by John Furlong
The directors began growing worried about the health of Olympic partners such as General Motors. The American automobile industry was on life support, or so it seemed. The CEOs were being summoned to Washington to meet with President Barack Obama to figure out a survival plan.
It was ugly.
Jack Poole was sweating too and wanted me to get a more ironclad assurance from General Motors that it wouldn’t renege on our deal. I honestly didn’t know what more GM could do or say that would make our deal with them any safer. I thought it would be almost insulting to ask, that we were best served by standing by the shoulder of a good partner, while others were trashing them. I remember heading east to see Arturo Elias, their president and CEO of Canadian operations, and asking if there was anything we could do to help. I suggested at one point that the company use the Games to show off their next generation of vehicles and that we were ready to do pretty much anything we could to give GM a hand—for free. He appreciated our loyalty and support and assured me everything would be fine, that we needn’t worry. And GM was true to its word, despite the fact the company was fighting for its life.
The growing worldwide gloom began to cast a shadow over our programs, and the optimism that had filled the organization for years disappeared. Companies and governments everywhere were now being affected. This, in turn, meant that some of our own directors were fighting fires of their own.
Prompted by instinct and a growing nervousness in the boardroom, we decided to behave as if this tornado was going to hit us soon. It was time to prepare for something quite dire: the failure of one of our major partners. Chasing replacement revenue 18 months before the start of the Games would be like chasing needles in a haystack. What-if scenarios were being sketched out almost daily in our executive meetings. To prepare for what was to come, I tagged on the title of Deputy CEO to Dave Cobb and asked him to lead an aggressive internal review of just about everything, a task he would take on with ferocity, supported by his executive colleagues. This move was a sign to all that it was time to hunker down.
We decided to take the organization and essentially turn it upside down and shake it in the hopes enough dimes and nickels would fall out to make a difference. Everything that wasn’t absolutely essential to our survival would be cast off. This may sound simple. In truth, it was a migraine of a process that included hundreds of painful choices. Rather than cut people we froze hiring. Huge savings were realized when we stalled new hires for even a month. We did that as often as we felt we could sustain the punishment that followed: fewer people meant that those already working had longer days, but it was better than a pink slip.
Over the years, we had built our budgets fairly logically. Reasoned estimates of cost and revenues were refined as data hardened. So budgets were always moving to some extent but generally in the direction of more certainty, not less. But not in times like this. Every meeting we had, every discussion, was about money. Those with room in their budgets had to surrender their surplus, every penny of it. Contingency funds were disappearing faster than beer in an Irish pub. We went after new revenue sources—although there were precious few—and trimmed big-ticket programs to the bone. We advised our government partners that we might need their help if we were going to survive this and still put on a spectacular Games.
We appealed to our staff for creative ideas to get around our funding dilemma. We were not going to run a deficit under any circumstances. A culture of survival took hold. We reduced all travel and hunkered down, hoping the economic storm would blow over soon. I decided not to attend a SportAccord conference in Denver, where I was supposed to give a progress report to the IOC. The IOC was not impressed and told me so. I didn’t care. I had to lead by example.
Scheduled pay increases for members of the executive were cancelled voluntarily, other contracts curtailed or shortened. We looked at our ticketing program, and if there was any way to jam another seat into a venue we did it. That’s how desperate we were to find an extra $20 of revenue. We set aggressive new revenue targets for licensed products and found new suppliers to help us reach them. If you could put an Olympic logo on something and sell it, we did. We even looked at how we could make money when it was time to wrap up everything after the Games were over. We had to get top dollar for every item we had acquired.
Against all odds, but in line with our most daring predictions, there was one major win coming for us—ticket sales. Tickets were put on sale to staggering global and national demand, and it became clear that we were heading for a virtual sellout. Caley Denton, our vice-president of ticketing, whom Dave Cobb had lured away from the Vancouver Canucks organization, had judged the market perfectly. He did two things that were exceptionally smart: he decided to release the tickets in three stages and he created the fan-to-fan marketplace. In the first stage, he only put a limited number of tickets on the market, which were gobbled up quickly, creating a demand frenzy. This led to an even greater appetite for tickets during the second and third releases.
The fan-to-fan program worked brilliantly. Even an attempted ticket fraud scheme conjured up by Latvian hucksters did not diminish the value of this program. Let’s say you had a ticket to the men’s quarter-final hockey tournament, in which you were hoping to see Canada play Norway. If Canada didn’t make the playoffs and instead it was Switzerland playing Norway, suddenly you were unlikely to want that ticket as badly. So Caley created a system where you could throw your ticket back in the mix so someone else, maybe a Swiss fan, could get access to it. We collected a small fee as part of the transaction, which helped us derive more revenue. Everyone won.
The success of the Olympic Red Mittens campaign helped take some pressure off us as well and allowed us to meet our obligations to the Own the Podium program. What was originally intended to be a simple fundraiser for our athletes became a phenomenon. The mitts became the number one stocking stuffer in the country. The factory where they were being produced couldn’t keep up with the demand, even though it was going 24/7 for months on end. The mitts even made an appearance on Oprah, where the queen of American daytime television gave a pair to each member of her studio audience. We ended up selling more than 3.6 million pairs. Even I couldn’t get my hands on them for friends. We needed every cent from them.
