The Olympics we loved in ’88 no longer exist

Let’s add snow removal to that endlessly growing list of sanctioned Olympic events, and maybe then we might get unanimous approval for a city bid to host the 2026 Winter Games.

Imagine all those fine-tuned athletes from every country on Earth furiously shovelling our side streets for all they’re worth. Voila — our pathways cleared and the chance to host the world.

Sadly, chances of that being recognized as an Olympic sport — though it’s more interesting than the biathlon, for heaven’s sake — are in Slim’s hands and he’s too tied up in the Flames playoff chances to be bothered with this will-we-bid soap opera currently dividing Calgary.

The latest all-too-expected development is an admission by the city that the previous, eyewatering cost estimate for hosting the Games in 2026 is likely too low, at a suggested $4.6 billion.

Still, council went ahead and approved spending another $2.5 million toward creating an Olympic BidCo — which sounds like another euphemism for a toilet — on the understanding the feds and the province will also pony up funds. In total, this ugly-named outfit will need $30 million to start its work, split among the three levels of government.

Now, just for a moment, imagine you call a realtor and question if it’s a good time to buy a home — or your mechanic, and ask if the car should get servicing, or even your dentist, and you inquire about a checkup.

The answer will be in the affirmative, of course. It’s not that these folks are greedy, but they come at the question from a committed viewpoint (it’s why I avoid talking to undertakers or politicians).

Fine folk the BidCo appointees might ... be, they’ll be biased from the start.

So, if indeed the other levels of government cough up their share of the dough, and this $30 million is sucked in and then spent by BidCo, what route forward is it likely to ultimately suggest?

Will we have a report concluding: “Yeah, the whole thing is a farce and a waste of money. We think those IOC people are ego-driven nincompoops without a sliver of financial prudence in their bodies who happily burden the cities they temporarily infest with enough debt to make Venezuela look solvent”?

Somehow, I doubt it. Fine folk the BidCo appointees might turn out to be, they’ll be biased from the start.

Honestly, this whole, drip-by-drip future bid process is as gruelling as an Emil Zatopek training session (my brother wanted me named Emil after the great Czech runner — thankfully, my mother had more sense).

Calgarians are already massively split over this and the painful, ongoing process looks certain to accentuate that division.

It’s sad, because the drive to stage the bestever Olympics might be what Calgary needs to get out of its current funk, where every suggested project is immediately shredded to the point where we can’t even talk about a new hockey arena. We’re stuck in a nasty neutral — unhappy, but unwilling to move.

This is neither the Calgary of 1988 — the year I arrived from Edmonton — nor the Olympics of that previous time.

Thirty years ago, we were a Prairie city grasping for the big stage with a population ready to embrace the challenge and welcome the world with a gung-ho, can-do spirit and a collective smile on its wide-open face. We aren’t that any longer. We’re bigger, richer and more culturally diversified. But we’re also more suspicious and cynical.

As for the Games themselves? Back in ’88, the Olympics had not made the full transition into the unwieldy beast of excess they are today, which has resulted in so many cities refusing to even get involved — Calgary being the last North American venue still standing for the winter of 2026.

Soon, the only cities willing to play host will be those ruled by autocrats, where the cost is immaterial to the propaganda benefits.

We need an Olympics, but an Olympics that no longer exists. So sadly, I’d vote to pass.