backfired

who was it that cannot run a peanut stand, eh Gordo?

The Guardian is only one paper

Every games is going to have problems. One of the problems with the commentary is that everyone is using Beijing as a benchmark. Consider that the PRC spent a colossal far more for the Beijing Games than we have.

Also consider that it has been the warmest
winter here in almost 100 years so that can't be helped.

The NDP couldn't run a peanut stand, that been proven over again.

The Guardian is only one paper.

If the Games are such a colossal failure
why are the streets still packed with Games visitors??

why are the streets still packed with Games visitors??

I dunno... I guess you would have to poll them or something. But one might speculate... if I book an expensive vacation and it doesn't turn out to be all that great, I don't pack up and head home unless there is some serious problem. I just chalk it up as a lousy vacation and hope for better next time. So perhaps the streets are packed because people are simply here already.

In short, I'm not sure that it follows from numbers in attendance that the games are a success.

I've been to sold out concerts that were lousy. The fact that they were sold out didn't make them any better.

Why Was Vancouver/Whistler Awarded The Games?

We'll never know the inner workings of the less-than-forthcoming IOC, full of pampered, out-of-touch people.
It's all about the deal not reality.
Salzburg, Austria and Pyeongchang, South Korea battled Vancouver/Whistler to hold the 2010 Games.
Today in Korea, the temperature is below zero and there's snow
In Salzburg, snow and around -6C.
Vancouver --- OWN THE PODIUM, DAMN THE WEATHER!

Right BC Boy.

The Liberals know how to run a peanut stand do they. Fudged budgets cost overruns, fudged benefit analysis, fudged cost accounting and on and on...Oh yeah they know how to run a peanut stand. The only thing they know is to fool you and that doesn't take much skill.

Let's call the games what it is

Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, a supreme fiasco.

Folks, let's remember this 6+ billion dollars of our tax dollaer having gone to toilet next time we head to vote.

Enough with corporate fascim.

People like BC boy et al don't have enough critical thinking skills to differentiate between colossal failure and problesm. Bus running late is a problem; everyday cancellation of events failure. Your stupid hydrolic arm not working is a failure; building an EXTREMELY DANGEROUS luge track is a failure; dodging responsibilites are failure.

VANOC is a failure.

green tech?

3 green Zambonis not working is a failure!
It might be easier to count the successes, than the failures.

The 'Spring ' Games you mean!

I wonder how much the Russians are going to spend on their 'Winter' Games?

Remember when CCCP (Russia) olympics were boycotted because the soviets were occupying Afghanistan!

Some olympic truce when a major offensive (according to media) is being waged in Helmand (sp) province by 'Nato' forces.

But as war is now a days, the show/economy, including the business of sports, must go on!

How many more event cancellations will there be in total by the end of the taxpayer funded circus circus?

IranianDude

I dunno, your response might indicate that your fall into that group as well.

There's a lot of small stuff going on but the worst problem (fatality aside) is just getting blind sided by El Nino. It's effects are a lot stronger than allowed for.

@Freebear

Putin and Neveded..Earlier this year at a photo-op claimed they had a budget of $44 billion dollars for their winter Olympic games...

Although that bill is for Russia not a single section of Russia.

Russia`s games will be perfect and the government insiders will rape the Russian people.

Cheers

From a BC Perspective

The games are a failure? According to Donegan they are, and his views are valid but nowhere does he mention any of the real bread and butter economic issues relevant to BC. The games are definitely a failure but this was the case before they even started.

Check this article from the Globe (which is pro-Olympics)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/what-legacy-vancouver/article1467045/?cmpid=tgc

Economic benefits - nothing.

And the Russian games - well chances are there'll be snow for start.

Warm winter "can't be helped"?

"There's a lot of small stuff going on but the worst problem (fatality aside) is just getting blind sided by El Nino."

Who's kidding who? We heard all summer that the El Nino current was moving back across the Pacific guaranteeing us a warm wet winter, yet VANOC refused to take precautionary mesures and move the Cypress events to anywhere else in the province that would have had more snow, from Mt Washington to Silver Star.

That's corporate politics of the slimiest order - no interest in satisfying fans, no support for the athletes - just make sure the corporate sponsor gets their chance to rake off the bucks from the public and government tit, and be damned to the reason for the games.

The IOC gives a whole new meaning to NGO - non-governmental oligarchy.

Odds of Warm Winter Known To Be Higher

When the Glen Clarke supported bid team won the Canadian right (against Quebec City) to pursue a bid to the IOC for the 2010 games I very distinctly remember thinking that the odds of having good weather on the mountains was at best a crap shoot.

You see, the year Vancouver won the right to bid, we had suffered through one of the strongest (warmest) El Nino weather patterns in quite some years. That is until now.

Ok, one year does not a pattern make, right? Right.

But a whole series of them do.

In the decade preceding Canada's Olympic city bid process (Vancouver competed with Toronto under Glen Clark's hand back in 98), El Nino had a pronounced effect during the December through March time frames:

1987
1988
1992
1995
1998

So bid organizers went after the right to go for the 2010 games knowing full well the prior decade had moderate to strong El Nino effects.

