1988 Calgary Olympics’ weather delays rank with Sochi sunniness

Twitter, it barely need be said, gives us all the same memory problems that Drew Barrymore's character had in the movie 50 First Dates.

It would follow then, that the hand-wringing over the warm temperatures in Sochi, Russia, during these Olympics, what with already dipping into the snow reserves, concern about how outdoor sports will be affected, leaves out that this is hardly new at a winter Games. By the way, it's still plenty cold for people staying up in the mountains outside of Sochi.

This happened in Canada, too, but not so much in coastal Vancouver four years ago. One can only wonder how many @Chinook Twitter accounts would have been created during the 1988 Calgary Olympics. The daytime high one day during the '88 Games approached that of Miami — Miami, Florida., not Miami, Manitoba.

"Wild winds" caused numerous delays to outdoor events. In all, as CBC's Nancy Durham reported on the final day of Calgary '88, 21 events had to be rescheduled because of #WindProblems. A chinook blew into Southern Alberta and for the most part it stayed. It threw off bobsledders and lugers and played havoc with ski jumpers' safety at the Olympic Park.

In '88, there was an all-encompassing concern about having enough snow, but an "ill wind that does no good" was a major Games story. The winds were so strong that sand kept getting on the bobsled track.

Calgary, of course, is a city where one can experience all four seasons in one visit. I was there in January to cover the CHL/NHL Top Prospects Game. The plane landed on a Monday amid a snow squall. Two days later I jogged outside and had to stop partway to take off my track pants and finish while wearing shorts.

It's just worth pointing out that this happens. It's probably going to be a fact of life at every winter Games due to continuing climate change. To wit, Atlanta, which hosted the 1996 Summer Olympics, is having more wintry weather at the moment than either Sochi is presently or Vancouver did four years ago.

Sorry to play semantics cop, but climate and weather are not synonyms. It's indisputable the planet has become warmer over the past century and that means more extreme weather everywhere, with equal and opposite conditions all over the globe. Namely, if it's really cold one place, it's really hot and dry someplace else.

Who knows how Calgary's wind problems would have been remembered if the world had been more digitized in 1988, a good half-decade before most Canadian homes were wired for the Internet. (We read books and played a lot of board games by candlelight, kids; sometimes we even went outside for more than just the walk from the door to dad and mum's car.)

In the big picture, the Calgary weather issues didn't seem to matter that much, speaking as someone old enough to remember both Games in '88 (yes, they used to hold both in the same year before the IOC decided to gin up the winter iteration by adding any event involving ice and/or snow that could have been a programming staple for the fictional ESPN8 in Dodgeball).

Canada did not win a gold medal in Calgary. The profit from those Games and the venues that were built created a legacy that helped many performers get to the top of the podium over the years to come. The other big takeaway from that Nancy Durham is that the '88 Games didn't saddle taxpayers with huge debt, which is something the Olympics needs to get back to like yesterday.

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.