Then, as the Games edged ever closer and the market conditions began to gradually improve, we realized that with a bit more belt tightening we just might survive this financial windstorm in one piece. Both levels of government helped us recoup some of the losses we incurred as a result of what was being called the Great Recession. We also went to the IOC and asked them for one final gesture of support—never an easy thing to do.
While the IOC was sympathetic, it was also a little wary. It had been burned before. The organizers of the Games in Salt Lake City pleaded poverty and got a last-minute infusion of cash from the IOC. Months later, the organizing committee declared a $100-million profit, to the complete fury of the IOC. But our relationship with the IOC was strong. They saw the pain we were in and the measures we had taken to deal with this crisis on our own. The IOC is criticized often for not being caring enough, but that was not the case here. In the end, the Olympic committee protected us to the tune of over $50 million beyond what it had originally committed to. Through this time, the IOC had suffered too. Its own revenues and investments were down and the organization had some belt tightening of its own to do.
This was an exhausting period involving endless strategizing. Dave Cobb and I wrote dozens of letters and proposals to the IOC, making all sorts of pleas for help. I used to joke to Dave that if we didn’t get help we might have to record “Danny Boy” in 50 languages and use it as the official music for the opening ceremonies. But in the end we survived one of the worst economic maelstroms anyone could remember.
We proved that we were more than a worthy adversary for bad times. Yes, we were helped by the amazing team of accountants we had at VANOC, who were pretty good scroungers. But I think it was street smarts over spr
eadsheets that won the day, as we got all of our thousand-plus staff goring away at budgets the way you would in your own home during tough times. I was in awe of the performances of individual members of our team, especially the leadership shown by a battle-weary executive.
While this period was easily the darkest, it ended up making us stronger, really giving us our wings. With the weeks clicking down rapidly toward February 12, 2010, we were more fearless and more together—our training was done. But battling through the first few months of the recession took a toll, no question. I also had to get some benign lesions removed from my face that left me looking like I had gone 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali. The entire team, including me, was falling-down tired. Everyone needed a break.
I had scheduled a week off in late December of 2008, mostly to sleep. It was the first week I’d had off in a very long time, and I was really looking forward to it. My calendar was completely clear of appointments. They would be my first Olympics-free days in years. The next morning, I couldn’t get out of bed. I was sicker than I could ever remember being. My system seemed to completely crash. Maybe the adrenalin drop brought it on, I don’t know. I would end up spending my week in bed with severe flu symptoms, but weird as it sounds I was happy to be there. I managed to get some work done that I wasn’t planning to do otherwise. So at least I didn’t have that waiting for me when I returned to the office.
But there were some awkward stories circulating about my health at the time. I had taped a Christmas message to VANOC staff that was posted on our website. Well, I don’t know what happened this time around, whether it was bad lighting or what, but I looked atrocious. I made Casper the Ghost look like George Hamilton. It was as if they had found me living in a cave for 20 years and threw me in front of the camera. If people wondered how much longer I had to live—and one or two asked—I couldn’t blame them. Even I was afraid to look at me.
I assured reporters that I was fine, though I had definitely lost some weight and needed to start working out again. I had to take better care of myself and I would. The board also had concerns that I looked weary and expressed to Jack that he might intervene. Jack told them, “I have tried to get his attention. If you think I can convince this guy to slow down you are seriously mistaken. This is who he is.”
He was right. I was not about to slow the pace—how could I? The Games were coming like a freight train. I didn’t know how to slow down anyway and there wasn’t the time. When I went back to work that January I felt just fine. We had a year to go. About 400 sleeps before the flame arrived—the very thought filled me with the energy to push through anything.
7
The Power of the Flame
WHILE MANY VIEWED my job as glamorous, the highs were often followed by bouts of soul-searching anguish.
It could be a lonely experience. There was hardly a moment along the way when I was not worrying about something. Some days were pure hell and I’d feel the weight of an entire country on my shoulders. Other days we’d get a big win and I’d feel invincible. It was rollercoaster stuff. I tried to grow a tougher skin but I took most everything personally for years. To sustain my spirit, I stopped reading newspapers, only perusing those articles and columns I was told I had to look at. To avoid plunging into darkness, I often read It’s How You Play the Game, a behind-the-scenes account of the Calgary Olympics written by its CEO, Frank King. While much about the Olympics had changed since 1988, there was still a lot I could learn from Frank’s insights and observations. Like me, he was a real believer in the power of sport.
One of the more memorable sections in the book concerned the torch relay. Calgary launched one of the most ambitious relays in Olympic history to that point—18,000 kilometres over 88 days. After its arrival in Newfoundland, the torch made an appearance in all 10 provinces and two territories. (Nunavut didn’t become a territory until 1999.) Calgary’s relay stood in stark contrast to the only other one ever held in Canada—Montreal’s in 1976. Back then, the torch travelled from Ottawa to Montreal, a distance of 200 kilometres, believed to be the shortest torch relay in modern Olympic history.
