Cindy Klassen has been chosen as Canada's flagbearer for the closing ceremonies. She will carry the maple leaf as the first female speed skater to win five medals in an Olympics. And as the only Canadian ever to win six medals in total, Cindy Klassen is Canada's greatest Olympian.

The closing ceremonies will include a special Canadian section during which Vancouver 2010 will be introduced. Avril Lavigne is performing.

Barring any compelling news or photographs in the upcoming days, this should be my last posting on the Cindy Klassen Games, I mean, the Torino Winter Olympics. I hope you haven't found them boring. I have discovered myself being glued at some point to all but one Olympic Games since Sarajevo and Los Angeles in 1984. In Sarajevo, Canada won four medals, three of them by speed skater Gaetan Boucher; in Torino we won twenty-four. I rarely go in planning to watch any of the Games, but then something always happens and I get hooked. The only exception was Athens in 2004, when I was living in Italy and didn't have access to decent television or prominent Canadian press. For me, Athens never happened.

Torino began for me back on Day 5 when I noticed the medals. Then the men's hockey team seemed to be all strangers to me--but the Games really got my attention when they took a swan dive against Switzerland.

Of course, close proximity to Switzerland is enough to make anyone lose their mind.