by John Furlong
To provide encouragement, I asked the premier to visit the workers. He had lunch with them and told them how proud he and the people of the province were of their heroic work. It meant the world to them.
A united House: The irresistible Barbara Ann Scott, figure skating gold medallist from 1948, carries the torch through the House of Commons for the first time in history.
A proud Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby carries the torch through downtown Halifax.
Our First Peoples welcome the world at the opening ceremonies.
The streets of Vancouver and Whistler teem with exuberant Canadians and their international visitors.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper pauses for a moment at a memorial to pay his repects to Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili.
2010 saw the warmest January on record, and our Cypress Mountain operations team and volunteers worked in miserable conditions to ensure there was enough snow for the competitions.
Alexandre the Great: Alexandre Bilodeau of Montreal won Canada’s first gold medal on home soil in men’s moguls.
Snowboarders poised to conquer Cypress Mountain.
Heroes in blue: 25,000 Blue Jacket volunteers were essential to pulling off a successful Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.
Joannie Rochette, Canada’s girl, pours her heart into her performance despite her mother’s death of heart failure days before.
Captain Hayley Wickenheiser (#22) and her teammates celebrate winning a gold medal in women’s hockey.
A joyous stadium awaits the athletes at the opening ceremonies of the Paralympics.
Other partners were rattled a bit and calling to hear me say how I thought it would all play out so they could reassure others who were calling them. I had faith in our team to pull it off. It’s a wonderful thing to be surrounded by men and women who do not understand how to quit. One day in early February on Cypress, I mounted a snowcat to see the challenges up close. Paul Skelton, who was Australian and more commonly known as “Bones,” said to me, “Worry about something else, boss. We won’t let you down.”
I knew they wouldn’t.
Daily weather reports were painful to listen to and there was almost no point. One day we would get word snow was on the way—the next day it was forget it; now we’re calling for rain and warm winds. Talk about breaking our hearts and kicking us when we were down. I sat in on some operations meetings and wanted to scream as Chris Doyle, VANOC’s chief weather forecaster, outlined the what-if scenarios. I actually said to Chris at one meeting, “You can’t talk anymore.”
I couldn’t handle it. He would say the weather was going to clear up in three days and it never would. I know Chris was as frustrated as I was. Like everyone else on the team he would have swum the length of the Fraser River if he thought it would give us snow. He wanted desperately to give us some good news. And any time he attempted to I’d spoil the moment: “Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Why should we believe you this time?” I eventually resigned myself to the fact I was only going to have faith in the weather when I woke up and saw a white mountain under a clear sky.
Mounting successful events on Cypress was clearly going to be all up to us. In the final days, as the athletes showed up and modified practices were scheduled, it was clear the entire country was cheering for the men and women toiling on Cypress. By Games time, the crew had endured unmerciful exhaustion but they had prevailed. The venue was ready.
SO THAT WAS the backstory to Cypress. It was an Olympian achievement that we were getting any events off on the mountain period, given what we were facing. But the first few days of the Games was more of the same, weatherwise. Heavy rain, warm temperatures. Cypress had become our “special child,” in the immortal words of our hard-working and unflappable vice-president of communications, Renee Smith-Valade. We had growing concerns that some areas where spectators were supposed to stand could become unstable, which forced us to cancel 8,000 standing-room tickets the first weekend. It was a tough decision to take but we had no choice. The safety of our athletes and visitors was paramount.
The lack of snow wasn’t the only problem on Cypress that first weekend. An electrical failure knocked out the concession stand. Lineups had been ridiculously long, especially for people wanting only a hot drink. Some buses were still struggling to get up the mountain. Some broke down in the process, leaving spectators in the pouring rain waiting for a bus to get them back downtown.
Within a couple of days, all those problems would be sorted out, except for the lack of snow. That would be an issue until the end. And while it would have been far preferable to have had an abundance of snow from the beginning, and perfect temperatures, the heroic work of our mountain team and the Blue Jackets that worked on Cypress in some of the worst conditions imaginable became a compelling story in itself. Their dedication and resilience were inspiring.
Despite the constant rain we were getting in Vancouver, crowds were already becoming a story. Tens of thousands poured into the downtown core the first weekend, with many hoping to catch a glimpse of the Olympic cauldron at Jack Poole Plaza. The cauldron was situated inside the security perimeter that we had set up. It had to be; the plaza in which it was located also contained the International Broadcast Centre and the Main Press Centre, which were only for journalists with proper credentials. What this meant was that the cauldron had to be behind the chain-link security fence we had set up around the area.
For security reasons, the fence was covered by blue tarps in different spots, which didn’t exactly cater to those wanting a look. But these measures were mandated by the RCMP, and we took our obligations to protect Canadian and foreign journalists seriously. There were all sorts of people looking to draw attention to one cause or another.
