Patriot Hearts

by John Furlong

  I had given thousands of speeches in my life, but never with so many people watching, with so many people wanting to hear what I was going to say and how I was going to say it. Yet I had never felt more humbled in front of an audience.

  I was also concerned about my French sentences. No matter how hard I tried, I was never going to sound like anything other than a person with little to no skills in Canada’s other official language. Some friends liked to joke that I hadn’t mastered English yet, let alone French. It was almost ridiculous how much I fretted about this, how much I obsessed on the amount of French content there was in the production. I knew we were going to be judged on how much French was spoken or sung: it couldn’t just be subtitles on a screen; people needed to hear and feel the language. Still, I felt we had achieved a good balance, challenges notwithstanding.

  I don’t know what it is about me and French. When I read the pages of my speech that night, the French words seemed to be moving on the page. I wasn’t helped by the fact that the lighting cast an awkward shadow so I couldn’t see the page properly. I’m pretty sure I was awful. And if I had any doubt I certainly got enough e-mails reminding me. But I tried as hard as I could. Short of living in French for a year ahead of time, it was always going to be difficult for me.

  “This journey has not been about the few but rather the many,” I continued. “All Canadians—Aboriginal Canadians, new Canadians, English-and French-speaking Canadians and the myriad of cultures, microcultures, languages and peoples that make Canada Canada.

  “On this, the proudest night of my life, I thank my loyal, selfless teammates, our tireless Blue Jacket volunteers, our partners, our thoughtful leaders, the IOC and global Olympic family and our many friends and our families for their belief, their efforts, their sacrifice and their courage.”

  After Jacques and I finished, we walked back to our seats. I missed k.d. lang’s haunting rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” a song that seemed more appropriate than ever. The audience radiated enthusiasm and didn’t want the evening to end. My daughter Molly was waiting for me. She greeted me with her beautiful smile and a warm hug, which always has a way of making me feel good.

  Then it was almost time for the Olympic flag to be brought into the stadium by Donald Sutherland, Betty Fox, Bobby Orr and the others. Betty looked radiant with her snow-white hair. After that, Hayley Wickenheiser took the oath on behalf of all of the athletes at the Games.

  In minutes, Rick Hansen was going to push himself up that ramp that David Atkins feared he’d never be able to climb, and the cauldron lighting would begin. This part of the ceremony, the climax, the part everyone was waiting for, had been practised many times under strict scrutiny. Every time I attended a rehearsal, usually in the wee hours of the morning, all four arms of the cauldron rose up from the floor flawlessly. It was all so perfectly timed, like a well-crafted Swiss watch, and I couldn’t wait to see the audience’s reaction.

  Rick powered his way onto the stadium floor through a thick veil of mist, as if he were crossing a snow-covered tundra. He immediately went to Catriona Le May Doan and used his torch to light hers. Catriona, in turn, ran to light Steve Nash’s torch, who lit Nancy Greene’s, who finally lit Wayne Gretzky’s. David had organized this part perfectly. The identity of the four cauldron lighters was obscured until it was time for their individual torch to be lit, stringing out the surprise a little longer. Soon it was time for the lighting itself. I recognized within seconds that we had a problem on our hands. One of the arms of the cauldron was not coming up. The floor was frozen shut and the arm was locked down.

  Oh my God, I thought. Can this really be happening?

  The next 30 seconds felt like an hour. The four cauldron lighters, Canadian legends, stood at their positions waiting to get fresh instructions from David from his booth high up in the stadium. Each was wearing a hidden earpiece, which connected them to David precisely for a never-in-a-million-years moment like this. I could only imagine the private hell David was experiencing as we all looked down at the floor. Was someone down there trying to crank the cauldron up manually? I envisaged a chaotic scene underneath the stage floor, where many elements of the show were being organized.

  The irony was that, unlike the television audience, most of the people watching in the stadium had no idea what was going on. Those watching at home were being told that an arm was malfunctioning, but the live audience just assumed that the cauldron had three arms. Steve, Nancy and Wayne lit the three arms of the cauldron that came up from the floor. Poor Catriona was the odd person out.

  I was mortified. I remember joking to Darlene Poole that Jack was probably behind this screw-up. He would have enjoyed watching me squirm a little. I knew that had he been sitting beside me he would have had a crack or two that would have put a smile on my face. He would have tried anyway. It took a lot to faze that man and he would have known that a faulty cauldron wasn’t life-and-death stuff. Without Jack there, however, the day was turning into the nightmare that just wouldn’t end.

  Nodar’s death would frame everything that followed that first Friday. It would make the most mundane problem seem so many times bigger. There are almost always niggly transportation problems on the opening day of the Olympics. At least there had been at every one that I had attended, from Salt Lake City to Beijing. I remember Gordon Campbell recalling how it took him four hours to get back to his hotel after the opening ceremonies in Athens. It takes a while to work the kinks out of the system. And what could we do about the protests? That’s democracy and this is Canada.

  I thought the police handled the situation about as well as could be expected. They approached that day with a good spirit. If anything, they went out of their way to avoid an ugly confrontation that could lead to violence, triggering an event that might force them to use tear gas or get into hand-to-hand combat. The last thing we wanted or needed was bloody images on the television news that would overshadow the opening ceremonies. But in showing restraint, the police probably allowed the protesters to get a little too close to the stadium, which had a negative impact on our transportation system. On top of all that we had the faulty cauldron.

  By the next day, the word glitch had entered the commentary surrounding the Games. It didn’t seem particularly fair, but there wasn’t any point moaning or whining about it. Our job was to plough ahead, to ensure doubt didn’t start creeping into the minds of those working at VANOC. I didn’t want people feeling that perhaps we weren’t ready for prime time.

  I knew my immediate executive team and others working at VANOC were looking to me for a signal that everything was going to be okay. Wounded as I was on the inside, I tried to portray empathy and project a strong, calm demeanour. I wanted my team to feel that they had support and could overcome adversity even if in my heart I was far from being sure how. I instinctively decided to assign key team members to key locations to shore up operations and show we were facing our challenges head-on, which seemed to help regenerate our focus. My staff had become complete disciples of the project and committed believers in what we were trying to accomplish. We were in a fast-paced environment with a million moving parts. It was our aim to be in front of the parade, leading it. But we were mired in the middle of it at the moment.

  I was particularly worried about my right-hand man, Dave Cobb. Dave had been such a warrior for us since the day he joined the team. He led the sponsorship drive that helped raise a record amount of money. He had a relentlessly positive attitude about everything. Underneath his gentle exterior beat the heart of a fearless competitor who wanted these Games to be the best in history. He took everything personally and his strength was important to us now.

  But I could tell he was wounded by Nodar’s death, deeply so. It was probably as tough a blow on him as anyone on the team. He was in charge of operations and felt a strong connection to what had happened in Whistler. Of course, Nodar’s death was out of Dave’s control, but the burden of it was his and he needed to be prepared to answe
r the tough questions, to take a lead role in making sure everything we did in connection with Nodar was handled with class and dignity and honour. And it was Dave who would have to watch over the restart of operations at the Sliding Centre. Every move he made now was so much weightier than before.

  After the ceremony, I had to go to the Main Press Centre for a news conference involving David Atkins and some of the performers from the opening ceremonies. I sat beside David in the middle of an exhausted but very proud cast that included stars like Sarah McLachlan, k.d. lang, Nelly Furtado and others. I could tell instantly that David was torn up over what happened with the cauldron. I felt badly for him because I knew how much of himself he had poured into that ceremony, how badly he wanted it to all come off without a hitch. On top of the cauldron, he had been forced to redesign elements of the show at the last minute to incorporate various tributes to Nodar. In my book, David was a hero.

  The problem with the cauldron notwithstanding, I thought the show was a masterpiece. And for him to have to sit there, after everything he had done, and be forced to answer question after question about the faulty cauldron seemed grossly unfair. But David did win rave reviews from Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who said it was the best show he’d seen in his life, and from Governor General Michaëlle Jean, who also praised the artistry.

  But beyond those scarce kind words, however, I must say we didn’t feel a lot of support from our 200 partners on that first day. It felt as if we were all alone, as if they didn’t understand what was involved in getting the wheels of a machine this big rolling properly. Instead, we had to exchange stern words with officials in the PMO who were making unreasonable demands and unpleasant accusations and who should have been looking at themselves first before pointing fingers at others.

  What bothered me was that in our darkest hour our friends seemed to be, if not abandoning us, suddenly indifferent toward us. I have never cherished fairweather friends who crave the front row when things are going great but don’t want to be around you when times are tough. The one notable exception was Gordon Campbell, who stepped out of a meeting with some U.S. governors earlier in the day to phone and offer his support. “I just want you to know that I’m there for you. Whatever you need just ask,” he said.

  I appreciated the generosity of the gesture. The rest of our partners were in limbo. Oh, they would step forward and be happy to be seen with us eventually, once the stigma and pain of opening day had faded away and a few gold medals were won. Once it was clear that the Games were going to be among the greatest ever held, we had more friends than we could count. But the adage about hard times being when you learn who your true friends are certainly felt right.

  I should acknowledge the support we received from senior staff at the IOC that first day. They were in this with us all the way, shoulder to shoulder. Our problems were their problems. At least that’s the way they made it seem. There was no way the IOC was going to hang us out to dry. They realized how much we had put into preparing for these Games and that we had had some horrible luck on the opening day. Jacques Rogge helped me as much as I helped him. So did René Fasel and Gilbert Felli.

  There wasn’t a minute that I didn’t miss my friend Jack Poole. I thought about him so much on that first day. “What would Jack have done?” I said to myself more than once. We would have talked a dozen times. We might have stayed up the entire night talking about what we did from here on. It would surely have been easier. I walked along the waterfront from the press centre after the news conference in the direction of my hotel. I passed the second cauldron sitting in the plaza named after Jack, and already crowds were surging around the fence to get a look, take pictures.

