Vancouver Olympic Games 2010

Slovenians are well-represented in the the XXI Winter Olympic Games, held in Vancouver, Canada, from February 12 until February 28.

More than 2,500 contestants from over 80 countries will compete for 86 sets of medals. The town of Whistler in British Columbia, Canada, will be the venue where most events will be held, whereas the opening ceremony will take place at the BC Place Stadium in Vancouver, indoors for the first time in the history of Olympic Games.

Slovenia will be represented at the Olympics by 47 athletes, which is the largest delegation of athletes to the winter Olympics in Slovene history. Seventeen women and thirty men will compete in ten different Olympic events, ranging from alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, skijumping, snowboarding, and figure skating to skeleton and freestyle skiing 

Petra Majdič in crosscountry skiing and Tina Maze in alpine skiing are two sportswomen in whom Slovene fans put most of their hopes. 

Petra Majdič, who has so far had one of the most successful seasons, is aspiring for at least one gold medal in women’s cross-country sprint, where she is one of the main favorites. Associated Press (AP) recently predicted that Petra will win four medals, something we all wish for very much. Tina Maze, on the other hand, will seek to win the slalom and giant slalom races, where in this year she had one of the best seasons in her career. She also was selected to carry the Slovenian flag at the opening ceremony on Friday. 

Other Slovene athletes to keep an eye on are Rok Flander in parallel giant slalom, Teja Gregorin in biathlon, and, of course, our ski-jumpers with Robert Kranjec, who also had a very successful season, in the front. 

The two Andrejs, Andrej Jerman and Andrej Šporn, are very likely to achieve great results in men’s downhill, since they both recently had great successes in the World Cup. Tone Vogrinec, who has been in charge of the Slovene skiing for many years and is considered an expert on world’s skiing competitions, recently stated that: "this time we [the Slovenes] are headed for the Olympics with rightfuly high expectations, since the achievements of our athletes this winter have shown, that medals are in fact within our reach.”