Sportsworld Vancouver update including a British Gold!

It's been quite a week in Vancouver for both Sportsworld and Team GB (and not forgetting Team Canada)!

Not only is the city of Vancouver staging a magnificent Games, but Sportsworld's guests are getting right in the thick of it! For some of our Canadian guests and the Sportsworld Vancouver office, it took just two days for the celebrations to begin! On February 14th, Canada finally captured its first gold medal on home soil. After failing to win gold in Montreal in 1976 and in Calgary in 1988, the pressure was on to raise the Canadian flag in Vancouver in 2010.

Amidst near perfect conditions at Cypress Mountain, guests from one of Sportsworld's key clients were on hand to witness Canada's Alexandre Bilodeau take first place in the men’s moguls freestyle skiing competition. The crowd was electric and Canada’s patriotism was clear. One thrilled guest said “it was great for Sportsworld to arrange for us to be here for such a momentous occasion.” Well, we try! To then witness Bilodeau receive his gold medal the following day at the medal ceremony, the same guest iterated "that really capped off the experience.”

Another Sportsworld guest then added to the excitement of Bilodeau’s win on Valentine's day by proposing to his girlfriend. He presented her with a ring, quite fittingly, under the Olympic rings. Now that's one to tell the kids about.

As the first Olympic weekend came to a close and our initial wave of Olympic guests headed home, a group of Sportsworld staff were treated to a thank you song, written and performed by the guests, to demonstrate their appreciation for the service offered by Sportsworld during their time in Vancouver.

In another heart-warming turn of events, while entering a Curling event later in the week, members of our client party were generous enough to gift unused tickets to a family waiting in line at the box office. The family were understandably excited and very grateful for being given the opportunity to attend an Olympic event thanks to a random act of kindness.

Team GB - Gold!
It wasn't just Team Canada who were celebrating though. Amy Williams won Britain's first solo Winter Olympics gold medal for 30 years with victory in the women's skeleton on Friday night.

Amy broke her own track record on the way to Team GB's first medal of the Vancouver Games in a time of three minutes 35.64 seconds, with German Kerstin Szymkowiak and her team-mate Anja Huber taking silver and bronze, while GB's Shelley Rudman finished sixth.

The gold continues a fine run of British skeleton sliding since the sport was reintroduced to the Winter Olympics at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. Alex Coomber won bronze eight years ago, Rudman secured silver in Turin in 2006 and Amy's now topped it off with a gold in Vancouver.

Her achievement is all the more remarkable as Britain does not have a full skeleton track to train on, apart from a dry starting section near Bath, where Amy now lives.

"Never in a million years did I think I'd come here and win gold," Amy said. "I don't think it will sink in for weeks and weeks. It's amazing to do this for my country. I had nothing to lose here and I just went for it. I enjoyed every minute".

Williams' gold is Britain's first at a Winter Olympics since Scot Rhona Martin led the curling team to victory in 2002, and the nation's ninth gold in total.

Watch Amy Williams impressive final run here, which clinched GB's first medal of Vancouver 2010.

But we're still hoping for more - come on Team GB!

Other British hopes doing us proud are:
Figure Skating - Scottish siblings John and Sinead Kerr produced another spectacular performance to record a season’s best in the free skate section of the ice dancing competition. Skating to music by Linkin Park they scored 92.23 to give them a total of 186.01 and 8th place in the final standings.

Men's Curling - After David Mudoch's team crushed Germany 8-2 yesterday (Monday), it takes them closer to securing a place in the semi-finals, and therefore a medal. They face Norway today and a win will guarantee them that semi-final berth. It was Britain's fifth win from eight games in the competition and the second in succession after a narrow defeat to Canada.

Women's Curling - After suffering a devastating 9-8 defeat at the hands of Denmark yesterday (Monday), it now looks like Eve Muirhead's team have seriously damaged their Olympic medal hopes. After now losing their last four matches to slip to five defeats and three wins, they must now beat table-topping Canada in their final game at 1700 GMT on Tuesday and wait on other results. Looks unlikely...

Women's bobsleigh - Great Britain's world champion women's bobsleigh team of Nicola Minichiello and Gillian Cooke get their Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games campaign underway today (Tuesday) and are joined in action by the GBR2 crew of Paula Walker and Kelly Thomas. They begin their first of four runs in Whistler at 0100 GMT on Wednesday.

Keep up to date with our Games Time Gallery and read more about what Sportsworld is up to in Vancouver here.