With a month to go before Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympics begin, VANOC CEO John Furlong described the mood inside the organizing committee as “positive anxiety.”

“We’ve been working on this in since in some ways the mid-'90s, we still really haven’t done anything yet,” Furlong said Tuesday. “The Games start on the 12th, that’s where the world’s attention will be.”

Responding to criticism that Vancouverites have yet to catch Olympic fever, Furlong said it’s just a matter of time.

“It’s happened in every city in the world that’s put on the Olympic Games in the past and it will happen in Vancouver as well,” he said.

Furlong said wrestling with the recession was the biggest challenge VANOC confronted so far.

“Having seen what happened, and how difficult it was to deal with, I think it made a better organization out of this one,” he said. “I think it made our team sharper and more focused, more resilient and more creative.”

Bob Mackin reports for Vancouver 24 hours