By Community Correspondent Angelika Mohr After two weeks of fierce competition and many moments of spectacular achievements and heartbreaking disappointment, the Closing Ceremony last Sunday brought the 21st Winter Olympics, held in Vancouver, Canada, to a close. Despite the sad death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili on a training run, which overshadowed the Opening Ceremony, the Olympics were considered “a success” by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The president of the IOC, Jacques Rogge, said: "The way Vancouver embraced these games was extraordinary. This is really something unique and has given a great atmosphere for these Games" and called the Games "excellent and very friendly". Ultimately, Vancouver achieved to stage the Olympics “With Glowing Hearts” or “Des plus brillants exploits”, which were the official mottos of the Games held from February 12th to 28th 2010.

Athletes from 82 Nations took part in the Games, the total costs of which are estimated at around six billion Canadian dollars. For athletes from the Cayman Islands, Colombia, Ghana, Montenegro, Pakistan, Peru and Serbia, Vancouver 2010 was the first ever Winter Olympics.

Of the fifteen sports which were included in the Games, eight were classified as “ice sports”. These included figure skating, ice hockey speed skating, curling, short track speed skating, skeleton, bobsledge and luge. The three “Alpine sports” snowboarding, alpine and freestyle and the remaining four were “Nordic sports”, which included ski jumping, biathlon, cross-country skiing and Nordic combined.

The host nation, Canada, broke the record for the most gold medals ever won at a Winter Olympics on the second-last day of the games with a total of fourteen, which had previously been held by the former Soviet Union and Norway with thirteen. The USA topped the medal table with thirty-seven medals in total, followed by Germany and Norway with a medal total of thirty and twenty-three respectively. Marit Bjorgen of Norway won the most medals as a single contestant in Cross-country skiing, winning three gold medals, one silver and one bronze.

A number of athletes broke world records at the Games, including Kim Yu-Na of South Korea, who won the ladies singles figure skating competition and broke the world record with 150.06 points for her free skate and with a combined total of 228.56 points. In the Women’s speed skating, China set a new world record in the short track 3000m relay with a time of 4 minutes and 6 seconds. Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo won the pairs figure skating competition, winning the first ever gold medal for China as well as breaking world records in both their short program and their overall score, with a total of 216.57 points.

Another interesting record was broken in Men’s Downhill skiing, with only a record-breaking 0.09 seconds between the gold, won by Didier Defago of Switzerland with a time of 1:54.31, and the bronze medal, won by Bode Miller of the USA with a time of 1:54.40, which is the smallest time difference ever recorded in this event. Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway took the silver with a time of 1:54.38.

Great Britain sent fifty athletes to Vancouver and finished nineteenth in the medals table, and returned with one gold medal, won by Amy Williams in the women’s skeleton. This was Great Britain’s first gold medal at the Winter Olympics in thirty years.

During the closing ceremony, the Olympic torch was passed to the mayor of Sochi, Russia, where the next Winter Olympic Games will be held in February 2014.

Vancouver is now looking forward to the 2010 Winter Paralympics held there between March 12 and March 21, 2010.