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Dick Pound as frank as ever

Canadian IOC member gives conference the low down on drugs and how Games are awarded
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There is one Games record Canadian International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound would like to see gone when the world comes to Whistler and Vancouver next month.

That's Canada's failure to win gold as an Olympic host.

"I think that is going to change this time," he said while pointing out it was 50 years (1952-2002) between gold medals in men's hockey for Canada.

Pound, a former vice-president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and a one-time candidate for the presidency of that organization has helped build a multi-billion dollar kingdom around the Games by marketing the Olympic rings and negotiating television rights around the world for phenomenal sums.

A Montreal tax lawyer and chartered accountant, he has been the IOC's top TV rights and sponsorship negotiator since the mid-1980s.

He is also the former chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and one of the most strident critics of drug use in sports.

Last weekend, in a wide-ranging speech, he told an audience at a Whistler business conference that it's impossible to guarantee the 2010 Olympics will be drug free.

"I don't think you can guarantee that any event in the Vancouver Games will be drug free," he said. "The testing and the procedures are better than they used to be... but there are holes in the system.

"...They are more likely to be drug free than they were say 10 to 12 years ago."

Pound said athletes not only understand that it is cheating, they also know that it is dangerous.

"They are not taking an aspirin here," he said.

"They are taking industrial quantities of these drugs."

"I would say there is a much higher degree of buy-in by most of the athletes now."

Pound, who competed in the 1960 Rome Games in swimming, also said he believed Canada's women ski jumpers, who took their fight to compete in the 2010 Games to Canada's courts, used the wrong strategy to fight for their sport.

"This is not a legal issue," he said. "I thought they had bad advice."

He also had strong words for how ice-skating is judged.

"...The judging is just awful," he said. "And I must say I don't see much improvement.

"It is so crooked that the judging is anonymous..."

Pound also gave a unique insight into how Games are awarded, saying that the 2016 Games were given to Brazil because it was time to hold the event in South America, which has never hosted an Olympics.

He confirmed long understood rules of engagement for getting the Games where politics play an even larger role than merit in winning.

Politics also lay behind Sochi's 2014 win for the next Winter Games and Beijing's 2008 Summer Games.

"It was time to go to China," said Pound.

"They are the worlds largest country and they have never had the Games."

Of the candidate voting procedure Pound said: "It is a brutal process."

"Years of work by all the candidate cities are rewarded by either a win or a loss. Close doesn't count.

"I'm often asked what is the IOC like and I say, 'well if you can picture the College of Cardinals it is pretty close.' But it is really the College of Cardinals with knives.

"The candidates all think the voting is about them but in fact it is not. The real strategic issue in (awarding 2010) was not 2010 but the Summer Games in 2012.

"There was a feeling among my colleagues that the 2012 Summer Games ought to be in Europe."

Toronto was also planning to bid on the 2012 Games and the best way to eliminate that city from the competition was to award the Winter Games to Vancouver.

That also helped eliminate U.S. prospects as well.

Pound believes the 2010 Olympic organizers are ready to host the Games and that they will be saluted internationally.

However, he quipped as rain continued to pour down: "Judging from today (organizers) may need to add some water sports to the schedule."

Meanwhile the month-to-Games time anniversary was also marked by VANOC officials this week as they released final transportation plans and urged people to book on the Olympic bus network to get to the Whistler and Cypress venues.

The temporary overlay is also almost in place at most venues, said John Furlong, CEO of VANOC.

"As we hit today - one month to go - the city is taking shape," he said.

"Today we are very close to having all of the temporary work on these venues completed and we are getting close to the time when we will be able to lock these down and apply the look of the Games."

He said organizers made a deliberate decision to put the Look and Feel of the Games decorations up in Whistler as late as possible to save them from getting weather worn.

Walking around town currently visitors would never know an Olympics was coming to town.

"We were never going to apply the Look of the Games and the flags until the last minute because the last thing we need is something that looks tired and worn," explained Furlong.

"It is in the middle of winter and there is salt on the road and all the things that can happen, so what we are trying to make sure is that the Look that is applied at the end is as fresh and as beautiful as it can be.

"(Whistler) is going to be the most exciting small community in the world for a period of time."

VANOC representatives also said:

• About 500 to 700 volunteers would travel daily by bus to Whistler from Vancouver.

• VANOC's website is receiving half a million hits a day.

• Athletes and others will begin to move into the villages on Jan. 29.

• Athletes will begin to train in the venues Feb. 4 th .

• The Cultural Olympiad begins Jan. 22.