Vancouver 2010

With only a few days left until the beginning of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the Olympic Torch Relay will arrive in Vancouver on Thursday and will make an appearance in the gay village along Davie Street around 8am on Friday, February 12th.

Pride House Vancouver, the first ever Olympic House for the GLBTQ community, will open with an official ribbon cutting ceremony and celebration on Thursday, February 11th beginning at 2pm.

The grand opening of Pride House Whistler, located at the Pan Pacific Whistler Village Centre, takes place today (Monday, 8 February 2010) with the public invited from 6pm to 10pm.

John Furlong, CEO of the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) today announced a few well-known torchbearers who will carry the Olympic Flame throughout the final days of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Torch Relay including California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and crooner Michael Buble.

Starting February 12th, Vancouver will host an estimated quarter million visitors as we welcome the world to the XXI Olympic Winter Games.  Here is our (gay) guide to the Olympics with information on events, bars, businesses and more!

Vancouver's Winter Olympics are not all about sport.  Along with the 17 days of competition, Vancouver will also host the 2010 Cultural Olympiad from January 22nd to March 21st, featuring artists from Canada and around the world in the areas of theatre, dance, music and the visual arts.

Among the almost 200 events that make up the Cultural Olympiad is BASH'd! A Gay Rap Opera.  Told almost entirely through rap, spoken word and poetry, the show has been winning over audiences across North America.  We caught up with co-creators of the show, Nathan Cuckow and Chris Craddock, during a break from their Canadian national tour to talk about the show.

With the Olympic Games there are always the firsts.  1900 saw women compete for the first time.  1924 saw the first Winter Olympics.  1960 saw electronic computers used for the first time.  And 2010 is no exception, with the Vancouver Winter Olympics the first year with Pride Houses - venues in Vancouver and Whistler open to gay and lesbian athletes, coaches, family, friends and their allies.

In 2001, a year before his Olympic hopes were dashed due to injury, elite snowboarder Ryan Miller came out to the competitive snowboard world during a trip to Vancouver.  Eight years later, with the Vancouver Winter Olympics just a month away, we caught up Ryan in his hometown of Denver, Colorado where he is still very much connected to the snowboard world with Outboard, the world’s largest gay and lesbian snowboard organization.

Named one of “100 Most Influential Gays and Lesbians” in 2001 by Advocate after his coming out, Ryan talks to us about snowboarding, coming out, being gay in a competitive sports environment and even Star Wars.

SafeGames 2010, a consortium of more than ten Vancouver community based organisations, will work to ensure that those attending the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics celebrate safely by distributing over a quarter of a million condoms, informational packets and other harm reduction materials, through a team of 200 outreach workers.

Organizers of first ever Olympic PRIDE House, which will operate in both Whistler and Vancouver during the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, have announced the acquisition of Slapshotolus, a bronze sculpture of a nude hockey player by Alberta artist Edmund Haakonson.  The sculpture will take centre stage at the PRIDE House in Whistler.