This is a compliment to Canada and Canadians and especially to Western Canadians for being such great hosts during the games.

A bit long but worth the read.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- I come to praise the Games. No, really, close your dropped jaw and wipe the skepticism off your face. While the 2010 Winter Olympics certainly won't be remembered as the best ever, they've rebounded from a dreadful start and have cleaned up rather nicely as we careen down the final stretch.

Good luck finding a single soul in the mad crush of crowds who'll say anything derogatory about these Games. In the end, it's the fans' opinions that matter most, not the cranky journalists and Olympic officials who spent the first week hyperventilating, on air and in print, over problems large and small.

There were legitimate issues, to be sure. The training run accident that killed the young Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili on the eve of the Games will always be the heartbreaking prelude to Vancouver's narrative. The inquests and investigations are far from over; until they are it is unfair and unwise to divvy up fault and blame.

But most every other problem has been, as far as Olympics go, a relatively minor inconvenience. Some, like the ugly chain link fence concealing the Cauldron and the vomiting ice-resurfacing machine at the speed skating, were easily fixed. Others, like the disastrous heavy rains on Cypress Mountain that forced organizers to cancel about 20,000 standing room tickets and the dense fog shrouding the Whistler slopes, couldn't be helped. (Not even Wayne Gretzky can direct dial the weather gods). Those who chose to slam the Opening Ceremonies because of -- quelle honte! -- a dysfunctional torch or the failure to properly honor Canada's French culture ought to send their disapproving letters to the Australian who choreographed and directed the extravaganza.

 
ShareIf those issues didn't illustrate the perfect storm to some, it was only a matter of time before full-on disaster struck. Nitpicking is part of a journalists' DNA, and while portions of the criticism were necessary (how terribly unjust it would be to Kumaritashvili's family if the media didn't question the circumstances surrounding his death), large chunks of the caterwauling seemed premature.

The harshest assessment came from hard-boiled scribes who hail from across the pond. A headline in the Guardian, a British newspaper, declared "Vancouver Games continue downhill slide from disaster to calamity," and it was accompanied by a subhead stating the fiascos were "threatening to make these Games the worst in Olympic history."

After five days? Athletes lose medals for jumping the gun. If piling-on were a sport, the media would win every time.

Thin-skinned Canadians, wounded by brutal reviews from all points on the planet, wondered why unfavorable stories didn't lead with mentions of the debacle that was Atlanta or the shameful stomp-out of human rights that occurred in Beijing. But of course those were the overwhelming, exhaustively chronicled themes of those Olympics. In Atlanta there was the lethal bomb planted by an American terrorist, the displaced homeless, the transportation nightmares. Many of us thought, not facetiously, that then-IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch should have declared Atlanta "the worst games ever" at the Closing Ceremony. In Beijing, it was impossible to tell a story about beach volleyball without noting how many protesters the Chinese government had arrested that day.

There are still four days to go before the curtain shuts on Vancouver. But at the moment what rings true is the joyful spirit that fills the streets here and in the charming town of Whistler. They are as packed as a can of tuna, these streets, but nobody seems to mind. Every day is a fantastic festival; every night is a revolving carnival crackling with the noise of a dozen languages, all of them sounding delighted.

The crowds are extraordinarily well-behaved, the police refreshingly calm even as they remain ultra vigilant. Drunken hooliganism isn't tolerated (last weekend the city took the unprecedented steps of closing downtown liquor stores early, just in case), and hordes of families safely walk the cobblestones deep into the night.

The locals are gracious and polite, no surprise to anyone who's ever spent time in Canada, but they've taken the sport of hosting to a new extreme. The Sochi (Russia) 2014 organizing committee brought a team of 150 staff here, to observe and hopefully imitate Canadian hospitality. Sochi's top officials are fetching coffee, parking cars, giving tours and practicing how to smile even while crazed journalists scream about faulty Internet service.

"(The Canadians) are so open and friendly. I feel that my people are getting energy from them," Dmitry Chernyshenko, president of Sochi 2014, told The Globe and Mail.

It's not just the sight of hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life getting along and sharing a common goal -- the universal quest for fun -- that warms the heart. It's the sound we're hearing more and more as the Games progress. As medals are presented to Russians, Germans, Americans or (fill in the homeland), the crowds have been all class. And no matter your country of origin, it's humanly impossible not to get chills whenever a Canadian athlete is honored in the nightly medal ceremony. There is nothing more rousing than watching the locals sing their national anthem loud and proud.

That endlessly analyzed "Own the Podium" campaign? The fans don't seem to give a moose's foot how many medals their country might compile. The first week brought a succession of tearful apologies from Canadian athletes who thought they let their country down. Sorry, said freestyle skier Jennifer Heil, after she failed to capture Canada's first gold. Sorry, said Christopher Del Bosco, after he crashed hard within sight of the finish line in the ski cross competition. Sorry, said speed skating brothers Charles and Francois Hamelin, after they took fourth and fifth. Sorry, said Canadian skiers, after they failed to take a medal on their own mountain.

But when the lovely Melissa Hollingsworth cried on national TV and apologized to the country after a sure medal in the skeleton evaporated into fifth place, it was as if the nation's tightly-wound psyche came unclenched. There was a seismic shift after Hollingsworth's breakdown, a palpable reduction of the immense and probably unfair pressure.

Enough with the public flagellation, Canadians seemed to shout. With the mood lightened considerably, the homegrown athletes took comfort and gained strength from the warm hugs of the crowds. And what do you know, Canada scooped four more medals Wednesday, including a record-tying seventh gold that equaled the United States' and Germany's gold medal haul. There also was that small matter of Team Canada crushing Russia in the men's hockey quarterfinals.

Worst games ever? Well, there were some grumbles overheard in the Russian cove at the Main Media Center following the hockey ouster, and more complaining from certain American journalists disgusted with the sparse culinary choices in the food court. It's all relative, same as it is for every Olympics.

Me, I'll declare them a raging success if I can just find a pair of those red mittens with the maple leaf on the palm. Bloody Oprah seems to have grabbed the last pair.