Vancouver Road to 2010

The only part of Vancouver's 2010 Olympics that is physically bigger than the Beijing Games is one of the mascots.

Step aside little Fuwa, it's Quatchi's turn now. With the close of the Summer Olympics, Vancouver organizers can finally begin taking their Games to the rest of the world. The pressure is on.

"People expect, regardless of whether we're smaller or not, they'll expect us to do something profoundly positive as well and leave our mark," said John Furlong, the chief executive officer of Vancouver's Olympic organizing committee.

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With less than 18 months to go and almost all of the venues ready to open, Vancouver planners are now shifting their attention to all the small details that go into hosting an Olympics.

"There are a lot of pieces that need to pulled together still before we can get to a seamless operation of the Games," said Paul Henderson, director of Olympic and Paralympic operations for the city of Vancouver.

"Of course, they are all in play, but there's still lots of work to do."

Among other things, details have still not been finalized on how the thousands of spectators, reporters and athletes will be moved around the venues and host cities for the Games.

A final security budget - initially low-balled at $175 million - has yet to be released.

The public will get its first true glimpses of how Vancouver will manifest its Olympic spirit when the decorative banners and flags to be used around the city and at venues during the Games are released in September.

Next will come the first phase of ticket sales, via lottery, which begins Oct. 3.

"We don't expect our challenge will be selling the tickets," said Dave Cobb, the vice-president of marketing for the Olympic committee.

"But we're not going to assume we can do things the way they've done before and expect our seats to be full."

To combat the chronic empty-seat problem caused by unused tickets that sprouts up each Olympics, Vancouver will launch a comprehensive, high-tech strategy.

Organizers are going to create an official resale market for tickets and cut down the number of seats available for the groups who most often don't show up at events - sponsors, media and other Olympic officials.

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Making sure each seat is full is part of Vancouver's drive to have more spirited Games than those in Beijing. Higher value will also be placed on in-game entertainment at the venues and on public celebrations.

"We are for sure wanting to turn the city into a place where everybody wants to go at night to come face to face with the events," Furlong said.

"The fact is not every citizen is going to go (to the competitions), not every citizen can afford to go, but they can all be part of the event and be downtown."

On the sports side of the Games, the drive to own the podium in 2010 continues.

With all venues set to be fully operational this winter, Canadian athletes will have home-field advantage for training - and the money to back it up.

Athletes in Beijing complained that a lack of funding capped Canada's medal haul at 18. But the Canadian Olympic Committee says the money for 2010 is just fine.

"When we came up with the Own The Podium plan in partnership with everyone else who was involved, particularly the sport organizations, we basically went to them and said 'What do you think you could do and how much money to you need to achieve it?,"' said Chris Rudge, chief executive officer of the COC.

"They said 'We think we can be No. 1 and we need $110 million.' We got the 110, so it would be somewhat hypocritical to say it's not enough when they gave us what we asked for."

Another challenge ahead for planners in the next few months is assuaging concerns the Olympics will wreak havoc with the daily lives of people in the two host cities of Vancouver and Whistler, B.C.

Furlong said he hopes measures needed to prepare the cities for the Games will be seen as "volunteering" by businesses and residents to help put on the Olympics.

"We may for example ask businesses to consider opening their businesses earlier in the morning and shutting down later," he said.

"I think we're going to get a high degree of co-operation because it's been our experience that everybody wants to help, everybody wants to be on the team."

For another segment of Vancouver's population, there also remain concerns the Games will eliminate its day-to-day existence.

Where Beijing used edicts and brute strength to create a city virtually free of vice for the Games, city and provincial officials in B.C. are spending millions in their rush to clean up Vancouver's streets of the homeless, mentally ill and drug addicted.

There's a strong belief in that community that people there will be shipped out of town or jailed arbitrarily to keep their faces out of the media coverage of the Olympics.

But B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell has vowed that isn't going to happen.

He says investments in housing and health are helping address the root problems in the Downtown Eastside, one of Canada's biggest ghettos, and it will look different by 2010.

"I see this as an area of possibilities, where we think about historic neighbourhoods and what they provided to the city, what they provided to the province, " he said.

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"And if we look at those things, and work on them as an integrated way, I think you will see significant improvements by 2010."

Though Olympic planners are chock full of spirit and enthusiasm for the Games, they recognize that not everyone feels the same way and protests are inevitable.

But if they do their jobs right, Furlong said, protest will be eliminated.

"The goal of the organizing committee is to try and earn the respect of the public, to build our credibility with the public to try and include everybody so when we get to the Games people will feel like the project deserves the support we would like it to have."