The women’s x 2 bobsleigh team of Aoife Hoey and Claire Bergin finished 17th, Pat Shannon 25th in Skeleton bob, Shane O’Connor 45th in Slalom, Kirsty McGarry 50th in Giant Slalom, and PJ Barron 91st in Cross Country Skiing. For a non- Alpine Nation the Irish athlete’s qualification dramas and Games performances captured the public’s attention as never before, and the Olympic Council of Ireland are proud of its support to Winter sports.
New events such as snowboard cross and skier cross were popular innovations, and appealed to a new generation of younger sports fans. The highlight though for the host Nation came last night when the Canadian Men’s team defeated the USA to win Ice Hockey Gold. Canada set out to top the medal table and did so by winning more Gold medals than any other country, a magnificent return on the investment placed in their high performance sport programmes.
Here are the statistics which capture the global scale of this magnificent event:
The Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games February 12 to 28, 2010
* 17 days of thrilling competition and athletic accomplishments
* 15 sport disciplines
* 9 competition venues
* 3 Olympic training facilities
* 86 medal competitions
* 86 Victory Ceremonies (16 in-venue medal presentations, 25 at BC Place and 45 at Whistler Medals Plaza)
* 615 medals awarded
* 1,055 athlete bouquets presented
* 82 participating National Olympic Committees (NOCs)
* 6,500 athletes and team officials in total
* 2,632 registered athletes
* 50,000 workforce members for the Games, including paid, contractor and volunteers
* Of that total, 18,500 were volunteers; 6,500 volunteers will also work during the
* Paralympic Winter Games
* 25,000 workforce uniforms distributed
* 96,409 people accredited for the Games
* 10,800 media representatives: 7,000 rights holding broadcasters, 2,800 press
– reporters and photographers and non-rights holding broadcasters, as well as 1,000
– host Olympic Broadcast Service (OBSV) personnel
* 3.5 billion worldwide television viewers are estimated to have tuned into the Games
* Olympic rights holding broadcasters have offered Vancouver 2010 Winter
* Olympic Games coverage on more than 300 TV stations and on more than 100 websites worldwide
* 47 per cent more global television coverage of the Games than for the Torino
2006 Olympic Winter Games
* This represents approximately 24,000 hours of coverage
* 50,000 hours of total broadcast hours of the Games across all media platforms around the world
* 6,000 hours of coverage worldwide on mobile platforms
* As of Day 15, 33.1 million Canadians (99 per cent) have watched coverage
* 27.7 million cumulative audience or CUME (meaning 82.7 per cent of Canadians)experienced the Games on February 27 through the platforms of Canada’s
* Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium.
* 1,500 appearances by the Vancouver 2010 mascots: Quatchi, Miga and Sumi by the end of the Games
* 20,567 deliveries made to Olympic venues
* 1.6 million tickets available for the 2010 Winter Games
* More than 3.3 million pairs of Vancouver 2010 Red Mittens sold
$500-million target for gross retail sales of Vancouver 2010 branded merchandise met by end of Games
* 2.2 million people engaged to date by the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Oympiad, which will continue for three more weeks
* More than 4,000 artists at 600 events, over 60 days in 60 venues are taking part in the Cultural Olympiad
* More than 12,500 volunteer hours clocked for Olympic Closing Ceremony. The thousands of volunteer performers range in age from 10 to 68
* More than 450 racks of costumes, 3,600 metres of elastic, 4,100 pairs of shoes, 18 kilograms of glitter, 10,000 green sequins, 200 giant spheres and balloons, as well as 20 zygote balls were used in the Opening and Closing Ceremonies
* 275 million visitors in total to www.vancouver2010.com, shattering the previous record of 105 million set during the Beijing 2008 Games
* 78 million total unique visitors to the site
* A record of 9,185,306 unique visits in a single day ? set on February 24. The previous record set during the 2008 Summer Games was 8,797,614 on August 11, 2008
* Vancouver2010.com was visited 85 million times this month from within Canada and reached more than 70 per cent of Canadians with Internet access and over 50 per cent of the total Canadian population
* 19.1 per cent of North Americans with Internet access visited the website this month
* 4.6 per cent of people worldwide with Internet access visited the site this month
* 14,000 followers on Twitter.com/2010Tweets
* More than 1.25 million downloads recorded for the official mobile spectator guide, which for 10 days of the Games was the No. 1 free app in Canada
* million Facebook fans, nearly four times the total amount for Beijing at the conclusion of the 2008 Games
