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Vancouver 2010 – Weather, NBC

It’s a month before the start of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games and its raining. The warm and wet weather forced the venue for freestyle skiing and snowboarding to close, reports Canwest News Service.

But Vancouver 2010 officials aren’t worried about the weather’s effects during the Games. Tim Gayda, Vancouver 2010 vice president of sport, said organizers have been planning for the weather since Vancouver won the bid. Canwest reports Gayda said, “we looked at all the venues and the challenges they would each face. We looked at having too much snow, warm temperatures, and all the different strategies that we would put in place to deal with that. What we’re seeing up at Cypress (Mountain) is definitely pushing the team, but it is something we did expect”.

He added, “at higher elevations the mountain received substantial amounts of natural snow that we are currently pushing into big piles in order to naturally insulate it”.

Canwest reports a fleet of 14 snowcats will push the piles of snow down the mountain in coming weeks to create the courses. Temperatures need to dip below zero to create artificial snow, but Gayda said there is enough stockpiled in emergency reserves now to construct the courses in case it doesn’t get any colder.

Three outdoor competition venues at Whistler are in better shape due to heavy snowfall at the start of the season and temperatures remaining within an ideal range at higher elevations.

Meanwhile NBC Universal says it expects to lose money televising the Games. Dick Ebersol, head of NBC Sports, said that while advertising sales were soft for much of last year, they have picked up as the Olympics draw near, reports the Associated Press.

NBC paid $820 million for the rights to televise the Games compared to the $613 million paid for the Turin Games in 2006.

Ebersol said it will be the first time NBC has lost money on the Games since he began producing the telecasts from Barcelona in 1992.

However the network said it won’t cut back on its coverage due to the financial problems.

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