Belarus at the 2010 Winter Olympics at Vancouver, Canada

The stamps on the First Day cover were issued by Belarus to celebrate the three medal winners from their country at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Natalia sent me this nice FDC. The 2010 Winter Olympics logo,named Ilanaaq the Inukshuk. And it is this very traditional symbol that stands on Whistler Mountain pointing the way to the winter sports atheletes. And this symbol is also drawn on the postmark on the FDC.

Belarusian athletes participated in hockey, biathlon, freestyle skiing, cross-country skiing, alpine skiing and skating.

Athletes from Belarus began their Olympic participation at the 1952 Summer Games in Helsinki, Finland as part of the Soviet Union (IOC code: URS). After the Soviet Union disbanded in 1991, Belarus, along with four of the other fourteen former Soviet republics, competed in the 1992 Winter Olympics (held in Albertville, France) as the Unified Team. Later in 1992, eleven republics joined Belarus to compete as the Unified Team at the Summer Games in Barcelona, Spain. Two years later, Belarus competed for the first time as an independent nation in the 1994 Winter Olympics, held in Lillehammer, Norway. From 1952 until the 2006 Olympic Games in Turin, Italy, 168 Belarusian athletes won 200 medals either as part of the Soviet Union or as independent Belarus.

Belarus won three medals. Alexei Grishin took the nation’s only gold in freestyle skiing – men’s aerials. Sergey Novikov took silver in the men’s 20-kilometers individual biathlon, while Darya Domracheva took bronze in the women’s 15-kilometer individual biathlon. The men's hockey team was eliminated in the first round of playoffs.