Getting excited about Vancouver

I’ve been looking at old Olympic highlight reels from Nagano, Salt Lake City and Torino.

Pretty awesome. A lot of familiar faces from the North Country will be back this winter, but I found myself shedding backyard fever.

Didn’t matter where the athletes hailed from.

It was the awesome power of the jumps, the raw power of the mogul skiers, the incredible risk-taking that made me catch my breath, even on old, grainy VCR recordings.

We live in a world where the media culture is largely summer-oriented.

This is a time when snow and ice are celebrated as more than the stuff you scrape off your car.

A time when California and Florida are nudged aside briefly by the North Latitudes.

NCPR’s coverage will kick off in a big way next week with a five-day series of pre-Vancouver specials.

We’ll also have celebrated sports photographer Nancie Battaglia reporting for us on the ground there.

And we’ll be checking in with other journalists including Peter Crowley from the Adirondack Daily Enterprise.

It’s going to be fun and exciting — global as well as down-home.

We’ll also be blogging regularly about the competition here on the In Box, so be ready to join in with your handicapping and your reactions.

Tags: olympics