2010 Olympic mascots unveiled

by Jarrett Martineau | November 27, 2007 at 04:15 pm | 312 views | add comment

Well the moment we've all been waiting for has finally arrived...the official 2010 mascots have been revealed! Not surprisingly, they draw inspiration from First Nations creatures and they've arrived in the modified animal forms of bears, whales, and marmots.

For a VANOC-certified animated look at these cuddly cute champions of all things olympic (and paralympic), check out the mascots in their natural online habitat.

Will Vancouverites embrace or reject these warm and fuzzy emblems of athletic animus? Locals are already weighing in and there will likely be much more praise and criticism to come.

But what if the mascots more accurately reflected the rapid changes and challenges of maintaining a high standard of living in the Vancouver region?

Would Miga be a starving artist spirit bear forced further and further out of downtown Vancouver due to massive gentrification and skyrocketing housing prices? Might Quatchi be a lonely homeless sasquatch, suffering from mental illness who's had nowhere to go since the BC Liberals shut down Riverview years ago? And couldn't little Sumi, just a baby marmot, end up suffering from BC's highest-in-Canada rate of child poverty?

While this is wildly antithetical to the messages of hope and prosperity that VANOC is attempting to communicate with their mascots, the all-too-real issues of Vancouver's unaffordability, lack of social services, and rising rates of poverty and homelessness remain.

The three mascots and a sidekick for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver were inspired by traditional First Nations creatures, and introduced Tuesday to 800 schoolchildren at the Bell Performing Arts Centre in Surrey, B.C.

    The three 2010 Olympic Winter Games mascots, Miga, Quatchi and Sumi, were introduced on Tuesday.The three 2010 Olympic Winter Games mascots, Miga, Quatchi and Sumi, were introduced on Tuesday.
    (VANOC)

Miga is a mythical First Nations sea bear that is part killer whale and part Kermode spirit bear. Miga was based on the legends of the Pacific Northwest First Nations of orca whales that transform into bears when they arrive on land, but is also a snowboarder.

Quatchi is a sasquatch, but a shy and gentle giant, that loves all winter sports, and is especially fond of hockey and dreams of becoming a world-famous goalie.

The third mascot, Sumi, is an animal-guardian spirit who wears the hat of the orca whale, flies with the wings of the mighty Thunderbird and runs on the furry legs of the black bear.

    Miga, a snowboarding sea bear inspired by the legends of the Pacific Northwest First Nations, will be one of three main mascots at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. Miga, a snowboarding sea bear inspired by the legends of the Pacific Northwest First Nations, will be one of three main mascots at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.
    (CBC)

The three creatures' sidekick is Mukmuk, a rare Vancouver Island marmot. While not officially a mascot, Mukmuk enjoys surprising his friends by popping up on occasion. Mukmuk’s name comes from the Squamish word for food — muckamuck — because he loves to eat.

Meet Miga the Sea Bear, Quatchi the Sasquatch, and Sumi, the Thunderbird.

Along with a virtual sidekick, Mukmuk the Vancouver Island Marmot, who will never make an appearance in the flesh, these are mascots the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games organizers hope will be adopted and adored by thousands of children around the world.

Vanoc unveiled a combination of British Columbia animals, an aboriginal mythic creature and a long sought-after half-man Tuesday as the flagbearers for its Olympic program, and in doing so joined a long list of organizing committees that have used cute and cuddly as the benchmarks for successful mascots.

None of the three mascots actually exist in real life: Miga the Sea Bear is a combination of an orca and a bear. Sumi, the Paralympic mascot, is a Thunderbird but looks more like a bear with wings.

And Quatchi is the first Sasquatch in history to actually make an appearance before human beings.

As for Mukmuk, it's actually the only real animal. But Vanoc says it isn't really a mascot and will only make appearances on its website.

The mascots are the creation of Vancouver graphic designers Vicki Wong and Michael Murphy, who own Meomi Design. Vanoc says that although the two provided more than 20 different concepts, it was Quatchi, Miga and Sumi that they first proposed and which were selected as winning designs.