The first phase of tickets for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games are now on sale.
Requests for tickets can be submitted online at http://tickets.vancouver2010.com/.

VANOC says phase one, which ends on Nov. 7, is your best chance to secure tickets
for the games.

There was a lot of chatter in the Vancouver-area press this week about the opening ceremony at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. VANOC sent out a vacuous press release, but other than that, the discussion (which included Premier Campbell), was along the lines of "how do we top this?"

The obvious answer to this question is, "we don't." The budget for the 2008 opening ceremony was $100 million. The budget for the 2010 opening ceremony is $40 million, which, in my opinion, is $39 million too much. Let's get the priority focused on the competition and the athletes.

An announcement was made by federal Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day on July 23 that "It's going to be more than $175 million, clearly, and the exact numbers will be out pretty soon. We're just going over some fine details."

If Day's objective is to inspire confidence, he's doing a poor job. Nobody with any brains believed that the $175 million figure had any relation to reality. Now, Day says that there will be "exact numbers". Uh, this is a budget we're talking about. Do you have "exact numbers" for what you're going to spend on groceries next month? Of course not.

More realistic estimates of "close to $1 billion" were made years ago. Story from the Ottawa Citizen: Vancouver 2010 Olympic security will be over budget.

It's official, and here: 2010 Daily Competition Schedule.

VANOC has stopped making minutes of their meetings available to the public. Here's an editorial from the Asian Pacific Post: Secrecy and the 2010 Olympics. Excerpt: "the increasing secrecy surrounding the 2010 games is creating a credibility gap between VANOC and its supporters, let alone its detractors."

Story from CTV.ca: VANOC unveils ticket prices for 2010 Olympics.

Not a lot of details so far, other than the initial sale will start in October 2008, and it will be by lottery.

Story from the Globe and Mail: Olympics strike gold on ticket prices

Here are three noteworthy paragraphs:

"The fact that tickets weren't officially on sale didn't stop ticket brokers from stoking the fires of greed prematurely. Last month, an Austin, Tex., company calling itself Ticket City followed up VANOC's appointment of the creative staff for opening and closing ceremonies with a bold sales pitch for prime tickets to the spectacles.

"Thirty-six tickets were available for the opening ceremony at B.C. Place, according to Ticket City, at prices ranging from $1,250 to $1,650 (U.S.). The Texas brokers offered another 36 to the closing ceremonies for a more modest price range of $650 to $995.

"VANOC officials said the tickets do not exist."

This site is, of course, about the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver (and Squamish and Whistler), not about the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. However, the 2008 Olympics are happening sooner. The issues of human rights around the Olympic Games has been around since at least 1936, and they aren't going away anytime soon.

A couple of stories have appeared recently in the Epoch Times about Kai Chen, who played for China's national basketball team. The stories are Olympic Freedom T-shirt Movement Launched and Olympic Freedom T-shirt Movement Launched—Part II, both by Linda Slupski. The Epoch Times has a history of publishing news about China that the mainstream media won't touch due to “bad for business” reasons.

Kai Chen has published a book, One In A Billion: Journey Toward Freedom, which tells his story of China's corrupt government, and the sports apparatus that is part and parcel of it. To draw more public attention to his cause, Chen has started the Olympic Freedom T-shirt Movement.

The movement has begun with a web site, http://olympicsfreedomtshirt.blogspot.com/. The first event will be a five mile run in Los Angeles on August 5. The t-shirts should be available on or after that date. An update will be posted here when they are available, or keep checking Chen's blogspot site.

The front page of the Vancouver Province today features a big screaming headline that says anti-Olympics protesters are going to picket the homes of Olympic officials, in an effort to drive them out of their homes - just like, they say, the Olympics are doing to low income people in this city.

The success of 2006's World Baseball Classic was all-encompassing; crowds showed up, money was made, the Americans got their hides booted (by Canada, no less!), and the event was deemed a total success. In fact, it did so well that the organizers were able to give a $1.2m donation to Habitats For Humanity from the proceeds.

Yet, baseball leaves the Olympic games after 2008, along with women's softball. Trampolining will stay, synchronized swimming is forever, but baseball and softball are gone. Why?

Columnist Charlie Smith of the Georgia Straight has spelled out proposals for how VANOC should be doing business, to bring them in line with other taxpayer-funded bodies. Here's where you can read about it: Olympic secrecy sowing a bitter harvest.