WORK SO FAR MERITS GOLD
The lead volunteer helping to determine whether Calgary should make a bid for the 2026 Winter Olympics says one of the chief obstacles may be skepticism about the integrity of the amateur sports spectacle.
“The biggest barrier to what we’re doing is the overall lack of trust that people have about Olympics in general,” Rick Hanson told Postmedia’s Calgary editorial board Monday.
“People have become really cynical — about the Olympics especially.
“The biggest single issue is about the cynicism around the work, and will they trust the work that’s being done, and that’s why we’re so intent, and have been so intent, on really focusing on the buckets of work and just to be objective.”
Hanson, the city’s former police chief, may well be right. But frankly, security costs are probably the biggest stumbling block to hosting the Olympics. Protecting athletes, officials and the public cost about a billion dollars in 2010, when Vancouver welcomed the Games. Setting aside inflation, it’s a certainty that the bill would be much higher 16 years later.
It’s refreshing to hear Hanson be so upfront about the committee’s true task: deciding whether the Olympics are a good fit for the city. Calgary is one of the most entrepreneurial cities in the world, and the last thing people want is a costly government boondoggle that leaves taxpayers on the hook for an event that fails to live up to expectations.
But being entrepreneurial means being open to opportunity, and there’s no doubt that a thorough investigation into the wisdom of submitting a bid for the Games, Calgary’s second, makes sense.
As the people exploring the possibility point out, part of the discussion must centre on the future of so-called legacy facilities from the 1988 Games.
Are they the foundation for a bid that would not only shave costs, but generate a profit, all the while further solidifying Calgary’s deserved reputation as a world-class sports city? Or, are the aging facilities depleted assets that would serve little purpose nine years from now?
“By 2026, most of those venues are going to be 40 years down the track from 1988, and so at some point in time, even though they’ve been maintained well and given tender loving care, we’re going to have to reckon with what are we going to do with them. This is an opportunity to look at that,” says Brian Hahn, the bid exploration committee’s general manager.
The group has a lot of work ahead of it. Calgarians have good reason to believe there won’t be a rush to a conclusion. That’s not how we do things here.