An Olympian effort’s beyond us, for now

L.A.’s doing it right — the bid for the 2024 Olympic Games, that is.

Their city council gave the initiative unanimous consent this week. Go get it, guys, was the sentiment expressed in a West Coast can-do vote of confidence.

Here, with two weeks to go before a letter of intent is required to tell the International Olympic Committee that Toronto is interested in contemplating a bid, city council, and citizens — even the usual characters who often wave the city’s flag on such endeavours — are, well, almost comatose.

The editorial cartoon in Thursday’s Star aptly captured this reality. As competing cities flex to “set” mode, ahead of the starter’s pistol going off, our guy is still in his warmup sweats.

Let’s just forget the whole thing, people. We’re not ready for prime time. The mayor who must sign the letter? He has a donor for the $150,000 required to send off the letter, but not much else.

He’s musing that the private sector, not his taxpayers, must pay the up to $60 million estimated cost of staging the bid — but it’s not like he has amassed a team of corporate bigwigs as backers.

This is no way to pursue the world’s largest and most costly shindig. To win — to play the IOC game and “bribe” unashamedly, using all your political, business and lineage and centuries-old alliances and IOUs — requires a certain worldliness matched with old-world charm. Our guys tend to be buttoned-down barristers armed with briefcases and sharp pencils. Arrggggh! We understand the money concerns. We get the desire to have the private sector pay for the bid when the money changers stand to reap the benefits, such as they are. But to be haggling over that now, days from the starting gate, when the journey’s cost is counted in billions, is to demonstrate a certain unpreparedness.

If you have to hit up your aunt and cousins and neighbours for the down payment on the house, you likely can’t afford to buy it, much less pay the upkeep.

If you’ve just owned a Honda, successfully, and you want to upgrade to a Lamborghini but can’t even state why, expect the aunts and uncles to balk when you show up asking for help with the down payment.

I don’t blame the mayor for being in a quandary. It’s not his idea, this potential Olympic bid. Whether it should be is another matter. He didn’t campaign on it. City staff did not list it as a civic priority. The business community had not identified it as a deliverable when they voted for him. And the public — consumed with commuting woes, lack of housing and non-existent job security — didn’t even give it a second thought until everyone got caught up and carried away by the exuberance of a successful Pan Am Games.

I love the idea of an Olympics in Toronto.

I believe my fellow citizens are up to the task of staging the “best Games ever.”

I know the GTA is in need of the infrastructure upgrades that will flow from hosting the world.

And I am confident such spending, and urgency of task, and guaranteed completion date will never be there, except when matched with such a catalyst.

But facts are facts. This is a risky venture. It takes careful, consistent, resolute management and oversight to keep the enterprise from going haywire. The margin of error is slim. It requires an Olympian effort — one obviously not contemplated in Toronto.

You don’t show up to the starting gate of an Olympic event — matched against the world’s best competition — without putting in years of toil and training and preparation.

As an Olympics booster, it’s painful to admit: Toronto’s not ready. Let’s drop this before we are embarrassed.

If the private sector bankrolls the bid then taxpayers are losing nothing by trying. But why throw away money when we’re so obviously unprepared. A more convenient time, yes. Our citizens, contented and self-satisfied as they are, will have to be jerked out of their complacency to care and clamour and advocate for something as bodacious as an Olympics.

The right catalyst will come someday. We are far from that point today.

The Star’s editorial cartoon was spot on. As cities flex to “set” mode ahead of the pistol firing, our guy is in his warm-up sweats