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Olympic hosts countdown to Games

With only a few months to go before Athens, Greece hosts the world at the 2004 Summer Games there are disturbing signs for the Greek tourism industry. Recent surveys show that there has been an 11.

With only a few months to go before Athens, Greece hosts the world at the 2004 Summer Games there are disturbing signs for the Greek tourism industry.

Recent surveys show that there has been an 11.5 per cent drop in hotel capacity utilization in the year before the Games.

"We are at the beginning of this crucial Olympic year and expectations had been cultivated that it would lead to a recovery after three years of stagnation," Stavros Andreadis, chairman of the Association of Greek Tourist Enterprises told Kathimerini, Greece's international English newspaper.

"(But) indications to date point to anything but such a development, and prospects do not seem favourable."

In Turin, which marked its two-year countdown to the start of the 2006 Winter Games this month, the problem is not tourism it's getting the nation excited about hosting the Games.

"The Olympics are a great opportunity for us but only if we can get Italians involved and excited about hosting them," Raffaele Pagnozzi, secretary general of the Italian Olympic Committee told Reuters.

Ever since flamboyant ski champion Alberto Tomba retired in 1998, Italy has lacked a top-class winter sportsman, and interest has waned in winter sports.

Turin's Olympic organizing committee, TOROC, is now trying to reverse that trend and spread the ski bug as far away as Sicily, hoping this year's summer Games in Athens will help people realize Italy is next.

Enthusiasm is definitely not a problem in B.C. which launched its six-year count down to the 2010 Winter Olympic Games last week.

Hundreds paid $60 each to attend a fundraising luncheon for athletes at the Vancouver Board of Trade and the Whistler Olympic information office ran out of cake as people turned up to mark the occasion.

"I hope that six years from now we can showcase this beautiful place as it is today so that the athletes and the visitors and everyone else can see what a really incredible environment we have," said former Olympian and downhill skier Rob Boyd.

With excellent conditions on the mountains, an azure sky and a brilliant sun Feb. 12 would have been the perfect Olympic day in North America's No. 1 ski resort.

But the weather wasn't the only thing on Boyd's mind. Now a ski coach the 1989 winner of the World Cup downhill at Whistler was also excited about the opportunity the Games represents for athletes and the province as a whole.

"Today I am thinking about what a great opportunity it is for us to host the Olympics and showcase not just Whistler and Vancouver but the province and the country of Canada," he said.

"If this is done properly. there will be great spin-offs for us a long way down the road - for sport front and centre but there will be other great spin-offs beyond that."

Fresh off the Dave Murray Downhill ski run - where Olympians will race the men's downhill, super-G and combined downhill - Whistler Mayor Hugh O'Reilly believes the next six years and the Games will truly put the resort on the international destination travel map.

"To be quite frank, we are not known," he said. "In reality I don't know that people understand the sophistication and cosmopolitan nature of Vancouver and Whistler. Even when the (International Olympic Committee) came here they were amazed.

"But I think that is going to change."

O'Reilly is also working to make sure that Whistler uses the Games to leverage its work on becoming sustainable. The resort is seen as an international leader and the IOC's focus on sustainability and environmentalism can only help the process he said.

The countdown celebration also marked the start of a new partnership for Whistler between its sports culture and its artistic culture.

A cultural cabaret was held in the resort showcasing the talent of the Sea to Sky corridor.

"This is a great chance to showcase one of the pillars of the Olympic movement and start a partnership to develop the arts and culture community in Whistler so by the time 2010 comes they are fully participating in the entertainment program," said Maureen Douglas, Sea to Sky programs manager for the 2010 Organizing Committee.

"The thing visitors are going to remember most is the experience and that is going to include the sporting events they were at and the entertainment.

"They will realize that this is part of our community and local culture and it will just make a return trip after the Games that much more meaningful and have broader appeal and it is a message they will take home to all their friends."

Although a CEO of the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee had yet to be chosen at deadline work is continuing and that task was aided this week with the announcement in the provincial budget of $235 million over the next three years.

The Vancouver OCOG will get $51 million this year to start building 2010 Games venues.

Top of the list is the $102 million Nordic Centre in the Callaghan Valley.

The money will be transferred to organizers by March 31.