Solar Sports airs Winter Olympics

MANILA, Philippines - Solar Sports will be bringing to the living rooms of Filipinos the coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics straight from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

The country’s no. 1 sports channel is setting aside 200 hours of live coverage for the Feb. 12-28 event, giving viewers fresh updates, day-by-day breakdown and round-ups of the various sports competitions.

This marks the second time in two years Solar Sports is doing a comprehensive coverage of the Olympics after the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.

No Philippine delegation will represent the country during the 17-day competition, although several Filipinos already carried the RP tri-colors in previous stagings of the quadrennial meet, among them Ben Nanasca and Juan Cipriano in the Alpine skiing event (1972 Saporro), Raymond Ocampo in men’s luge (1988 Calgary) and Michael Teruel also in alpine skiing (1992 Albertville).

Around 5,000 athletes from 80 countries are seeing action in the 15 winter sports events, including bobsled, luge, skeleton, ice hockey, figure skating, speed skating, short track speed skating, curling, alpine, freestyle, snowboarding, biathlon, cross country skiing, ski jumping and nordic combined.

Some of the events will be held in the resort town of Whistler nearby Vancouver.

Apart from the Games, the event also highlights the splendor of Vancouver, a vibrant cosmopolitan city dramatically set on the Pacific Ocean, and showcases the Canadian spirit of hospitality, multi-culturalism and athleticism.

This marks the second time Canada is hosting the Winter Games after the 1988 staging in Calgary.

Canada also previously hosted the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal.