by John Furlong
Nodar was blazing down the course when he lost control of his sled in turn 15. His reaction was evident for all watching to see: he raised his left hand in the air and dropped his feet to the ice in an effort to slow himself down. By turn 16 he was high on the wall and completely out of control. In a split second, the gravitational forces at play acted to catapult Nodar out of his sled, over the wall and into a steel support pole. I was disappointed that broadcast outlets chose to show the tragedy over and over again. I failed to see the public service in this. I just couldn’t imagine being the boy’s parents and having to watch that.
By the afternoon, the investigations at the Sliding Centre were finished. It was decided to resume training runs in all of the sliding track sports, including luge. But the FIL made the arbitrary call that men competing in luge would now begin races from the women’s start line, in an effort to reduce speeds and lower the psychological barrier now confronting their athletes. Also, walls at turn 16 were raised as a precautionary measure, and padding was put around support poles. Many luge competitors felt the decision ruined the event and said so. I could understand their feelings, but I also knew there were athletes competing in the sport who were nervous and may have welcomed the move. They just weren’t going to say anything publicly for fear of incurring the wrath of their fellow competitors.
Over the next 10 days, there would be fewer accidents on the track than there were in Salt Lake City in 2002 and about the same as there were in Turin four years later, a reassurance that failed to make me feel any better.
My mind turned to helping Nodar’s parents get their son’s body back to Bakuriani, Georgia, as soon as possible. I phoned our chief medical officer for the Games, Dr. Jack Taunton, to see what the prospects were for getting this done at rocket speed. Jack explained the normal procedures and how much more complicated it was when the police and coroner were involved. But I still didn’t see why, under the exceptional circumstances, we couldn’t just speed the process up.
“Jack, this isn’t good enough,” I said. “We have to do better. You need to make these phone calls and explain our situation. And if you need to talk to the top officials in the country in charge of this, then it’s time to talk to them now. You need to implore them to help us, to pull out all the stops, to go that extra distance to get Nodar on a plane back home in as short a time as humanly possible.”
Jack, who possesses pit bull determination, said he would but he didn’t seem very optimistic.
“Keep me in the loop,” I told him. “I’m counting on you, Jack.”
By the end of the day, Jack had worked some magic and managed to get the various authorities to speed things up, cutting three days off the length of time Nodar’s body would remain in Canada. It was a small but important victory.
I wanted to spend as much time as I could over at the track, talking to our volunteers and full-time staff to make sure they were doing okay. I knew nerves would be frayed. I was worried about Craig Lehto, director of the Sliding Centre. Craig was one of the nicest people you’d ever meet, with a first-class knowledge of sliding centres. He had a huge heart and was loved by his team. We were lucky to have him.
When I saw him on Saturday, I told him that he was now in the midst of one of the most challenging moments in his career. In fact, there might never be one quite like it again. Over the next few days, he was going to need to show what kind of man he was and what kind of leader he was too. His team was going to draw off his body language, his mood and his strength. “This is not easy,” I told Craig. “But people are going to be looking to you for signals, they are going to be looking to you for affirmation that everything is going to be okay and that some kind of order and calm is going to be restored. Mostly, Craig, they will be looking to you to show them, convince them, that you are all going to weather this storm. And whatever you need from me you will get—that I will promise.”
I knew that, like many, he was unfairly wearing some of the responsibility for what had happened. I told him he needed to stop worrying about that now. He had to focus on running the project, to get the program he had developed over the last few years back on track. He couldn’t let that slip away from him. There was too much riding on it. Craig would pass his test with flying colours.
Before heading back to Vancouver, I attended the lighting of the cauldron in Whistler, which was located in the town square. Thousands turned out, and yet the ceremony still felt quaint and warm and Canadian. I said a few words and probably didn’t have the same upbeat lilt in my voice as I might have had under normal circumstances. But Whistler had responded brilliantly to its Olympic challenge, producing first-rate venues and an Athletes’ Village that never got the recognition and kudos it deserved. From the stage, I could see the pride in the crowd over how the resort had come together. Its finest hour had arrived.
Because I needed to be in Whistler on Saturday, I was unable to take in Jenn Heil’s performance at Cypress Mountain in women’s moguls. Jenn is a five-foot-nothing dynamo from Spruce Grove, Alberta, with a smile that could light up a continent and a personality that could warm a small country. She represented our first legitimate chance of winning the first gold medal on Canadian soil. She had taken the gold in Turin. I knew Jenn wanted it badly and had trained her heart out to be the one here at home. When I got word that she had finished second, I felt a little sad for her because I knew that while a silver medal was nothing to sneeze at, gold was what she wanted. Gold was what we all wanted for her, and it certainly would have helped change the negative story lines that were being rolled out by the media.
I had been on the phone throughout the day Saturday, talking to various members of my team about new issues that were beginning to emerge. For one, we were receiving some early grief for what was perceived by a vocal few to be a lack of French content in the opening ceremonies. If there was one issue that could get my blood boiling throughout the Olympics, it was the tightrope we seemed to walk daily over the use of French. As an organization, we had gone the extra mile and beyond to ensure the Games reflected Canada’s linguistic duality. During the run-up phase, we had received heaps of praise from Canada’s official languages commissioner, Graham Fraser, for ensuring that VANOC was fully bilingual. He applauded us for hiring bilingual staff in key positions. Almost a quarter of our staff spoke French. We were ensuring that all signage was in both languages. We had 4,500 volunteers who had driven or flown across the country, many from Quebec or other French-Canadian communities, to work on the Games. We had every document printed in both languages. We had signed memoranda of understanding with the Fédération des francophones de la Colombie-Britannique and the Fondation canadienne pour le dialogue des cultures to help us raise the profile of francophones living outside Quebec. Sure, Fraser had taken the odd shot at us, but by and large we had raised the bar on official languages.
And, of course, when it came to the opening ceremonies, few knew that we had tried to have the famous Quebec anthem “Mon Pays” in the lineup but were shot down by the song’s author. Still, it wasn’t enough to deflect criticism.
As fate would have it, one of my scheduled stops in Whistler was a reception hosted by the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, where I was to drop by and deliver a greeting on behalf of VANOC. The organization is made up of countries and states where French is the customary language. Given the events of the previous evening, and some of the reviews around French content that were in the morning newspapers, I wasn’t sure what kind of greeting I would receive. As it turned out, although there were some private discussions among delegates at the function about the opening ceremonies, no one confronted me over it.
I did hear from some that they thought the show was spectacular, moving and emotional. Having said that, there was an elephant in the room—I could feel it. People were talking. The topic was doing the rounds. Still, I left mostly unscathed. It was funny because months later, in August 2010, I would get a letter of commendation from the president of the same organ
ization in Switzerland praising our stellar efforts to recognize French at the Games. It said the organization also hoped Games organizers in London and Sochi were attempting to clear the high bar that we had set.
When it came to French content at the Olympics, Quebec premier Jean Charest said it best in one of the many conversations we had on the subject. “Whatever you do,” said the premier, “it will never be enough for some. You will always have critics.” And he was right. But the French debate, such as it was, was infused with politics. So when Heritage Minister James Moore, who represented a riding in suburban Vancouver and was also the minister responsible for official languages, came out and denounced the amount of French in the opening, I thought, Okay, this is clearly about votes in Quebec. But knowing that a big part of the conversation was political didn’t help defuse my annoyance. I mean, as our head minister and partner, he had been intimately aware of our challenges as well as our plans. I had briefed him myself.
There we were, having spent years working to share these Games with the country, working to infuse the organization to the degree we could with the French spirit, and this was the respect we got? Not enough French in the opening? You had to be kidding.
I went back to Vancouver late Saturday night by car. All the way there I tried to answer some of the thousands of e-mails I had received in the previous 24 hours. Yes, there were a few denouncing my appalling French. But there were many more giving me marks for the courage of trying. There were lots urging me to keep my spirits up, giving me the same pep talk I was giving my team. It was gratifying that unknown Canadians cared enough to write me and tell me to hang in there. That the sun was going to shine . . . eventually.
We had experienced more transportation problems throughout the day. Who knew buses from California didn’t like climbing hills? But beyond that, politicians and dignitaries were also creating problems. For instance, for buses going up to Cypress, there was a drop-off point halfway up the mountain, with security screening tents that spectators had to pass through as part of a strict protocol imposed by the IOC and the RCMP. But then a procession of black Escalades belonging to the security detail of U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden showed up and they weren’t stopping at any checkpoint and having the president’s number two man jump out to be searched and walk 800 metres. Not a chance.
If that wasn’t enough, the vice-president’s security detail also effectively stopped all traffic trying to get up the mountain. And it wasn’t just Joe Biden. Arnold Schwarzenegger was another, and even the prime minister’s entourage caused problems on the first day. At any given time we would have kings and queens and other royals visiting the Games, adding layers of protocol headaches behind the scenes.
Part of our challenge was getting these groups to understand that there was a way to access the venues smoothly and a way that would cause us enormous grief. I think there was a great deal of sympathy for us. The leaders knew we were managing a difficult situation, especially on Cypress, and after the first day we didn’t have nearly as many problems with political processions.
I met with my staff first thing Sunday morning. We went over the list of issues that had emerged from the day before: the pesky transportation problems, more weather problems, the French fallout from the opening, Nodar—the list went on and on. During my time in Whistler, it had become evident that confidence was fragile. Nodar’s death had really caused people to spiral, but also the weather was getting everyone down (especially up at Cypress, where events were threatened with cancellation), and the international media were reacting negatively to some of the problems we were experiencing.
I felt it was important that we, as an executive, fan out and get to as many venues as possible, especially ones where there were problems—like the Sliding Centre in Whistler and in Cypress— and give the staff and volunteers on-site support and assurances that they were doing a great job and everything was going to be okay. We decided to double the executive presence at key soft spots, especially in the mountains.
For instance, I had Dan Doyle, our executive vice-president of venue construction, head up to Whistler and oversee things there for a bit. The idea wasn’t to be looking over people’s shoulders but rather just to have someone people could turn to if doubt started to creep into their decision making. More a guiding hand than anything and Dan was a pretty good shoulder to lean on. Donna Wilson, our vice-president of human resources, went to Cypress Mountain to boost morale of a Games team that was exhausted, wet and frustrated.
The warmest February in eternity was causing massive headaches at Cypress, and there was the rain to contend with. It was literally threatening to wash out events. This was leading to the second-guessing we’d anticipated about why we had planned so many events on Cypress instead of Whistler, where cold weather and snow were more of a sure thing. The short answer was that Cypress offered advantages that Whistler didn’t. It was a lot closer to more people, for starters. That allowed us to get more Olympic tickets in the hands of more spectators. Not such a bad motivation. On a beautiful day, the view from Cypress over Vancouver was one of the most stunning in the world. And, frankly, we didn’t anticipate we’d be dealing with weather that hadn’t been seen in the area for more than a century. Whistler was already over capacity with five stadiums, an Athletes’ Village, a Celebration Plaza and other facilities.
THE IOC HAD required us to stage test events in the period leading up to the Games. It was a chance for them to see us under the kind of pressure we would face at Games time. And for us it was an opportunity to face the stresses of competition, a chance to put ourselves through the wringer. Chances were that if there was a flaw or weakness it would reveal itself during these test events, and there would still be time to fix them.
We had scheduled 21 such events and boasted an impressive report card at the end. Almost straight A’s. The program allowed our team to test transport, technology, security, accreditation, scoring systems and food and beverage. All the venues but one seemed a perfect fit: Cypress. The venue was tight, access tough, the owner not wildly enthusiastic that we were there, and there was always the worry that snow conditions might be problematic.
The test events at Cypress in 2009 were far from Olympic-calibre, with one postponement, so we had serious work to do. This fairly modest mountain was to face its stiffest test—ever. It had a year to become world-class. We worked hard to ready the hill, develop a spirit of teamwork on the site, recruit the best kinds of volunteers, install snow-making and lighting equipment and create an upbeat stadium atmosphere. By Games time, one of the most stylish grandstands ever built on a North American mountain was in place, a full 14 storeys top to bottom. Looking straight down on the finish corral for ski and snowboard cross (fairly recent Olympic disciplines) and other events, it looked like a giant Meccano model. Eventually the mountain, with its multiple venues, was transformed. We had turned water into wine. In its coverage, NBC favoured Cypress for its amazing vistas.
The organizing committee had taken painstaking measures to prepare for every kind of weather. Unique weather station technology had been installed in the mountains through a partnership with Environment Canada—the sole purpose to help us get in front of every imaginable winter challenge. Too much snow, too little snow, none at all, rain, sun, flying saucers—the system could tell. For years we watched, analyzed and tried to predict what was coming—usually with bang-on certainty. The data said don’t worry. The data said we would manage. In Whistler, if the same weather technology said we’d have a clear window at 10 AM to start a downhill event, then voilà that’s what we got. Pretty impressive stuff . . . until we needed it most.
In the months leading up to the Games, Cypress had looked good. But then conditions started to bounce around a bit. The mountain was acting strangely, just not co-operating. We thought that, based on previous years’ data, it would right itself and the snow would come, and plenty of it. Just after Christmas the situation was beginning to look dire. No snow or so little it hardly matter
ed. The little snow that the mountain got was in the wrong places. On top of that, it wasn’t cold enough to make any snow artificially.
Early work we had done on the mountain was destroyed by warm winds. January was the warmest in Vancouver since record-keeping began in 1937, with a mean temperature of 45 degrees Fahrenheit, or more than seven degrees higher than normal. It was El Niño Plus. At Capilano Golf and Country Club, a few kilometres from Cypress, men and women were playing golf in short sleeves. The fields of play on the mountain were breaking up. With the start of the Games closing in on us, the condition of Cypress had become the daily focus of our mountain operations team. New plans were drawn up. Still parts of the mountain were more brown than white, and pretty soon the media were going nuts with doom-and-gloom stories that went around the world. Will they make it? Is there any hope?
The pundits were having a field day predicting it was only going to get worse. The sport and venue teams collaborated endlessly, new money was found as contingencies for other things were reduced and major decisions were made to shore up our position. Creativity was the order of the day. We were now looking for bales of hay to protect and stabilize the runs, creating false but strong and effective bases to hold the snow. Meantime, we were hunting for other snow that was compatible with the snow on the mountain.
The crew was determined not to let the mountain defeat them. Every day was a new adventure with very little help from the sky. Every ounce of snow was taken from other sites on the mountain and stockpiled for emergencies above the runs. Erickson Air-Crane helicopters carrying the hay to key locations made for dramatic pictures, and when trucks started to haul snow from Manning Park it was clear to all it was game on—man versus mountain.
As the days ticked down, the mountain operations team, led by Paul Skelton, was exhausted after practically living on the mountain for weeks. I went up many times to see the work and cheer them on. Their Olympics had started and they were after a gold medal—nothing less. If something was humanly possible then they tried it. Dave Cobb, Terry Wright and Cathy Priestner Allinger worked day and night making key strategic decisions with the crew, and while there were many setbacks they chewed their way through each one. This was not going to be the site of the first-ever Olympic event outright cancellation.