Which is all to say that responding to early grumbling about the fence and its impact on cauldron viewing wasn’t simple. But on the first Sunday I received a call from Mayor Gregor Robertson, who was adamant that we find some kind of solution because the complaints were getting louder by the hour. And the crowds bigger. Walking by one night, I heard a loud continuing chant from the crowd, I think partly in fun: “Mr. Furlong, take down that fence.”
The truth is, no one anticipated that we’d get well past 30,000 people a day going down to the waterfront to see the cauldron. It became the biggest tourist attraction of the Games—by far. I phoned Terry Wright, our premier troubleshooter, and asked him what could be done. At first, Terry didn’t think there was much we could do because of our security responsibilities.
But eventually, in discussions with the RCMP, we found a great solution, which involved moving the security fence closer to the cauldron and creating “windows” that allowed people to take unobstructed pictures. And we also managed to establish a rooftop viewing area west of the cauldron, which allowed people to get an eye-level view of the flame. The viewing area was a wing of the Convention Centre that was designed as a scenic outlook point and could accommodate about 150 people at any one time. From there, you could feel the flame’s heat on your face. After it opened, the crowds seemed to grow even bigger.
While you could put the kerfuffle over the popular cauldron into the category of a nice problem to have, it became another thing that the media could lump into the problems we were experiencing and build into an early narrative that these were the “Glitch Games,” and that we had got off to one of the worst starts in Olympic history.
By Sunday night, having heard a lot of the criticism, members of my executive team were bitter and very down at the complete lack of sympathy for our position. It’s not like many of these problems were uncommon to the start-up of any Olympics, especially the transportation challenges. And I don’t think we got enough credit for the stunning job our team on Cypress was doing just to have the venues competition-worthy. It was as if God himself was saying, “Anyone can stage this thing with snow. Let’s see how good you are doing it without any.”
On the afternoon of that first Sunday, I decided to head to th
e Richmond Oval, where a men’s speed skating final was taking place. I was anxious to see the Oval in all its glory, packed with fans, many of them members of the famous Dutch orange army, all in awe of one of the most splendid Olympic settings seen in recent years. But I also wanted to shake hands and slap the backs of as many Blue Jacket volunteers as I could.
I hadn’t been at the Oval long when I felt a tug on my arm. When I turned around it was one of our Blue Jackets.
“Mr. Furlong?” he said hesitantly.
“Yes.”
“Jim Fowlie.”
My eyes nearly popped out of my head.
“Jim Fowlie,” I exclaimed. “What in the world are you doing here? I thought you were in Australia.”
“I am,” he said. “But there is no way on earth I was going to let this happen in my country and not be a part of it. So I volunteered and I’m your venue services manager here at the Oval.”
“Wasn’t anybody going to say anything to me?” I laughed.
I loved Jim Fowlie. I had known him from my earliest days in Canada, when I was athletic director at the high school in Prince George. Unlike the other schools, which had dozens of swimmers, we had just five in the entire school when we entered the district swimming championships. Jim was an unbelievable swimmer, the best in the country in his age group. At the end of the competition there was only one event left: the 400-metre individual medley relay. Even with so few swimmers we had had lots of firsts and racked up the points, but to win it all we had to win the relay. But we didn’t have a relay team. Heck, we barely even had a swim team.
So I went over to Dick Zarek, who was the head of the swim team at another school and our local swim czar. I said, “Dick, I’d like to give Jim Fowlie a chance to go in the relay as our team.” Dick laughed at first. He thought I was joking.
“I’m serious,” I said.
“Ridiculous,” he countered. “You can’t do that.”
I asked why not and didn’t he want to see just how good this kid was. So Dick went off to a corner to huddle with a few of the other coaches and organizers and came back a little later with a proposition: Jim could go in the relay as a one-man team but at the end of each length, he had to get out of the water, get up on the starter’s block and jump back in.
“Okay,” I said. “You’ve got a deal.”
I found Jim and told him the terms of the pact. He had to swim 100 metres, get out of the pool and mount the block, dive back in and swim another 100 metres until he’d finished the 400 metres. To make a long story short, he won the race by a length—a length of the pool.
Jim ended up becoming world champion and record holder and eventually ended up in Australia working for the New South Wales Institute of Sport as a swim coach. It was great to see him again and even better seeing him in one of our Blue Jackets. What spirit! And all at his own cost.
As I wandered around the Oval, I didn’t see any of the long and troubled faces among the volunteers and workers that I had witnessed up in Whistler the day before. Everyone was smiling, most of all those in the crowd, who were just loving the speed skating competition. I was routinely getting reports from my executive team telling me that competitions were going off flawlessly at other venues around Vancouver and up in Whistler. Even most of the bus problems had been fixed.
But those stories weren’t making the news. By Sunday night the media, especially the foreign media, were obsessed with Nodar, the weather, French in the opening ceremonies, broken-down buses and the fencing around the waterfront cauldron.
I believe it was Sunday night when I heard the anchor on CTV say, “Look at what the world is saying about us.” And it was a compendium of the worst headlines and stories from around the globe, but primarily from the British press. So our own Olympic coverage in our own city was centred on the views of others—hard to believe.
