Calgary wooing the Olympic Winter Games despite cost

The Olympic sirens are luring Calgarians once again.

And with memories of the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics still strong, some people are already convinced they can recreate the excitement and international attention for another round in 2026.

But the Olympics have become a bit tarnished over the past 30 years and it seems the most prestigious, and expensive, athletic competition in the world may need Calgary more than Calgary needs it.

Interest is so low that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had to extend its usual bidding calendar for the 2026 Games by a year.

Calgary hasn’t yet put together a formal bid to the IOC, but it has been seriously investigating, at the cost of $3 million so far, the pros and cons of hosting the games. Former Calgary police chief Rick Hanson chaired the advisory committee established by city council. After months of study, the committee decided that Calgary could handle the 2026 Winter Games, but stopped short on the question of whether Calgary should make a bid.

Of course, the biggest stumbling block is cost: Hanson’s committee estimated hosting the Winter Olympics would cost $4.6 billion, of which $2.4 billion would have to be provided by federal, provincial and municipal governments.

Alberta’s NDP government amassed billions of dollars of debt as the price of oil sunk, so may have some reservations about that idea.

But the IOC is so desperate, it offered to shave some of those costs by not requiring new facilities, but simply updating old ones, such as Calgary’s speed skating oval, a star of the 1988 games.

Last week, IOC officials spent a few days in Calgary, at their own expense for a change, to check out local sporting facilities and offer advice on preparing a bid.

“Let’s use what exists, including outside of the city, outside of the country for legacy and sustainability purposes. So this goes in exactly the direction we want,” Christophe Dubi, IOC’s executive director, said during a conference call from Switzerland.

When Dubi says outside of the city, he’s not talking about a 20-minute drive. He means the ski jump at Whistler in B.C., which is almost 1,000 kilometres from Calgary. There’s also talk of using facilities in Edmonton (300 kilometres away). Since it has a fancy new NHL arena and Calgary doesn’t, and likely won’t for a long time, figure skating and hockey, two of the most popular events, could be held in Edmonton.

Edmontonians would be delirious with joy, but Calgarians would be really ticked off.

As for holding events in another country, it’s not clear what Dubi had in mind.

Was he talking about facilities in Salt Lake City, which hosted the Winter Games in 2002? It’s only 1,400 kilometres south of Calgary. Or maybe Sochi, Russia, which hosted the games in 2014, which is easily accessible if athletes and fans like really long airplane flights.

Fans watching it all on TV, the IOC’s biggest source of revenue, probably won’t care exactly where the ski jumping, bob sledding, speed skating or the slalom races are taking place. But spreading events out like that would surely dilute the fervour and celebratory feelings that take over a host city.

That’s certainly what happened in Calgary in 1988 and made it a year to remember for so many people. Ditto the Vancouver Games in 2010. Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi has been supportive of the exploratory process, but he is leery of putting billions of taxpayers’ dollars into a project that might not produce the economic benefits that are so often touted.

Nenshi told Calgary Metro that he has had conversations with the federal and provincial governments and, while he is not seeking cash in hand at this point, he needs a commitment from those levels of government before Calgary can decide whether or not to prepare a formal bid.

Much of that discussion will likely take place at the Winter Games in February in Pyeongchang, South Korea, which Nenshi will attend with a delegation of 10 provincial and city officials.

Let’s hope he realizes that once you get on the Olympic train it’s very difficult to jump off. Gillian Steward is a Calgary writer and former managing editor of the Calgary Herald. Her column appears every other week. gsteward@telus.net