  By the time my head hit the pillow that night I was mentally and physically knackered. The next day I was heading up to Whistler, where a downhill event was scheduled. There was a chance, we had been told, that the weather might prevent it from happening, which was not going to be the worst thing in the world from my perspective. It might give us a bit of a breather to deal with some of the issues that lingered in the wake of Nodar’s death. I wanted to visit as many members of my team at the Whistler Sliding Centre as I could and spend time with the medical team members who had so valiantly tried to save Nodar’s life. They would all need picking up. I would need to assure them all would be okay.

  Little did I know there would be more tribulations to experience before the light would begin shining on us for good.

  10

  Cypress—Our Special Child

  WHAT WOULD TODAY bring?

  I rose from my bed around 4:30 the next morning after a fitful sleep. The mental gymnastics of the project had wreaked havoc on my sleep for years. A great night was four to five hours. It had been one of those nights.

  I walked to the balcony of my room at the Bayshore to take a look at the second cauldron down at the waterfront. I wanted to make sure it was still burning. I was also optimistically on the lookout for any indication that the weather might give us a break. But all it did was rain.

  My working day began with breakfast with Dave Cobb in the coffee shop at the Bayshore. We were typically the first to take a table. We talked about the events of the previous day and the fallout from Nodar’s death that we were going to have to deal with over the next 24 to 48 hours. It was a pretty heavy discussion. I was heading up to Whistler later that morning to deal with the many Nodar-related issues that were now on our plate, among other things. After breakfast, Dave and I joined other members of the executive team in our private meeting room to talk about what each person would be doing and see if we needed to modify our plans.

  Besides the heavy emotional toll that Nodar’s death had had on our workers in Whistler, there was now a myriad of practical considerations. What was to happen to future luge events? Did we need to implement additional safety measures at the track to satisfy concerns being expressed in various quarters? When would the investigations into the accident place be completed? How was it all going to affect the timetable for other events that were supposed to be taking place at the Sliding Centre, such as skeleton and bobsleigh? And what about the athletes? What would their state of mind be, having to perform in the wake of a fellow competitor’s death? Would they all be petrified? Who could have blamed them if they were?

  This was no way to have to compete. The sliding sports are physically and mentally demanding. Competitors would need to be reassured that this track was safe, that it was no different from most around the world, that they could trust it if they trusted themselves.

  There were mobs of media already in Whistler mid-Saturday and more were expected to descend on the town over the weekend to do follow-up stories on Nodar’s death and to look into questions being raised about the track. A meeting with Felix Kumaritashvili, Nodar’s uncle and the coach of the Georgian luge team, was hastily organized. Jacques Rogge was also going to be there, along with executives from the International Luge Federation.

  Felix was wearing a Georgian team jacket. He was medium height, sturdy, with greying dark hair and a light stubble on his face. It was evident from the dark circles under his eyes that he’d spent the night tossing in his sleep. He looked like someone who had lived a hard life outdoors. One of Nodar’s teammates, a fellow from the same small village, sat nearby with his back against the wall, motionless. There to support Felix, he never spoke.

  I thought about the call he had had to make to his brother, David, the day before to tell him that his son was dead. I imagined the guilt Felix must have felt, that he was somehow partly responsible for the tragedy. That kind of self-inflicted psychological wound was only natural. Of course, none of it was his fault, but there was little I could say to relieve his anguish.

  We spoke with Felix through an interpreter. It was a deeply humbling, emotional exchange with everyone searching for the right words of consolation. It was not a long conversation but it went on long enough for him to make clear that the family desperately wanted Nodar’s body sent back home to Georg
ia as soon as possible. “Can you do anything, John?” Jacques asked me in front of Felix. “Leave this with me,” I said. “These are statutory processes, but I will move heaven and earth to try and make this happen. I will do something, I promise.”

  After the meeting, I wandered about the Sliding Centre to see how our staff members and volunteers were coping and to chat quietly with officials from the luge federation. It didn’t take long into my chat with FIL President Josef Fendt to determine that these guys were still lost, in an environment most of them had never ventured into before, surrounded by media trying to trip them up, to get them to say things that might be controversial, that would cast the Games or the sport in a negative light. Amid the avalanche of coverage surrounding Nodar’s death were questions that flashed like a beacon: Was the track too dangerous? Did FIL officials, and by extension us at VANOC, have bloody hands in this affair?

  That was certainly the subtext of many of the stories. Some of the papers in the U.K. were blaming the crash on Canada’s Own the Podium program, suggesting we went so far as to speed up the track to give our team home-ice advantage, the logic being that because our athletes would be able to train on the track the most, they would be better able to handle its speed. It was a preposterous and repulsive suggestion unbecoming of any reporter. No one would ever put lives at risk to gain a competitive advantage. And we had given more practice time to visiting athletes than previous Olympic host countries had. It was tough to read and listen to the coverage, but we had to deal with it.

  By Saturday afternoon, there was a lot more information about what happened in the final seconds before the crash. I talked to the officer who had conducted the investigation into the accident for the RCMP. I had earlier wondered what expertise the RCMP could bring to bear on an accident that happened on a luge run. After all, what did the force’s investigators know about the sport and this type of facility? But this guy was impressive and pretty much nailed what most authorities would conclude in due time.