Did that trend continue? Should organizers have considered this to be a risk? Yes. Since winning the 2010 games award in 2003:

2003
2005
2007
2010

Indeed, the year Vancouver was awarded the games (2003) El Nino had a pronounced effect on our winter weather and editorial cartoons were making jokes about "Lawn Luge" and "Beach Bobsled".

John Furlong said that there was no way they could have put the Cypress venues up in Whistler too - it would have packed too much into a small community.

That excuse sounds perfectly rational, except for the fact that they made what is essentially a six billion dollar bet on the weather without having decent odds behind them to do so.

Well

Here is some classic cherry picking for us. I heard him whinging on CBC about the cost that he was being charged to connect on the internet.

Aussie joke:

Q: How do you know a plane load of Brits has landed?

A: As soon as the jet engines stop the whining starts.

It wasn't only the Guardian,

It wasn't only the Guardian, The London times had a few choice words to say as well. I'd put those two world class newspapers against anyhting the CAnWest group could come up with

What a laugh

In the run-up, all we heard was how these Olympics was going to put Vancouver on the map etc etc etc.

Now, VANOC says it doesn't care about what a couple of British newspapers have to say.

Har Har. Good One.

Cheque's in the mail I suppose, Eh Furlong?

North Saanich security crack down

In my hot bed of radicalism (North Saanich) the talk in the Deep Cove Store is about what the heck is going on with all the RCMP checkpoints and stops on vehicles. There are a large number of new unmarked SUVs prowling the community since the Olympics started They've now taken to setting up checkpoints at places like Landsend Road, that well know multi-million dollar residential area for radicals from Arizona, for security reasons, but which end up giving local residents speeding tickets for going a few KM/H above the limit. We're really impressed with the use of our tax dollars to clamp down on our "dangerous" organic farmers, horse breeders etc. and their propensity at great distance to endanger the Olympics, presumably with their arsenal of turnips and horse manure. The latter being my opinion of the security arrangements for the Olympics in my community.

Just wait - it will get worse!

Interesting article, Geoff. And interesting comparison of Cypress to a "special child" by VANOC Communications. Yikes...

Of course the streets of Vancouver, Richmond and Whistler are jammed with deliriously happy party animals, because the Games are about entertainment and money - not athletic achievement (that's why each Olympic sport hosts its own world champtionships).

While every mega event has hiccups, the usual official response in the midst of it all is the organizing committee's reassurances of the enduring legacy of these Games, the promise of fabulous economic benefits thanks to increased exposure, all those jobs, warm fuzzy feelings, and increased tourism.

So it came as a shock to me when I read recently that economist Dr. Jeffrey Owen of Indiana State University has joined many other senior economists who study such things in exposing the myth that obscenely expensive Olympic Games actually bring a financial benefit to the hosts, DESPITE what all those consultants who write economic impact studies promise. He writes:

“To date, there has not been a single study of an Olympics or other large-scale sporting event that has found empirical evidence of significant economic impacts.”

More at "Why The Olympics Are Bad Business" at http://www.ethicalnag.org/2010/02/14/olympics/

zalm

I'll use the whole quote for you.

"There's a lot of small stuff going on but the worst problem (fatality aside) is just getting blind sided by El Nino. It's effects are a lot stronger than allowed for."

And another column

Carolyn here is another column along the same lines.

Myths About Landing the Olympics
By Stefan Szymanski_Sunday, October 4, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/01/AR2009100103891.html

Or a cartoon

here - you MUST use this address today.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/toon.php

Thanks

Thank you, North of Hope - verrrrry interesting.

Is it just me, or are other people scratching their heads and wondering why ANY city spends this kind of money and resources attempting to win the Olympic Games bid, given the wealth of credible data out there that clearly points out the wrong-headedness of their thinking?

The evidence out there seems quite clear, as BC Business magazine summed it up this month:

“You can count on three things being true with the Winter Olympics:
1. the initial cost estimates for staging the Games will be underestimated
2. the Games will almost certainly lose money
3. and organizers will claim they made a profit.

Yet all this appears to be forgotten every four years when a new city hosts the Winter Games.”

snert

Your point being.....?

It is...

Right and just! and well deserve criticism, and perhaps understated.

zalm

That your point wasn't.

'S'funny

You struck me as one of the ones who didn't have to move his lips to read.

Let me carry on with the rest of the class, snert, and I'll come back later to help you catch up. You've obviously had some trouble with the earlier lessons....

A little disappointed

We went downtown yesterday to check things out. Yeah, lots of woo-hoos being tossed around, but I guess I was expecting more. David Lam Park? ..huge lineup for pretty much a big screen and stage band. Yaletown? .. street vendors & buskers. Robson Square? .. tons of people milling around & some bright lights, but little to do other than look up at the zip-line. O-Zone, yea, I want to check out, but I've heard complaints about the food. If you call fries and hot dogs food. Point is, despite 10 years of planning, all I see is tents that look like they've been rented from the PNE. If organizers had put even a fraction the effort into what they put into 'branding' protection and over-bloated security, then we might have had something really impressive. Where are the outdoor cafes? Where's all the good food?

Certain people and businesses profit...

Who do you think lobbied government to put in a bid for the Games?

Those that could profit from it: property owners/flippers/speculators; security companies; hotels, construction firms, etc.

How many taxpayers lobbied for hosting an olympics?

Remember the Simpsons' episode where the town is conviced they need a monorail!