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player ready...VANCOUVER — Dark clouds that lingered over the city last week have finally lifted, a blue sky dawning on a Winter Games that needed some cheering up.
“The morale is good,” said Renee Smith-Valade, an official with the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. “The sun is shining and the sports are going well.”
Big crowds and big performances, not to mention solid television ratings, come as a big relief after a succession of bumps and glitches that had organizers wondering what might go wrong next.
It started with the death of a young luger, then too much rain and not enough snow. There was an embarrassing torch malfunction at the Opening Ceremony, protest marches and a skating oval that — in the Great White North, of all places — could not produce decent ice.
Blunders have affected athletes who were sent off the starting line at the wrong time and eager fans who had their tickets canceled for the popular halfpipe competition.
“I must say the venues are wonderful and the attendance is also very good,” said Luciano Barra, a top official at the 2006 Turin Games in Italy. “But some of these technical problems cannot happen at an Olympics.”
The British press has been particularly derisive, the Guardian calling these games potentially the “worst in Olympic history.” In the United States, a historian gives Vancouver a C grade. And a columnist wondered if the planning had been left to Bob and Doug McKenzie.
While organizers seem increasingly confident they have turned a corner, one thing seems as clear as the sky above: The Winter Games have become a massive and costly undertaking that, with the added variable of weather, can be a logistical nightmare.
The cost — and who ultimately pays
Go all the way back to the first Winter Games at Chamonix, France, in 1924.
“Every single Winter Olympics has been fraught with problems,” said John Lucas, a Penn State professor emeritus and Olympic scholar. “So I am not even remotely surprised there are glitches in Vancouver.”
Snow, rain and fog disrupted Nagano in 1998 and scandal marked the bidding process for Salt Lake City in 2002. Distant venues and cumbersome transportation made for blocks of empty seats in Turin.
Organizers, who can’t do anything about the weather, have limited resources to throw at other problems because the Winter Games aren’t as popular or as lucrative as their summer counterpart.
The disparity is especially glaring in Vancouver, following on the heels of the 2008 Beijing Olympics where the Chinese government devoted unprecedented money and manpower.
“If you want to take thousands of people from the countryside to build a beautiful facility, then ship them back out to the countryside, that’s not something we do in the United States and Canada,” said David Wallechinsky, co-author of “The Complete Book of the Winter Olympics.” “The communist government, if they needed to spend more money, they spent more money.”
Compare the Opening Ceremonies. China spent an estimated $300 million; Canada’s $30 million version came to an awkward halt at the climactic moment when the hydraulic torch stuttered, only three of its four legs eventually rising from the arena floor.
Overall, Beijing’s budget surpassed Vancouver’s by an estimated $43 billion to $5.6 billion. Even with fewer events and athletes in winter sports, that’s a significant difference.
“They haven’t spent as much as Beijing, so some of the snafus you see are maybe what you would expect,” said Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon.
But money does not explain every blunder.
The death of a Georgian luger and subsequent crashes have raised questions about whether Vancouver and international luge officials signed off on a track that has sacrificed safety for breathtaking speed around its twists and bends. Concerns also have been raised about the cross-country course. Slovenia has filed a protest to Vancouver’s organizing committee after one of its athletes was injured.
Organizers had to cancel 28,000 tickets at the Cypress Mountain venue when a lack of snow rendered one of the spectator areas unsafe. That left Matt Alkerton, a 23-year-old fan from Hamilton, Ontario, no choice but to pay a scalper $500 for a ticket to the men’s halfpipe final.
“It’s just so disappointing,” he said.
And then there was the rough ice at the Richmond Olympic Oval. Trying to be environmentally conscious, organizers purchased electric resurfacers that broke down. A traditional, propane-powered Zamboni had to be rushed in from Calgary, Alberta.
Ottavio Cinquanta, president of the International Skating Union, gives Vancouver credit for responding to problems but adds: “Of course, I am not purchasing champagne to have a toast.”
Barra sees a clear cause and effect — North America doesn’t know winter sports, not like Europe where the likes of biathlon and Nordic combined qualify as fan favorites.
“In Europe, the knowledge of winter sports is deep,” Barra said. “Whenever we go to North America, the knowledge of technical things is not there.”
At all venues, Vancouver organizers work jointly with the appropriate international sports federation. But even that backfired in biathlon, when a mix-up in the starting sequence may have cost a Swedish athlete her chance at a medal.
And when the ice finally got smoothed at the skating oval, confusion caused Russian skater Dmitry Lobkov to sprint an entire lap before officials called for a restart in the men’s 1,000-meter race. Lobkov finished 21st.
“I guess it was a mistake on the judge’s side,” he said. “It’s very disappointing as nobody explained the real reason for interrupting the race.”
Spread the load — or take it the road?
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For all the potential mistakes, there might be a simple solution to problems that make Olympic organizers’ blood run cold.
The Games could be spread across neighboring cities, like soccer’s World Cup, to ease the burden, Swangard said. Lucas goes a step further.
In a 40-page report, he suggested the International Olympic Committee create permanent summer and winter sites in central Europe.
“The staff would be well-paid professionals,” he said. “I have an educated guess there would be fewer mistakes.”
Not a single IOC member voted for his proposal, he said. The problem is, cities continue to bid for the games despite the headaches and rising costs that have left Montreal, Athens and other hosts with staggering debt.
“There are cities in the world that are losing sleep because they don’t have the Olympic Games, where they can spend several precious billion dollars for a three-week sporting event,” Lucas said. “It is total madness.”
Memories will begin at the end
Vancouver, like any Olympic Games, will ultimately be remembered for the stories its athletes tell.
So far, the big names for the United States — snowboarder Shaun White, figure skater Evan Lysacek and skiers Lindsey Vonn and Bode Miller — have come through with medal performances.
That, in turn, has boosted NBC’s ratings by 27 percent compared with four years ago.
A sense of optimism has been fueled by enthusiastic crowds on city streets, tourists and locals wandering out of figure skating competitions, hockey games and free events.
Maybe these Olympics just need a few more mistake-free days to build on the momentum.
“I don’t think we have ever had a perfect games,” said Scott Blackmun, CEO of the U.S. Olympic Committee. “We have had maybe more (problems) then we are used to in these games so far, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see it finish strong.”
That’s what organizers are hoping for.
Smith-Valade, who faces the media in sometimes contentious news conferences each morning, says problems are bound to arise with any event this large and complex.
What matters, she insists, is what officials do next.
“That’s the role of a good organizing committee,” she said. “You take the circumstances you find yourself in and you make the best of it and hopefully you shine.”
Like the sun that has finally broken through the clouds.
Philip Hersh of the Tribune Olympic Bureau contributed.