1988 OLYMPICS BID WAS BORN OF VISION, PASSION
Looking back shows just how much of a farce today’s push for the Games has become,
As a journalist for 15 years, I travelled the world covering the International Olympic Committee, the international sports federations, the winning Calgary bid, and the disciplined, as well as the fiscally prudent, organizing of the 1988 Winter Olympics, which would become the best ever at that time.
It could be argued I knew more about the IOC than the organizing committee, and I had a wealth of knowledge about the mistakes that could be made and the legacies that could be created having returned to virtually every past Games host city to conduct in-depth research in what went right, and what was left behind. Some truisms I coined:
The Olympics are an ego looking for a place to inflate; The Olympics are a kingdom that goes looking for a country to pay the bills every four years.
The 1988 Games bid was the polar opposite of what is happening in Calgary today. The bid was led entirely by entrepreneur business leaders with a vision. It was born with unmatched passion launched with a $5,000 boost from the Calgary Booster Club, an organization that to this day supports the best athletes this city produces every year.
Hell-bent on a mission whose only goal was to succeed, they spent pennies like manhole covers and raised the funds required to bid from within an engaged populace and excited corporate community. They convinced corporations to volunteer their experts and professional services instead of paying everyone tax dollars. For the 1988 Games, city hall covered a minuscule part of the bid cost.
They sold bid pins door to door at $5 each. And I will never forget Anne Murray singing at a fundraising gala at the sold-out convention centre. The cost — $1,000 a plate, a mind-boggling ticket price more than 30 years ago, but corporate Calgary reached into their own pockets instead of those of taxpayers. Prime Minister Trudeau, the other one, also showed up.
Most importantly, they kept the city politicians totally at bay, allowing representation on the board but nothing else. It was as if all councillors served game misconducts through the bid process. In doing so, they saved city taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars because both the federal and provincial governments assumed full responsibility for actually building all major venues, including covering their cost overruns if any occurred.
The only main Games project partially covered by city taxpayers was one-third the cost of building the Olympic Saddledome, a commitment primarily made up by the city donating the land upon which the building sits. The Games themselves cost Calgarians virtually no cash.
Sidelining the mayor and council and letting adroit business acumen take the lead was a brilliant manoeuvre that protected taxpayers while taking local political grandstanding out of the Games.
Local politicians were unheard of during the bid stage, especially councillors. Mayor Ralph Klein had a running public battle with the organizing committee, complaining regularly that organizers were kowtowing to the IOC while not doing enough to look after the average Calgarian. In most cases, he was dead on — because it is easy to forget who is paying the bills.
This time around, local political games that rival a Shakespearean comedy have been played out for the entire world to hear and see. It has been true farce and many of the leaders of the 1988 bid must be turning in their graves as they have watched ego after ego enjoy Olympic inflation. There is little room left.
People who know little pretend to be experts. We have made the internal politics of the IOC look like child’s play. How do you expect to negotiate from a position of strength when we have constantly led with our chin?
Another major change was in 1988 local organizers banked all the world’s international broadcast rights fees and a large portion of the international sponsorship rights. No longer. The IOC now takes that money for-its-elf—even-i fit comes in more than expected — and then tells bidders they will help cover the costs of the local organizing committee with a grant. In percentage terms, the amount banked by local organizers is much less than for the 1988 Games.
Don’t get me wrong. I am a huge fan of the Olympics, and especially the athletes, who remain the least regarded members of the so-called Olympics Family. I watched how the Olympics, from the actual bid to the Games themselves, changed our city.
We shone on the world stage, and we did it without the interference of city hall and its battalion of bureaucrats.
I used to give a speech that Calgary was a medium-sized city with small-town values and truly world-calibre dreams. No one knew how good we could be until someone asked us to be great. Bid chairman Frank King, and his band of tough, hardnosed visionaries, united Calgarians behind a vision for greatness. Together they turned vision into reality, and for that we should all be thankful. The legacy of athletes training here enhances our city.
I haven’t quite figured out the vision for the 2026 Olympics: no LRT to the airport, a minuscule arena for figure skating (the world’s most popular Winter Games sport) and no new modern arena. At the moment, it is all about the money, even though we want to spend billions. To me, that is sad.
This fragmented council has no idea what would be great for this city. History shows the tourism benefits of hosting the Games is always exaggerated. At least Vancouver in 2010 got a sparkling new convention centre, the No. 1 driver of increased tourism spending in any city. Not in the Calgary playbook. Too visionary.
The sooner we bench local politicians, the better chance we will have to reach greatness again. Let them focus on what services taxpayers’ need, and let the pros bid for and organize the Olympics.
Then a vision rather than an ego will begin to emerge.
Sidelining the mayor and council and letting adroit business acumen take the lead was a brilliant manoeuvre that protected taxpayers while taking local political grandstanding out of the Games.