For a country that’s hosted both a Summer and Winter Olympic Games, and has such a strong tradition in winter sports, it is remarkable to think no athlete has ever sung ‘O Canada’ with a gold medal in hand.
So when the world’s attention focuses on Vancouver for the opening ceremony on February 12 - in addition to the 60,000 live spectators praying it will be third time lucky for Canadian athletes - all stakeholders with an Olympic investment will be assessing whether the Games has raised the bar from their perspective.
None more so than the executives of the Vancouver Organising Committee, whose seven year-long, $1.76 billion programme has had to tackle a series of contingencies from stockpiling vaccinations to tackling the global swine flu pandemic, to spending C$38 million on outdoor advertising space to protect official sponsors from “ambush marketing” by local companies.
Starting from a position of strength helps and fortunately for VANOC, hosting a Winter Olympics is free of some of the problems that need to be tackled when approaching a Summer Olympics. “There is less risk of ‘white elephant’ stadia being created and a minimal need for temporary venues, which leave no legacy at all,” Dave Cobb, VANOC executive vice president and deputy CEO, told SportBusiness International.
“The Vancouver Games required five or six new permanent venues and there is no huge worry of how they will be used in the future. We are also in the fortunate position that there are no winter sports that aren’t popular in Canada; for example in Athens for the Olympics [in 2004] they had to build baseball stadia where there is no legacy for the sport in the country.”
That is not to say there were no hurdles to overcome. Vancouver has a population of over 600,000 - treble the population of Salt Lake City, the previous North American city to host the event in 2002 - and creating a solid transport infrastructure to be able to handle 5,500 athletes and officials, 1,350 Paralympic competitors, in addition to spectators and media, is one of the things VANOC has been particularly commended for.
The US$600 million upgrade of the ‘Sea-to-Sky’ highway connecting Vancouver to the resort town of Whistler approximately 125 km to the south - which includes the venues for alpine skiing, Nordic events and bobsleigh, luge, and skeleton - was originally scheduled for completion in 2012 but authorisation from the British Columbia provincial government meant the improvements were fast-tracked. It is estimated the road will transport 15,000 people per day over the course of the Games. Cobb sidesteps praise for the transport system saying it is “still the biggest challenge” for VANOC but believes once volunteers and the city gets used to the travel influx in the first days of competition the system will run smoothly.
In addition to transport, VANOC’s corporate social responsibility initiative of making the aboriginal community an official partner of the Olympics Games, for the first time in the history of the Olympic movement, has gained praise.
The Four Host First Nations - the collective term for the aboriginal peoples who since time immemorial have occupied the lands and waters of the Vancouver area - have been active participants of the Games since the planning stage, with VANOC awarding more than C$56 million in business contracts to the communities and employing over 1,000 aboriginal people directly or indirectly through its investment. The communities have suffered a long history of poverty and unemployment and, according to Cobb, it was of “vital importance” that aborigines “are economically advantaged by the nationwide event.”
For the full story, including the perspective of TOP sponsors and Olympic broadcasters, see the latest edition of SportBusiness International published February 1.
Vancouver 2010 is re-writing the record books to become the biggest Winter Games in the history of the Olympic movement.