I remember Frank talking in his book about the excitement associated with deciding who would run with the torch. But the best parts focused on the energy that the relay gave the Games themselves. Frank talked about going out on the route, running alongside some of the torchbearers and seeing their passion. He said those sojourns were a nice respite from the negative jaw-wagging that was going on back in Calgary, where the air was often filled with despair over various aspects of Games preparations. On the road, the mood was magical and it lifted him. He returned to Calgary completely charged up.
To me, the relay was the secret to delivering Canada’s Games, and while 18,000 kilometres was certainly impressive, I thought we could go farther—much farther. I wanted to reach every Canadian I could. Coca-Cola, RBC and Canada had signed on as full partners, so we had the support we needed to make a seemingly impossible mission possible. But it wasn’t until we started mapping the route out in detail that I began realizing what a monster challenge I had set for my team.
The primary group assigned to deal with the relay included Dave Cobb; Andrea Shaw; Jim Richards, who was named torch relay director; and Vidar Eilertsen, head of operations and a genuine road warrior. Vidar was an impressive Norwegian import, a general, who knew more about relays than just about any other person on the planet, having worked on several. He was the guy with the whip and chair who made sure the buses left on time—in his own charming way. There would be many other hands that would help shape the journey, but this was the core group forced to listen to my constant harping and insistence that we perform magic and extend the relay to its far-out, far-off limits.
Over the months the relay took shape, there were plenty of tense meetings. The sparks would often fly over my saying that the plans as they were didn’t push the boundaries far enough, didn’t get the flame close enough to enough Canadians. In the early going, much of the push-back I received from Andrea, Jim and Vidar involved simple logistics. There was concern the relay would never end if we tried to get the torch into all the communities I wanted it to appear in. It was not lost on me that Canada was not Luxembourg—but this wasn’t an adventure for the faint-hearted either. And then there was the inevitable bad weather and other unforeseen problems we had to allow for.
In my heart, I was pretty sure that once on the road it would be a frosty Friday in the Sahara before Vidar would let the relay get as much as 10 seconds off schedule. I thought we should just go flat out and if we had to modify on the fly we’d do it. But let’s not model the whole program around having to rest the tour every six days because we might be a little tired or encountering a week’s worth of bad weather and planes not able to fly or land when we needed them to. I was having none of it. I felt the team could pull it off and told them so a hundred times.
We were going to plan on everything going right. There would be lots of time to sleep after the Games.
I admit I didn’t make it easy on this group. I pushed them to the brink. In the years that followed getting the bid, I was speaking several times a week across the country, drumming up support for the project. It seemed everywhere I went people wanted to know if there was any chance the torch was going to be making an appearance in their town. I wasn’t above getting some cheap and immediate applause, so I said, “Of course it’s coming here,” wherever “here” happened to be that day. I’d get a standing ovation and lots of pats on the back afterward, and the next day my guarantee would appear in the local press. The members of my torch-relay-planning team would shake their heads and curse me and wonder where I’d be asking them to go next.
Our vision for the relay forced us to be creative. We would have to be in more than one place at the same time, which meant having teams that would splinter off from the main relay to get into other smaller nearby communities. This was trickier than it sounds. There are strict rules governing the activities of the torch and one states
that it can never be burning in two places at the same time. You could take a lantern that contained the Olympic flame to a remote community; you just couldn’t light a torch there until it had been extinguished in another. But we managed around this dilemma, and there would be several days during the relay in which the Olympic flame seemed to appear in two different places at the same time. It was carefully orchestrated but ultimately vital to our mission to get the torch or flame within an hour’s drive of almost 95 per cent of the Canadian population.
The route would undergo many redesigns before we finally settled on one that would be 45,000 kilometres—the longest in Olympic history—and last every second of 106 days. But the truth is, having the longest route was never what got the team excited— rather it was the idea of bringing the torch close to so many people.
AFTER LOOKING AT what seemed like a thousand scenarios, we decided to kick off the relay in Victoria. There were a couple of reasons we went this way: first, starting off in the B.C. capital offered us a better chance of getting more runners involved in the relay. That was a primary objective: get the torch in the hands of as many Canadians as possible. More than 12,000 people would have a chance to walk, run and even paddle with it, which was an astounding number when compared with the 6,000 or so who ran with it in Calgary—a Herculean feat itself at the time.
But there was another reason we liked Victoria as a jumping-off point: the relay would start in the province where the Games were being held. This, we felt, might help address the unease in some quarters about our sharing the Games so enthusiastically with the rest of the country. It also harkened back to the origins of the relay itself, when runners were dispatched from Olympia to inform people in outlying areas about the sporting festival the Greek city was hosting in honour of Zeus. So in a sense, we were now doing the same thing: setting runners off from Victoria to invite the rest of the country to the 2010 Games.