Time of glitches hopefully over as sun graces Olympics (News Feature)

By John Bagratuni Feb 17, 2010, 22:22 GMT

Whistler, Canada - The sun finally arrived at the Olympics on Wednesday and organizers will be hoping that the dark clouds of several glitches will be gone for good now.

The tragic death of a Georgian luger, the almost daily reshuffling of the alpine ski programme, hitches at biathlon races, the breakdown of ice making machines and buses as well as the closure of a standing area at the popular snowboard and freestyle events have almost made more headlines than the competition itself.

But the improving weather, two golds for Olympic hosts Canada and the highly anticipated start of the men's ice hockey tournament could now make all this forgotten and lead to a smooth running of the Games until the February 28 finale.

'It's absolutely nice to see that that sun is out there,' said alpine skiing venue manager Peter Bosinger. 'We can feel a little more assured that the next few days will be great days for ski racing here.'

The Games also has an emerging star in Lindsey Vonn who captured a thrilling downhill women's gold for the United States, while race scheduling problems look as if they are over.

Biathlon organizers, are happy to have the staggered start pursuit races behind them as a mixture of inexperience by the starters and the late arrival of athletes led to five hitches at the start of the men's and women's pursuit races on Tuesday.

'This was a very bad day for us. I can not understand why this could happen,' said the deeply embarrassed International Biathlon Union technical delegate Norbert Baier.

The next races in an interval and mass start format should allow faultless starting, with the only staggered starts left on the Olympic programme taking place in Nordic combined skiing - where there were no hitches in the first event on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the arrival Tuesday of a Zamboni machine from Calgary to back up Olympic ice-making vehicles which broke down on Monday should do the same for speed skating at the Richmond Olympic oval than the absence of snow clouds and fog in Whistler Creekside for the alpine - smooth running of the competition.

Organizers have also responded to complaints that the view of the Olympic cauldron at the downtown Vancouver waterfront was spoiled by an ugly chain-link fence. From Wednesday the site is more fan-friendly thanks to the erection of a rooftop viewing platform.

New buses have also been brought in to replace malfunctioning vehicles and luge has thankfully seen two incident-free competitions after Friday's tragic death of Georgia's Nodar Kumaritashvili.

For Smith-Valade, the hitches resulted into something like a learning-by-doing experience which has also happened to previous Olympic organizers.

'It is a little bit like lost luggage. Its not whether your luggage gets lost its how you deal with it and so we are dealt with the cards we are dealt,' she said.

'We have done everything we could to put in place the very best things. Sometimes things can happen. The most important thing is being creative, responding quickly and coming up with good solutions.'