The Vancouver Winter Olympics 2010 will take place from February 12 to February 28, 2010. It will be the 21st Winter Olympics and the 3rd to be hosted by Canada. It would be the first to be hosted by the Province of British Columbia.

The Vancouver Winter Games 2010 will have around 5,500 athletes from more than 80 countries. There would be 86 different evetns across 15 sporting games like alpine skiing, biathlon, bobsleigh, cross-country, curling, figure skating, freestyle skiing, ice hockey, luge, nordic combined, short track, skeleton, ski-jumping, snowboarding, speed skating.

In the 2006 Games in Torino, Germany topped the table with as many as 11 gold medals, 12 silver and 6 bronze. USA were placed 2nd and Austria 3rd.

The list of Venues is metioned below. The opening and the closing ceremony will be held at the BC Place Stadium. The other venues are:


Ice hockey (Canada Hockey Place and UBC Thunderbird Arena)
Figure skating (Pacific Coliseum)

Speed skating and short track speed skating (Richmond Olympic Oval and Pacific Coliseum)

Freestyle skiing (Cypress Mountain)

Snowboard (Cypress Mountain) Curling (Vancouver Olympic Centre)

Ice sledge hockey (UBC Thunderbird Arena)

Wheelchair curling (Vancouver Paralympic Centre)
The Mascots for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics are:

Miga: a mythical sea bear, part orca and part kermode bear.
Quatchi: a sasquatch (bigfoot)

Sumi: Sumi the masot for the Paralypic Games is an animal guardian spirit who wears the hat of the orca whale, flies with the wings of the mighty Thunderbird and runs on the strong furry legs of the black bear.

Mukmuk: a Vancouver Island marmot.

Around 1350 paralympic athletes from around 40 countires are expected to take participate.

1.6 million tickets will be available for the spectators, with around 10000 media representatives expected to cover the mega games.

The security budget for the games will be around $900 million for the Winter Olympic Games 2010.

All the events can be watched live on BBC and Eurosport channel. Merinews