Countdown to Vancouver Part II - Fundamental Challenges

If my last post painted a picture of the micro Olympic picture in Canada, I though it would be remiss of me not to try to paint the macro picture as we approached the Games.

As we sat down to breakfast on our first full day in Canada, there were two big stories on the front of the Calgary sports pages. Firstly, Brian McKeever’s extraordinary achievement in qualifying to represent Canada in Cross Country skiing at the Olympic AND Paralympic Games. This was global news at the time – and still features heavily on the BBC website. His home town? Canmore of course (see below if you have not read my last post!)http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympic_games/vancouver_2010/8428841.stm

The second story with the front page picture? Calgary Roughnecks narrowly losing to Washington Stealth 16-15 at indoor lacrosse. That just about sums up my experience of Canadian sport. Passionate about the Olympics, balanced with a taste for certain sports which have escaped the attention of most of the rest of the world.

Brian’s selection is not the only incredible story in Canada’s build-up to hosting the Games. Quite the opposite in fact. There are many other stories I encountered during my trip which verged on the surreal. Last minute challenges seem to be particularly extreme this time. For example, the Whistler skiing venue faces a challenge to create enough snow in time for competition - it has been 11 degrees and raining for much of the winter. Of course those of us in London would not be surprised with those conditions come 2012, but they are more than unusual for Whistler.

Amazingly though, a total lack of snow is not even Whistler’s biggest current challenge. Even more critical is that fact that the venue for the skiing events at the Olympics is actually going to be up for sale by Wall Street Financiers after its owners defaulted on their $1.4bn loan facility. The recession has hit this Games hard. http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2010/01/20/intrawest-whistler-olympics.html

Another key theme while I was in Canada was (of course) ice hockey. Along with the obsessive form checking on Team Canada’s brightest stars plying their trade in the NHL, a more serious debate was emerging as to whether the sport had crossed the line to an illegal level of violence after Calgary’s 19-year-old team captain was banned for the rest of the year for an assault on an opposing player. The question is whether the sport is viable in its current form in any socially mature (and litigious) culture.

Of course the Olympics will also cover an inordinate amount of column inches as we approach London. However hopefully they will be less fundamental issues than the financial collapse of the primary Games venue, the lack of the basic conditions necessary for competition or the unsustainable violence in our nation’s leading sport!

Not every story is a blockbuster of course. Come London I imagine we will be glad to see the following kind of stories on the front page, whereas currently they are hiding in the Olympic supplements and in the sports pages in Canada. This would mean London has escaped any larger issues. These are the kinds of stories I read over a four-day period:


• Which national legend should light the torch?

• How did the local politician put their foot in it at Day 89 of the Torch Relay?

• How are protesters likely to try to impact the Opening Ceremony Games?

• How on earth can a sponsor who signs up for the Games 4 weeks out get any value from the deal at all?

• How will companies cope with employee downtime during the Games?

• Why cannot our country fill all the spots we could have had available for x or y sport?

• Why do we need 3 Olympic mascots – and why do they look Chinese?

• Can the leading childrens clothing licensee stay solvent long enough to deliver on their responsibilities up to the Games?

• How do you put a huge vinyl overlay on a dour Vancouver building to transform it to a fully branded part of the 2010 experience?

• How quickly can the public use each facility when the Games leaves town?

• Which bars have been block booked by Corporates for the evenings in Vancouver?

• When it all boils down to it, how many gold medals will we win?

It’s been fascinating reading.

I hope the last two posts have helped to give you a sense of the kind of sentiments in a host nation just a few weeks from the lighting of the torch. It is genuinely a story of national sporting excitement, with the role of the Games as a social and economic catalyst (or threat) never far below the surface. I have many friends making the trip over for the next few weeks to soak up the lessons from Vancouver. There is much to learn and inspire amidst the challenges of being a host nation.