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Everyone else is getting snow and Vancouver is having warm weather. They already have about $1.5M in lost revenues for the games from cancelled tickets. Looks like a blackeye for Canada.Feb 16, 10:13 PM (ET)
By ERIN McCLAM
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) - From fire to ice, nothing seems to be going right at the Olympics.
The torch malfunctioned. Warm weather turned the slopes and the event schedule to slop. A Zamboni had to ride to the rescue from Calgary following a meltdown at the speedskating rink.
By Tuesday, the Glitch Games were in full swing: 20,000 standing-room tickets for the snowboarding venue were voided because fans had fallen between the bales of hay under the melting layers of trucked-in snow.
Want to take a picture of the Olympic cauldron? Make sure that camera is pressed up against the chain-link fence - provided there's room to squeeze in and a Vancouver 2010 banner isn't in the way.
Organizers expect to unveil a plan Wednesday to address the rising public outcry and bring people closer to the flame, the most distinguished and enduring symbol of any Olympics.
"Perhaps," conceded Renee Smith-Valade, a spokeswoman for the organizing committee, "we did underestimate the degree to which people would want to get close to it."
Perhaps. At a press conference, a Canadian TV reporter asked organizers why the flame was hidden behind "a ratty-looking prison-camp fence." And the Globe and Mail newspaper chose to allude to another Olympic city - Berlin.
Addressing the head of the Vancouver Games, the paper cried: "Mr. Furlong, tear down this fence!"