Looking Forward To Seeing Betty

It's Day 16, and the Games are winding down. The last couple of days included a visit to the Olympic Village, interaction with Olympic gold medalists from the track, football pitch and swimming pool, and more pin trading than should be legal for any one person.

This morning included time for reflection on the London Olympic experience. I took at taxi to Parliament Square (where this Games officially began for me personally) for a morning meeting at the London Media Centre, then I spent an hour at church learning about the Unitarian Universalist congregation of London founded in the 1780s.

Oh, and picked up a Closing Ceremony ticket.

I look forward to the return to Olympic Stadium and seeing the cauldron in its end-of-field location.

The London Olympic cauldron designers and ceremony team nicknamed the mega-torch "Betty" as a codeword to keep its design, construction and installation a secret, so it will be fun to revisit "Betty" before the flame is extinguished.

The changeover ceremony for Rio 2016 is also highly anticipated -- I hope there are some fun surprises. My money is on a Pele cameo. I hope also to get another shot at photographing Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (Kate Middleton) like at synchronized swimming.

As my fingers type this post, for its money from Team Spain in the Olympic basketball. Go USA!

There are tons of photos and heaps of videos to upload and share, which should be good fodder for more post-Games updates to this Olympic blog. I appreciate everyone reading and sending nice notes of support via Facebook during the last 16 days, and look forward to sharing more of the London Olympic story, a look at Sochi 2014 and Rio 2016 and more photos very soon.

Photo via The Guardian and Getty

Frustrated Francophones, and a Closing Ceremony Prediction

Yesterday it was vandals posing as protesters who grabbed a few headlines from Olympic media in town.

The Olympic media bandwagon today jumped on word that some French Canadian officials politely griped that there was, in their view, not enough French in Friday's Opening Ceremonies.

C'est la vie.

One report on this topic brought up Celine Dion's absence from the Opening Ceremony as an example of "could've provided more French feeling" performer, but also mentioned that Dion's manager/spouse reported it was a problème discutable (moot issue) since the award-winning (and 1996 Atlanta Opening Ceremonies "Power of the Dream") singer is apparently in hôpital for assistance to conceive a child.

I'm going to go out on a limb, er, hors sur une branche (or "hors sur un membre") and state here that there's something fishy about Dion's alleged "unavailability" -- I think it is a ruse (much like VANOC's John Furlong stating Wayne Gretzky would not ignite the cauldron), and she will in fact appear in the Vancouver Olympic Closing Ceremony to sing the duet "Immortality" with one of several male Canadian stars (a la Bryan Adams' duet with Nelly Furtado in the Opening Ceremony).

You might recall, Dion recorded "Immortality" (infused with the theme/words "we don't say goodbye") with the Bee Gees a few years back (for an all-Canada extravaganza, perhaps Leonard Cohen or Michael Bublé would stand in for Gibb two weeks from tonight).

"Immortality" provides appropriate "farewell" lyrics to send-off the athletes of the world, much like "Amigos Para Siempre" at Barcelona's spectacular Ceremony in 1992 (Sarah Brightman's first Olympic appearance).

So, you read it here first: Closing Ceremony including Celine Dion and the lyrics "We Don't Say Goodbye" two weeks from tonight.

For this evening, au revoir!

Photo of Celine Dion performing in Atlanta's Opening Ceremony via this site.