February 4, 2010 Day 4

Today we started very early in the morning. We were scheduled to satrt at 7:00 am and that meant we had to catch the WOP (Whistler Olympic Park) shuttle at 6:15 am and it looks like that will be our schedule for the next week. The morning was a tour and venue training for the Athletes Village where all of the Olympic athletes stay. Some of my shifts will be at the Village and we will be doing alot of pre-competition testing there. it is a very large facility and we needed to be familiar with the site and to know exactly where all of the athletes were staying and where each country was housed. All of the Anti-doping team thought this may be a bit awkward because for testing, we are to find the athletes and notify them right in their dorms. We have access to them anytime and anywhere. We will see how this goes.

The security is really starting to get very tight particularly in the Village. You couldn't walk around the athletes village without your accreditation showing. Full RCMP officers worked and staffed every checkpoint in the village. The security to enter the village was EXACTLY the same as the airport.

The Olympic rings everywhere are green instead of the traditional colours to represent the 5 continents of the world. I believe this is to celebrate the "Green" or environmental awareness and sustainability theme of the Olympics. te housing at the Olympics is all brand new and very beautiful sparing no expense in most cases. Each country has put flags up or they have marked them with things unique to their country. I took some pictures of some of the more interesting ones and all of th DCO's loved this because it clearly marks where each country is staying so we can find them more easily. The best were the Canadian's residences. There were huge banners with past Olympic medal winners, hockey nets in the driveways, a huge Canada moose and the Canadians had the nicest townhouses to live in.

We got to witness the official opening ceremony of the Olympics villages simultaneously in Vancouver and Whistler. There was a ribbon cutting ceremony and it was actually quite thrilling. They played a video of the Olympics and it was a very wierd feeling because we were actually there and a video about the Winter games was playing. Many people were quite emotional and wept openly watching the video and participating in the ceremony...