About This Stamp
With this stamp featuring an illustration of a snowboarder, the U.S. Postal Service continues its tradition of honoring the spirit of athleticism and international unity inspired by the Olympic Games. The stamp is being issued in connection with the XXI Olympic Winter Games, held February 12–28, 2010, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
This is the second Olympic Winter Games — those in 1988 were hosted by Calgary — to be held in Canada, but the country’s historic ties to the event go back much further. Canada helped usher in the Olympic Winter Games by joining in the debate to persuade the International Olympic Committee to add “Winter Sports Week” to the VIII Olympiad. The Week was held in Chamonix, France, from January 25 to February 5, 1924.
For Vancouver 2010, the Olympic torch relay will be the longest, to date, to take place in a single country. Some 12,000 people have the honor of being Olympic torchbearers, carrying the Olympic flame along a route starting in Victoria, British Columbia, and then passing through every province and territory of the country. After reaching St. John’s, Newfoundland, in the east, the Flame will then make its journey back to Vancouver, British Columbia, arriving in time for the Opening ceremony on February 12.
It is anticipated that approximately 5,000 athletes and officials from roughly 80 countries will participate in the 2010 Games. At least a million people are expected to travel to Vancouver, a beautiful city in Canada’s westernmost province that is surrounded by water on three sides with a view of mountains in the near distance. The main venue for skiing events will be the resort village of Whistler, some 70 miles north of Vancouver.
The number of sports and disciplines designated for Olympic Winter Games has grown over the years. In addition to those included since the first Olympic Winter Games in 1924 — figure skating, ice hockey, cross-country skiing, bobsled, Nordic combined, ski jumping, curling, and speed skating — athletes today compete in Alpine skiing, biathlon, luge, and skeleton, as well as in the newer disciplines of snowboarding, freestyle skiing, and short track speed skating. After making their Olympic debut in Torino, Italy, in 2006, the events of snowboard cross and the team pursuit for long track speed skating will again be included on the sports program. The introduction of ski cross, a race down a technically challenging course resembling a motocross track, will round out the 2010 program and bring the total number of competition events to 86.
Stamps featuring Olympic themes have been popular with collectors since the first modern Olympiad in 1896, when Greece issued 12 Olympic-themed commemorative stamps. Beginning in 1932, when the Olympic Winter Games were held in Lake Placid, New York, numerous U.S. stamps have been issued in conjunction with the Games.
36 U.S.C. Sec. 220506. Official Licensed Product of the United States Olympic Committee.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
Howard E. Paine
A member of the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee before being named an art director in 1981, Howard E. Paine supervised the design of more than 400 U.S. postage stamps. After three decades as an art director for the U.S. Postal Service, he retired in 2011.
For more than 30 years Paine was an art director for the National Geographic Society, where he redesigned National Geographic magazine, developed the children’s magazine, National Geographic World, and designed Explorers Hall. A popular lecturer, he has spoken at Yale University and New York University, among others, and presented programs for the National Park Service and the Smithsonian Institution. A judge for numerous art shows and design competitions, Paine also taught magazine design at The George Washington University.
Paine had been a stamp collector since childhood. In 2000, he designed the catalog for Pushing The Envelope: The Art of the Postage Stamp, an exhibit of original stamp art at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Howard Paine died on September 13, 2014.
Stamp Artist
Steve McCracken
Steve McCracken is a freelance illustrator and designer with a studio in Winchester, Virginia. He is a former features artist for The Miami Herald, The Virginian-Pilot, and The Washington Post. McCracken has been awarded six gold medals by the Society of Newspaper Design, and his work is represented in the Society of Illustrators Annual.
Clients have included National Public Radio, U.S. News & World Report, Daedalus Books, National Geographic magazine, and a variety of trade magazines. He is also a graphics information consultant for The Manoff Group, which provides solutions to health and environmental problems worldwide.
His designs for the Postal Service™ include four stamps in the Circus issuance in 1993, the 2001 stamped envelope honoring community colleges, the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games stamp, and four stamps in the Christmas Carols issuance in 2017.