Party's over: Vancouver has Olympic hangover

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-03-02 11:33

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - The party is over in Vancouver, replaced by an Olympic-sized hangover. The question now is how long the headaches will last.

While the streets of Vancouver overflowed with mosh pit-like crowds celebrating Canada's overtime hockey victory over the US in the gold-medal game on Sunday night, the arena that hosted the game was already being dismantled from the inside out.

Party's over: Vancouver has Olympic hangover

A visitor looks at the Olympic cauldron a day after the 2010 winter games ended in Vancouver.[Photo/Agencies]

By the time the world media finished writing up Sidney Crosby's golden goal, the ice he scored it on had almost been completely stripped away.

The Olympic-logo faceoff dot nearest his clinching shot had been melted out of the ice and given to a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer in exchange for his hat, which the Zamboni driver wore while grinding away the rest of the ice. Except he wasn't driving a Zamboni, but rather a sponsor-supplied Olympia, which broke down before the ice was gone and required a second to tow it off and finish.

It was a somewhat fitting scene for an Olympics that started solemnly with the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili in a training crash, and struggled through weather, technical and performance issues in the middle, before finishing in climatic fashion with a historic hockey win.

By the time Vancouver awoke Monday - many belatedly and with bloodshot eyes no doubt - the celebratory din that followed had been replaced by sounds of power tools as temporary venues were dismantled and packed into moving vans. The red-and-white crowd had given way to more typical weekday attire, with only a smattering of Canada logos among the power suits and dark overcoats.

"We've done a lot of triple-shot drinks this morning," said Kyle Straw, the manager - and award-winning barista - at Caffe Artigiano, one of Vancouver's most popular stops for coffee. "I've never seen this city celebrate so big, never been in a crowd as intense and thick as it was last night."

The remnants of that crowd, including many of the 60,000 people crammed into Sunday s closing ceremonies, were surprisingly manageable.

Garbage was in, or at least nearby, the numerous temporary trash cans, with a solitary shoe on the sidewalk the only sign of the recent revelry.

"We expected a lot worse," said Jody Weatherby, an electrician with the City of Vancouver as he helped repair street-crossing signals damaged in the party.

Like low-lying fruit, the signals were an easy and expected target, too easy for those that had one too many to jump up, grab onto and hang from. But other than that, Weatherby said the biggest damage on Monday was to the city's mood.

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