GOLD for Jon Montgomery, who not only wins Canada's latest gold, but confirms your intuition that those skeleton dudes would be a lot of fun to hang around with after the runs are over. Check out his cool skeleton rider helmet here. And consider his way of evincing humility before the final run, when he said nothing short of "Tonya Harding and a lead pipe" would help him win the gold.

GOLD for high finance etiquette to those auctioning off the assets of Intrawest http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/related_content.html?topic=Intrawest ULC. The auction has been pushed back to Friday, Feb. 26. "The delay avoids the awkwardness," one news report daintily explains, "of having the auction take place during Alpine skiing events at Canada's Whistler Blackcomb resort, which is operated by Intrawest." Let's all... just hum... a little tune... while that…bankruptcy awkwardness... passes.

GOLD to "Ikons," which, as the excellent online newsmagazine Vancouver Observer explains, "is an interactive art installation that has been a long time coming. For nearly three decades, Vancouver performance and visual artist Eric Metcalfe and legendary American composer, trombonist and intellectual George Lewis have been skating around the same circles, waiting for the right time to collaborate. It seems that right time is now...

"For the piece, which will be on display from Jan. 28 to Feb. 28, Metcalfe has created seven vibrant hand-painted sculptures, each about eight feet tall, that will house sonar sensors and speakers. The exhibition space will be full of recorded music composed by Lewis and performed by Vancouver's contemporary/classical Turning Point Ensemble."

GOLD to this athlete for summing up the predicament Canadian athletes face in these games thanks to nationalist drumbeaters: "I had almost no ownership over my results or my situation . . . because too many people had said, 'Oh, he's going to win these medals. And when everyone says that about you for that long you don't feel like you have ownership of your own actions anymore." That athlete, by the way, is Bode Miller, the American skier who failed to win a medal in Turin but did snag a silver and bronze here.

SILVER to W2 Culture + Media Centre for best excuse to throw an African dance party. Their fundraiser last night for the Ghanaian Ski Team, a.k.a Kwame a.k.a. the "Snow Leopard," featured Ezeadi Onukwulu and band. They started at 10. Are they still playing?

SILVER for the buskers on Granville, drawing the wandering hordes into spontaneous cheering, dancing and laughing collectives that would rival any high-priced nightclub or stage show. Deserving a special mention is Basketball Jones, who shoots hoops from a 10-foot tall unicycle, and the Grass Mountain Hobos, who play like they're auditioning for Afghanistan Idol.

BRONZE to NBC for the huge ratings success it's claiming for the 2010 Olympics Games. The broadcaster is crowing that its package, a mix of taped sporting events held for prime time, heart-warming histories of American athletes, and live stuff, has boosted the network's market share way over the record low rating for the Torino games. In fact, it's the first show that's beat American Idol in six years! Points off for not noting that the Torino time difference really hurt U.S. audiences, and when compared to the Salt Lake City Games of 2002, ratings for Vancouver's Olympics are down 24 per cent.

BRONZE for the relative lack of corporate advertising in a lot of 2010 Olympics venues. For instance, you will see way more corporate tents and logos in Whistler for the TELUS Ski and Snowboard Festival than you are for the Games. Also impressive is the fact that RBC gave over $5M to all of the communities that the Torch Relay went through, without actually making a big deal about it.

BRONZE to Elvis Stojko for providing insight into the murky world of figure skating judging while blasting the sport for rewarding those who play it safe and grabbing headlines saying the risk-taking Plushenko should have won. Points off for getting us all excited and then failing to land the final jump, by shrugging: "How can the sport be put back on the right path? I have no idea. I haven't even thought about it. It's not up to me."

But Plushenko himself, after "accidentally" stepping onto the gold level of the podium, lays it out pretty clearly:

FACEPLANT to the Vancouver Sun, the ultimate homer, for predicting Canadians would win 39 medals at these games (sez the Toronto Star). Don't they understand the rudimentaries of karma, quantum mechanics and gods eager to punish hubris? Eight in the bag, 31 to go.

PENALTY BOX for stingy fans of street theatre. Remember that item above about Vancouver's wonderful buskers? A five-minute major for appreciative crowds who enjoy their serendipitous show, then pass up the pass-the-hat policy, causing the hard-working performers to go home with but a few shiny nickels for their trouble.

PENALTY BOX to the "Official Restaurant" of the Olympics, which the pays lowest wages in the country according to the B.C. Federation of Labour.

British Columbia has the lowest minimum wage in Canada at $8 an hour, frozen for eight years. However, McDonald's in the Lower Mainland use the so-called training wage to lower starting salaries to as little as $6.35 an hour. The Liberal government introduced the training wage by lowering the minimum wage by 25 percent for new workers and immigrants.

"For those watching the McDonald's commercials celebrating the spirit and values of the Olympics, it might come as a surprise that one of the largest global restaurant chains pays new employees the lowest wages in Canada," Sinclair says in a BC Fed press release. "The company can't just pay lip service to the spirit of the Olympics."

He adds this zinger: "This company can find hundreds of millions of dollars to sponsor and promote the Olympics but they pay less than the lowest minimum wage in Canada to new workers."

The People's Podium will be closed Sunday as we at The Tyee spend the weekend enjoying ourselves -– and of course we urge you to do the same! See you Monday with a roundup of the weekend's Games.

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