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Men's half pipe snowboarding gold winner Shaun White - Source: Reuters -
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A breeze of enthusiasm has blown into the Vancouver Olympics after operational glitches, warm weather and the death of an athlete early on cast doubts over their success.
With the February 13 to March 1 Winter Games nearing the halfway mark, organisers are seeing full stadiums, exciting competitions and colder, sunny weather after weeks of rain threatened to wash away their sports schedule.
"Yes, (Vancouver) it is a gorgeous baby and I think it is a great city," International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams told reporters, quoting a US newspaper headline reflecting the shift of media coverage after predictions of doom and gloom only a few days earlier.
"It is certainly not a case of we told you so but we sort of told you so," Adams said.
"The city of Vancouver is absolutely rammed, you can hardly move and the excitement is fantastic. It can only continue."
Organisers are lapping up the praise, well aware the Games were off to a disastrous start, described by some as the worst ever for an Olympics.
A record warm January set the stage for frantic preparations at the Whistler and Cypress Mountain venues as a lack of snow and heavy rain were wreaking havoc to training and competition.
Tragic death
Hours prior to the opening ceremony, Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, 21, died at a training run when he crashed into a steel fixture, leaving the Games' start shrouded in mourning.
Further mishaps involving ice resurfacers, competition timing errors and the fenced-off downtown Olympic cauldron as well as the cancellation of some 28,000 standing room tickets due to safety concerns, seriously threatened to derail the Olympics.
The tide though looks to have turned, at least temporarily, for organisers, with stunning sunny weather providing a spectacular backdrop for the competitions and teething operational problems seemingly a thing of the past.
Domestic enthusiasm is also on a sharp rise with Canadians already having won three gold medals, three more than in any of the other two Games they have hosted in the past.
With a total of seven medals and a few more expected, including in the hugely popular ice hockey competition, the city is already bursting at the seams with tens of thousands of fans spilling out of venues and into central Vancouver at night to celebrate.
"It is so Canadian to be modest ... but we are thrilled to see that kind of coverage," Games spokeswoman Renee Smith-Valade said.
"The weather is beautiful, the sports are fantastic, the athletes are happy ... to have it recognised in the international press is so gratifying," she said.
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