Kristin and Hakon were the mascots for the Lillehammer Games.(ATR) The trio of mascots for the Vancouver Olympics unveiled Tuesday confirms a trend towards “the more the merrier” in the mascot business.
With the addition from Vancouver of Miga, Sumi and Quatchi to the mascot menagerie, a total of 14 different creatures or human figures have stood as mascots for the six Winter Olympics since 1994.
Magique, the star-shaped figure for Albertville in 1992, was the last mascot toperform solo at the Winter Games.
The 1994 Lillehammer Olympic Winter Games ushered in the first mascots to be based on historical human figures. They also have been the last of the humanoid mascots. The Lillehammer pair were named Hakon and Kristin after royal children from the 13th century.
“Nothing is as good as Lillehammer,” jokes IOC member Gerhard Heiberg of Norway, whose bias is firmly rooted from the time he spent as president and CEO of the 1994 Games.
He tells Around the Rings he likes the choices Vancouver has made: “They have found what they needed”.
Consultant George Hirthler, known for his communications work on Olympic Games and bids for the past 20 years, says the Vancouver mascots will be “a hit”.
“Love their diversity and their different sizes,” he says.
“A nice reflection of Canada’s creativity and a great new edition to Olympic folklore. Children will gobble them up,” predicts Hirthler.
Neve and Gliz, mascots of the Turin Olympics, with Aster, the Paralympics mascot, in the middle. (ATR)
The Turin 2006 Olympic Winter Games mascots were Neve, and Gliz. And as their Italian-based names implied, the pair represented a snowball and an ice cube, the two elements needed for the Olympic Winter Games.
At the time of their unveiling, Neve and Gliz were described by Turin 2006 as reflecting the spirit of the Turin Games: passion, enthusiasm, culture, elegance, and love of the environment and of sport. The pair were featured in a series of short TV cartoons in which they squeaked and jingled as they took part in winter activities. Turin provided the first mascot for the Winter Paralympics, a snowflake to complement Neve and Gliz.
The Salt Lake City 2002 Olympic Winter Games mascots Powder, a snowshoe hare, Copper, a coyote and Coal, a black bear, were chosen to symbolize the Olympic motto "Citius, Altius Fortius”. As with most winter mascots, the trio receded quickly from public consciousness soon after the Games were over.
The most popular of the recent wave of Winter Games mascots The four mascots from the Nagano Olympics proved to be popular in Japan.may have been the four Snowlets of Nagano in 1998. Four were chosen to represent the four years between each Olympic Games.
Sukki, Nokki, Lekki and Tsukki were the names chosen for the critters out of nearly 50,000 suggestions sent in by the public. At the end of the 2002 Games, plenty of mascots remained unsold. (ATR)
Merchandise bearing the snowlets enjoyed steady sales among young people in the run-up to the Olympics. And by the end of the Games, the snowlets were, so to speak, extinct: scant snowlet products remained for sale.
Written by
Ed Hula and Laura Grundy.
For general comments or questions,
click here
Your best source of news about the Olympics is www.aroundtherings.com , for subscribers only.
Últimas Noticias
Sinner-Alcaraz, the duel that came to succeed the three phenomenons
Beyond the final result, Roland Garros left the feeling that the Italian and the Spaniard will shape the great duel that came to help us through the duel for the end of the Federer-Nadal-Djokovic era.
Table tennis: Brazil’s Bruna Costa Alexandre will be Olympic and Paralympic in Paris 2024
She is the third in her sport and the seventh athlete to achieve it in the same edition; in Santiago 2023 she was the first athlete with disabilities to compete at the Pan American level and won a medal.
Rugby 7s: the best player of 2023 would only play the medal match in Paris
Argentinian Rodrigo Isgró received a five-game suspension for an indiscipline in the circuit’s decisive clash that would exclude him until the final or the bronze match; the Federation will seek to make the appeal successful.
Rhonex Kipruto, owner of the world record for the 10000 meters on the road, was suspended for six years
The Kenyan received the maximum sanction for irregularities in his biological passport and the Court considered that he was part of a system of “deliberate and sophisticated doping” to improve his performance. He will lose his record and the bronze medal at the Doha World Cup.
Katie Ledecky spoke about doping Chinese swimmers: “It’s difficult to go to Paris knowing that we’re going to compete with some of these athletes”
The American, a seven-time Olympic champion, referred to the case of the 23 positive controls before the Tokyo Games that were announced a few weeks ago and shook the swimming world. “I think our faith in some of the systems is at an all-time low,” he said.
