary thing that happened was that Canadian athletes did very well at the freestyle event, winning 9 medals, including the first defense of an Olympic championship. 

But like most Canadians, the most important medals were in hockey, and the men's and women's teams defended them both (I am also glad that Russia basically was ran out of the tourney and I am sure that most Russian hockey fans were very disappointed by the outcome).  I am sorry if I spoiled the outcome of the men's hockey final, but I am assuming that most people reading this aren't huge hockey fans.  And if you are wondering if I was up at 4 am for the gold medal match, you'd be wrong; I had only gotten to sleep about 2 hours prior to the game (was watching the ladies figure skating free skate and the figure skating gala to get room on my PVR for the hockey game). 

During the past 17 days of competition, I got tons of reading done.  In fact, I almost finished reading The Luminaries (I have a few hours of reading left to go through and I can probably finish it sometime this afternoon/evening).   I did read a few other books and got a couple of them completed, but I am feeling like the guys who raced in the mass 50 Km Cross-Country event earlier today.  I managed to finish A Great Game, Winter's Tale and How to be a Good Wife and I felt exhausted even after completing those two and certainly after reading about 10 hours of The Luminaries last weekend.  I honestly don't know what I am going to do with my reading come tomorrow evening.  Maybe I'll save the gold medal game for the evening (I have recorded both the NBC and CBC broadcast, so I don't know which one to watch first; maybe NBC and save CBC for later).    But I am sure that these 17 days of reading is going make reading a little easier.

There were a lot of memorable images coming out of Sochi, but for some reason this one caught my eye:

I love how Scott Moir is embracing the rain and enjoying the moment.  I saw images of him and Patrick Chan at the women's gold medal game and thought its great that these athletes can go and cheer other athletes at other events and it was fun seeing hockey players that get paid millions of dollars with goofy curling hats on their heads and just generally cheering on other athletes in other events.  I also enjoy the general sportsmanship that you see at the games and am looking to Rio for the 2016 Summer Games.

I realize that I haven't posted for about a month, so here are the books that I have reviewed since my last Sunday Salon:

• A Great Game by Stephen J. Harper (review)
• How to be a Good Wife by Emma Chapman (review)
• Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin (review)

Till next week.