Olympic Stamp: 'Let the Games Begin'

The U.S. Postal Service today commemorates the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games with the issuance of a stamp featuring an illustration of a snowboarder. The stamp goes on sale today in Park City, UT, and in Post Offices across the United States. The XXI Olympic Winter Games will be held February 12-28 in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Stamps featuring Olympic themes have been popular since the first modern Olympiad in 1896, when Greece issued 12 Olympic-themed commemorative stamps. Beginning in 1932, when the Olympic Games were held in Los Angeles, CA, numerous U.S. stamps have honored the Games.

This will be the second Olympic Winter Games, after the 1988 Games in Calgary, to be held in Canada, but the country’s historic ties to the event go back much further. Canada helped usher in the first Olympic Winter Games — at the Alpine resort of Chamonix, France, in 1924 — by joining with Central Europe to persuade the International Olympic Committee to add an “International Winter Sports Week” to the Games planned for that year.