I got a nice respite from all the negativity on Sunday evening when I attended a U.S. Olympic committee reception staged partly in our honour. The committee members were over the moon with the Games to this point, particularly the hot start their athletes had got off to. There was a fantastic energy in the room. It made me feel better.
The big event that night for me was attending the first victory ceremony at BC Place Stadium. Jenn Heil would be getting her silver medal. Dave Cobb and I got over to the stadium a bit early. There was already a frisson of excitement in the building. Soon there would be 24,000 people filling the seats of the amphitheatre that we had designed for the celebration. The place looked spectacular.
But before Jenn had a chance to take to the stage, there was a commotion around one of the television sets in the area where we were standing. We went over to see what all the fuss was about. By now people were cheering and waving their hands in the air. Alexandre Bilodeau of Montreal had just won Canada’s first gold medal on home soil. I wanted to drop to my knees in thankful prayer.
Alexandre had not been a medal favourite in men’s moguls, but he turned in a performance of a lifetime on a miserable night on Cypress Mountain to give the country a wonderfully historic moment. What made it even more special was the warm human drama that was playing out around the victory. Waiting at the bottom of the hill on Alexandre’s gold-medal run was his older brother, Frédéric, who suffers from cerebral palsy.
The image of a jubilant Frédéric cheering his brother’s victory brought many Canadians to tears that night, including this Canadian. The story of the incredible bond the brothers enjoyed would be shared with the nation over the next several days as Alexandre, often with Frédéric in tow, went from one media interview to another. The Vancouver Province headline the next morning was perfect: “Alexandre the Great” it exclaimed. And he was great.
I was thrilled that such an incredible honour, the first gold in Canada, had been bestowed on such a worthy young man, someone who truly was a perfect role model for children around the country and who embodied everything that was good about sport. In fact, the victory and the tale around it represented the very best of what sport could be.
I was happy too for Quebec. It had developed so many great amateur athletes because it took amateur sports seriously and funded programs properly. Alexandre would be just the first of many French Canadians at the Games who would leave with a medal, including more gold. So I was happy that the people of Quebec, some of whom may have felt slighted by the opening ceremonies, would be dancing in the streets Sunday night and well into the following week. They had a new hero.
And selfishly, I was happy for the hard-working men and women at VANOC and the thousands and thousands of Blue Jackets. They all desperately needed some good news to help lift the gloom and this was it. If I could have somehow transported myself to Cypress Mountain at that moment, I would have sprinted over to Alexandre and given him the biggest hug he’d ever known. The entire nation wanted to hug the likeable 22-year-old.
After that, watching Jenn Heil get her silver medal was even more special. People in the stadium knew what had happened on Cypress by then, so the mood was buoyant. Everyone gave Jenn such a hearty, deserving ovation. The stadium rocked in her honour.
After it was over, Dave Cobb and I decided we’d walk back in the direction of the cauldron to see how things were looking there and on the streets. We hadn’t yet fixed the viewing situation but would in a few days. By the time we got out of the stadium, the area around it was a mass of revellers. Even though it was raining the walk was fun. There were people everywhere, hooting and hollering. Young women on the shoulders of young men. The streets were rivers of red and white. I must have been stopped a hundred times for pictures. Dave became a go-to photographer, laughing away at the atmosphere building around us. Happiness was breaking out everywhere.
The news about Alexandre had evidently gone forth. Gold. Pure gold.
To say that this passion was nice to see was more than an understatement. I was praying that we were at the start of a turnaround. The day the story line began to change. But before I got too far in my tho
ughts I reminded myself that the next morning I would be brought back to earth—hard. I would be attending a memorial service for Nodar, as a pallbearer.
11
The Sun Finally Shines
WHEN I WALKED into the funeral home on Kingsway Street in Vancouver that Monday morning, I turned the corner into a modest, quiet chapel where a number of people had gathered. It’s there that I saw the open casket with the still, athletic young body of Nodar Kumaritashvili lying inside, dressed in a dark suit he might have worn at his high school graduation.
A memorial service for Nodar had been put together over the weekend. It was a closed, intimate gathering of about 25 or so, including a few teammates and coaches from Georgia and some other athletes and Olympic officials. My old Irish friend Pat Hickey, now the head of the European Olympic Committees and a close friend of the Georgians, was there. While Pat had apparently offered to represent Jacques Rogge and the IOC, I thought the president might have been there himself.
The last time I had seen a body in an open casket was at my mother’s funeral. I went up to Nodar’s casket, touched his hand and quietly paid my respects. There was little evidence of the traumatic event that had cost him his life. It was difficult not to look at Nodar and think that just over 72 hours earlier he had been laughing and joking with his teammates, completely absorbing his experience in Whistler. He had undoubtedly been a little nervous and excited about the training run he had in front of him, a kid yet to enter the prime of his life. Now he was lying in this casket, far away from the excitement of the Games, surrounded by just a few. It was all too much to accept.
