Olympic junkies losing sleep

TORONTO — Becky Marsh figures she’s slept an average of two hours a night since the Pyeongchang Olympics started.

The diehard Olympics enthusiast from Spruce Grove, Alta., watches the Games daily from the time they start airing live in late afternoon until the wee hours of the morning, when she pulls the couch right in front of the TV and turns the volume down so she doesn’t wake up her husband or three kids.

“I nap on the couch for about 10-minute periods and literally watch the Olympics all night long,” says Marsh, who works from home.

“I have not missed an event, I have not missed a medal, I have seen them all. I know the channels and I flip back and forth, back and forth, back and forth so that I do not miss one live.”

With Korean Standard Time over a dozen hours ahead of this country’s times zones (in Alberta, it’s a 16-hour time difference), Olympics junkies in Canada have to stay up late or get up at the crack of dawn to catch events live.

Citing data from ratings tracker Numeris, the CBC said Monday that almost two-thirds of all Canadians (65 per cent) have tuned in to CBC/ Radio-Canada’s coverage of PyeongChang 2018, with a total of 23.4 million in Canada watching at least part of broadcasts across all English and French television network partners and digital streaming simulcasts on the CBC’s Olympics websites and its apps. The data was from Feb. 7-11.