My cousin visited us from England in 1998. Highlight of his entire trip: Seeing Eddie the Eagle's helmet in the museum at COP. Not sure if it is still there - haven't been inside that building since.
I was down at Olympic Plaza a few nights as well and saw medal presentations. Calgary invented the downtown evening medal presentation. And pin trading of course, still have an Olympic toque with pins on it.
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Watching the Oilers defend is like watching fire engines frantically rushing to the wrong fire
I was at the 90m Ski Jumping, I turned 9 during the games.
Awesome times sitting there in the Ski Jump bowl with around 60,000 others. Where we were sitting, you could only see the jumpers after they were already in the air. It was hard to tell jumpers apart, except for Eddie the Eagle, he landed much shorter than everyone else.
Crowd was doing lots of waves, shouting "tastes great! Less Filling" back and forth from side to side, and of course "Eddie! Eddie!"
11 almost 12 at the time in grade 6. The cauldron lighter Robyn Perry was the next grade up, but was from the same school the year before. That was totally random and out of the blue, and for the kid to be someone you had seen in the playground was even more random.
The Catholic School system had the opening ceremonies day off, but the Public board had the whole two weeks off, which we thought was unfair.
Went to SWE/FIN hockey and Cze/Ussr (I think). A couple bobsled events. Had tickets for ski jumping but it was one of the days that was too windy at Paskapoo, so never got to see any jumpers.
Other random thoughts:
As most did, traded pins. Still have them somewhere on the same towel I used to display them 25 years ago. Got the coveted (at least at our school) ABC pin. There was the big Safeway/Coke pin trading tent downtown, but even malls like Chinook had tables setup for pin traders/sellers.
Canada having a poor hockey team..guys like Peplinksi were on it, and Andy Moog actually wore a full clear Itech mask in net.
Had the official $20 coin, and still have it, green box and all, with the Team Canada goalie on it.
My uncle was a vounteer driver, drove all sorts of recognizeable athletes and officials around town and to and from Nakiska.
Went to Olympic Plaza a few times, which was jammed at night for medal celebrations.
A few weeks after, they held a surplus sale from all the Olympic stuff...from TV's used, to Chevy Caprice Classic and Chev Celebrity Wagons.
My dad picked up a spare opening ceremnoies poncho (with the card saying to wear this and not trade it), a teal blazer with logo on it used by judges/officials at events, a Phillips small color TV, with the Olympic badge.
Good times. Of course wish I was older, but the city was a completely different place that 13 days...can only imagine if Canada had a competitve team or at least more surprise medals, how much more that would've made the experience.
Last edited by browna; 02-13-2013 at 09:48 AM.
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The Catholic School system had the opening ceremonies day off, but the Public board had the whole two weeks off, which we thought was unfair.
The Opening Ceremonies were on a Saturday afternoon, so everyone had it off, and I can assure you that the Public board didn't get the whole two weeks off.
Certain schools may have shut down because of their proximity to venues or something, but we had to go every day. I remember they would let you leave early if you had tickets to an event, and because of the Chinooks, a lot of events got re-scheduled, so they'd make announcements every day whenever something was cancelled for the day, and all the kids who had tickets to that event would get mad.
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Turn up the good, turn down the suck!
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"Life of Russian hockey veterans is very hard," said Soviet hockey star Sergei Makarov. "Most of them don't have enough to eat these days. These old players are Russian legends."
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I was still in the military, the night before the opening ceremony we helped sweep McMahon looking for anything out of place, we were alerted to the possibility of suspicious people making their way to the city.
I did security work at the front gate, in the dome during a Team Canada game. I met Jim Peplinski in the players lounge and had a nice chat with him. I met the great Mike Eruzione and asked him why he didn't play pro hockey after the miracle on ice and he simply stated that he didn't think anything would match up to beating the Russians.
I saw Katerina Witt stretching out and she was hot, I got busted staring at Debbie Thomas' hiney. I was at one of Karen Percy's medal ceremony.
I traded one of my unit pins with a Czech player for 3 of his pins.
It was a great time to be in Calgary. looking back on the ceremonies with the cheesy music and the mullets and the bright red uniforms it still brings a bit of mist to my eyes.
Thinking about the 10,000 volunteers and the job they did to make everyone that came here fall in love with the people and for the IOC to declare our games the best winter Olympics ever. The fact that Calgary made a profit from the games, and created a lot of the world class facilities that are still being used today is awesome.
I agree with the sentiment, lets do it again, lets welcome the world again.
Some fun facts about 1988
The average house price was about $75,000
Average annual salary was $24,500
Average Price for a new car $10,400
Movies were $2.50
Not sure about this but gas was 38 cents a litre
Terrorist blow up a pan am flight over Lockerbie Scottland
Crack makes its debut
Solidarity movement in Poland leads to mass strikes
First Space Shuttle launch since the Challenger disaster
Stephen Hawkings publishes a brief history of time
First major computer virus hits computers connected to the internet
The Stealth Bomber is unveiled
The Shroud of Turin theory is disproved its not the burial cloth of Christ
Top remembered movies, RainMan, Twins, Big, Die Hard, A Fish Called Wanda
Top musical acts Enya, Robert Palmer, Kylie Minogue, U2, Michael Jackson, Gloria Estefan, George Michaels, GNR
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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I went to a lot of bars, like every night. It was a huge amount of fun. Everyone was in a good mood and more than willing to tell stories. Meeting people from all over the world was great. It's what I always imagine Mardi Gras to be like.
Me and some friends had a habit of getting on top of a building every night for the laser show, and a smoke break. Sometimes we ended up on top of commercial buildings but a lot of the time it was just getting up on top of smaller rundown apartment buildings that were along 8th ave at that time.
I was part of the choir during the opening ceremonies, part of the green ring (0:26 in the clip GWE posted). I was in grade 5. It was a pretty cool experience. I also went to see a few hockey games.
I also remember going down to olympic plaza to watch a medal ceremony, and a woman who was standing in front me but slightly left, let someone block my view because as she stated "Don't worry, he can't see anyway".
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"Opinions are like demo tapes, and I don't want to hear yours" -- Stephen Colbert
I was one of those kids in blue snow suits that made shapes on the ground in the opening ceremonies. Like snow flake patterns, a bobsled run, etc. We had to practice for like three years or something for that, but it was a huge rush when we ran on the field for the real deal.
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I remember being at the opening ceremonies (it was damn cold). I also went to the last hockey game. It was a round-robin format so there was no actual gold medal game, but the medal presentations were done after the game. I think I also went to the bobsled one day, but I was too young to remember a whole lot.
I was 5 years old at the time. Unfortunately, we hadn't emigrated to Canada until 1989, but I do remember watching some events on TV. The other sad part was that we came to Calgary in October 1989, so I also missed the Flames winning the Stanley Cup.
First hockey game I ever attended was at the Olympics. I was 8 at the time. USA vs. Austria. The Americans won 10-6. Other than that, my memories are rather thin.
Interesting to note that the IOC had considered scrapping the Winter Olympics several times. They barely survived past 1972, then continued to limp forward until Calgary. Samaranch called the Calgary games the best Olympics ever. The Olympic retrospective in Sunday's Sun pretty much said that Calgary saved the Winter Olympics entirely.
The improvement Canada has made at the Winter Games is probably Calgary's greatest legacy - Our 14 gold medals in Vancouver is an all-time Winter Olympic record. But I read a couple days ago the embarrassing performance by the Americans in 1988 also caused them to re-focus their winter program.
Save the Corral!!
