By Clare Ogilvie
There are many recipes for Olympic success as each Games held is unique.
But a new report commissioned by the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Games on Calgary’s 1988 Games suggest that without key ingredients being in place success will be measured.
Near the top of the list is to make sure your legacies are in order and funded. And organizers should capitalize on volunteers and offer outstanding cultural and arts programs to ensure that the event can be enjoyed by and participated in by as many people as possible.
“(The Games) are all about fiscal responsibility and legacy, those words belong in the same sentence together,” said Frank King, former president and CEO of the Calgary Olympic Organizing Committee, from Calgary this week.
“It’s the Games themselves, and the after use of the facilities, and the financing that surrounds all of that that is key.
“One of the things that comes to a Games is an after use plan for everything, the real things that have been built to stay, and then the big question: who is going to pay for the use of them?”
King, who also authored a book about the Games experience, It’s How You Play The Game , said Calgary started off small at bid time with a legacy toward sport of just $5 million. Even though the amount was small it was a big step as no other organizing committee had ever put an item like this in its budget.
By the end of the Games that amount had grown substantially, with a final tally of $70.5 million in legacy endowments for the facilities, $40 million to the Canadian Olympic Committee and $110 million to the IOC, which was almost bankrupt at the time.
Those legacy funds have been grown substantially over the years.
The COC had grown its $40 million to $110 million by last year.
The money, said Chris Rudge, CEO of the COC, allows the organization to be self sustaining and part of it is given each year to sport federations to make sure Canadian athletes get to competitions around the world.
“It was a huge benefit from Calgary,” said Rudge. “Nearly 20 years later, the 1988 Olympic Winter Games in Calgary continue to impact the development of high performance sport in Canada.
“The legacy of world class facilities and a multi-million dollar endowment fund has contributed significantly to Canada’s increase in podium results at the Olympic Winter Games over the years,”
The Calgary facilities themselves may be the greatest legacy for sport and Canadians.
According to VANOC’s report the venues have hosted more than 200 national and international competitions in the last 18 years and eight national sport teams are based in the area.
The Calgary Olympic Development Association, set up after the Games to manage venues, also helped establish the National Sport School where high performance athletes can pursue both academics and sports. Since it opened its doors in 1994 it has turned out six Olympic medalists. Twenty members of the Olympic Winter Games team in Torino were current or former members of the school.
At the Torino Games more than 25 per cent of the 196-member team was from Calgary and the surrounding area. Almost three quarters of the medal winners in 2006 were either Albertan or had been training in the province at facilities that are a legacy of the 1988 Calgary Games.
When asked if there is room for new venues in Whistler and Vancouver King was adamant that they can only improve Canada’s performance in the future.
“We need not worry about an oversupply (of venues),” he said.
“France, Italy, Switzerland they have 20 places closer together than Calgary and Vancouver, each with many of these same kinds of facilities and they have dozens of World Cup races there.”
The facilities have also brought millions of visitors to the area, with Canada Olympic Park being the second largest tourist attraction in Alberta.
As well, there is a strong school program with several hundred students each year taking lessons from the classroom to COP. And close to 30,000 children, youth, and adults participate in organized recreational programs at COP annually.
King also points proudly to two legacies that are often overlooked. It was Calgary that turned the event into a 16-day celebration from a 10-day sporting event, resulting in the Summer and Winter Games being held two years apart. And curling, freestyle, and short track skating, which were demonstration sports in Calgary, are now part of the Games.
King said extending the length of the Games was a must if it was to be a financial success and Calgary explained that situation in no uncertain terms to the IOC.
After some debate at the international level it was agreed to.
“It has been a major financial plum for all Olympic organizing committees since, Summer and Winter,” he said.
The Calgary Games reinvented the idea of a festival around the event. Indeed, the Olympic Arts Festival was the longest running and most comprehensive arts festival ever held in conjunction with an Olympic Winter Games, involving approximately 2,200 artists from 18 separate arts disciplines in more than 600 performances and exhibitions. More than 197,000 tickets to 258 events were sold worth $2.6 million.
“In Calgary we felt a huge obligation to share the experience, in fact that was our bid motto,” said King. “That meant everybody.
“We kept prices very low so people could go to Games, so demand was way beyond supply. It just created an unbelievable friendship party right in the centre of Calgary.”
Indeed Juan Antonio Samaranch, then-president of the IOC, described Calgary’s Games as a “miracle of shared friendship.”
That, said King, “was the finest compliment he gave.”
He believes the 2010 Games in Vancouver and Whistler will be an iconic event for Canada just as Calgary was.
“I think Vancouver is going to deliver the biggest all-Canadian happy moment in memory,” he said.
Next week VANOC will release the third and last in the series of reports on Olympic Winter Games legacies. It will focus on the Games of Salt Lake in 2002. The reports, authored by Kate Zimmerman a long-time journalist, are based on research obtained from newspapers, magazines, official reports, studies, books and original interviews.
