“To describe the beauties of this region will, on some future occasion, be a very grateful task to the pen of a skilled panegyrist.” — English captain George Vancouver, 1792.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA — For those unaccustomed to 18th-century vernacular, a panegyrist writes eulogies. When Friday’s opening ceremony kicks off the Winter Olympics, enough words will be printed to cut down nearly every Douglas fir that peppers this majestic city.
Excuse the 2 million Vancouverites if they’re burying their lucky $1 Canadian loonies in hopes the Greek gods of Olympics past don’t turn the final eulogy into a Canadian tragedy:
Oh, gods, please don’t hand us a final bill like you gave our countrymen in Montreal 34 years ago. The Quebecois just paid off the 1976 Summer Olympics, like, an hour and a half ago.
Don’t turn our relatively sane traffic patterns into suburban Houston at 5 p.m. We like being different from America for other reasons besides health care, eh?
And let’s hope one of the aerialists doesn’t airmail himself off course at barren Cypress Mountain and land in a flower bed. Mother Nature hasn’t been kind to us. You guys better be.
Finally, and most important, you must have our men’s hockey team deliver a gold medal. Gods may have created heaven and earth, but we created hockey.
Relax, Vancouver. You’re going to be fine.
Buzz is building
What George Vancouver saw when his ship sailed into Inner Harbor that day in 1792 wasn’t too different than what the estimated 350,000 visitors will see this month: a narrow land mass shaped like a greyhound’s head sandwiched between a gorgeous bay and lake-laced park to the north and a deep, blue river to the south. Beyond stand snowcapped mountains.
Cynics claim you can only see those mountains during Vancouver’s nonrainy season which, they say, is July 15. No, this is not a typical Winter Olympics city. It’s the largest and warmest city in Winter Olympics history and the first seaside city to host the Winter Games since Oslo in 1952.
Consequently, Cypress Mountain, where freestyle ski events will be held 18 miles north of Vancouver, has received virtually no snow recently. Beijing right now has more. Maybe even Athens.
However, Vancouverites have a West Coast spirit that combines free-thinking entrepreneurialism with a laid-back demeanor. Will there be problems? What Olympics hasn’t had problems?
But Olympic spirit has enveloped this city like its steady winter drizzle. Even Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and Chris Shaw, one of the Olympics’ opponents, put away their sabers Wednesday and met to talk about a future strategy for the city.
“You could just start to feel it over the weekend,” said Sue Griffin, CEO of the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame and Museum, which houses 25,000 artifacts in BC Place, host of the opening and closing ceremonies. “Buildings are fully wrapped. The transit system is wrapped. Media are walking around with their passes on. You can feel the buzz.”
In the city of the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks, the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) pushed a slogan called “Everyone’s a Canuck.” During a media tour last month, it appeared the city had already bought in.
A red maple leaf 11 stories high is draped on the side of the Hotel Georgia. The windows in Scotia Tower are colored red and white. Canadian flags fly throughout the city.
The Canadian Olympic Committee’s Red Mitts campaign, in which you can buy $10 red mittens with the Olympic rings on one side and the maple leaf on the other, has been a huge hit. Locals are breaking out their red jackets, red pants, red stocking caps and, of course, red mittens.
“Someone who’s born and raised here, who hosts a show aired around the province, it’s hard not to be proud that we’re an Olympic city and will have that legacy forever,” said Radio CKNW’s Dan Russell, who has hosted a sports talk show in Vancouver for 25 years. “Many Americans know what Vancouver is all about, but there are a lot who don’t.”
First, folks, get over the rain. Vancouver gets 44 inches a year. Deal with it. It has made Vancouver as green as Seattle but with less crime. Stanley Park, which ol’ Captain George should have claimed as his own, is 1,000 acres featuring everything from lakes to cricket pitches to beaches.
Thanks to a renaissance of Pacific Northwest cuisine, Vancouver is challenging Montreal and Toronto as the culinary capital of Canada. If you want to eat with an Olympic spirit, go to Cardero’s and dine on wild Pacific salmon near a fireplace while watching giant Olympic rings bob atop Coal Harbour.
“It’s a great chance to show the world what Vancouver has to offer as a city, outside of sports itself,” said Troy Clare, 24, a bartender at the Shark Club, one of Vancouver’s biggest sports bars. “It’s a beautiful city. Many may not know, may not understand.”
As for sports, these Games should be easy to navigate, thanks to the new $774 million SkyTrain linking the airport to downtown and the scenic Sea-to-Sky Highway, which is a widened road between Vancouver and Whistler, the main skiing venue.
The venues are concentrated in three main areas:
Vancouver. Canada Hockey Place and UBC Thunderbird Arena (hockey), Pacific Coliseum (figure skating and short-track speedskating), Vancouver Olympic Centre (curling), Richmond Olympic Oval (long-track speedskating).
Whistler (80 miles north of Vancouver). Alpine skiing, biathlon, cross-country skiing, ski jumping and sled sports.
Cypress Mountain (18 miles north). Freestyle events.
With Vancouver already a major sports city, the only new venues needed were the Vancouver Olympic Centre, the biathlon and ski jump areas, the Richmond Oval and the Whistler Sliding Centre.
They were ready a year ago and most have held World Cup or test events, some to mixed reviews. Cross country skiers have said the course is too easy; the high-maintenance Austrians say the ski jump, featuring a unique refrigeration system, is perfect.
The most important thing is they’re up and running. VANOC even dressed up the drab, domed BC Place to look presentable for the Winter Olympics’ first indoor opening ceremony.
“I have no worries,” said Jan Damnavits, venue management director for the Vancouver venues. “There will be issues we’ll deal with on a day-to-day basis, but we’re ready to go.”
Yes, even Cypress Mountain will be ready. Half-pipe snowboarder Shaun White won’t have to worry about trying to pick up speed through dirt, grass and daffodils. VANOC has stockpiled snow from a 5-million-gallon snowmaking reservoir and will push the snow into the venues before the events.
Sure, it’s artificial, but as Griffin said, “It’s going to be 9 degrees (48 Fahrenheit), so it’s going to be very pleasant.”
But for Canadian sports fans, the emotion they want from these Olympics must be more than pleasant.
Hinging on hockey
This will be the third Olympics on Canadian soil. The number of gold medals won by Canadians on Canadian soil stands at zero.
“The big initiative here is called ‘Own the Podium,'” Russell said. “Never mind owning. Let’s just lease it for a little bit.”
Canada will strike gold. It may have the best long-track speedskating team in the world and has potential high-profile gold-medal winners in figure skater Patrick Chan and downhiller Manuel Osborne-Paradis.
Sports Illustrated projects 10 golds for Canada, second to Germany’s 11 and ahead of the seven by the U.S. and Norway.
But the one sport that really matters here will either elevate Canadians higher than any Austrian ski jumper or send them to depths Alberta oil rigs couldn’t reach.
Talk to many Vancouverites and this isn’t so much an Olympics as a world hockey tournament. Canada finished a miserable fourth in the 1988 Calgary Games. This time they’re favored on home ice. Only the Canucks winning the Stanley Cup could top it in a Vancouverite’s lifetime.
“It has been built into us that this is our game,” said Paul Winfield, a 50-year-old consultant drinking a pint in G Sports, a cozy sports bar downtown. “Anyone who joins, be it the Russians, the Europeans or, God help us, the Americans, are Johnny-come-latelys. That’s our sport.”
It’s also their time. Starting Friday, the world will see a nation best known for mounted police, cold winters and social systems show off its crown jewel.
Gentlemen, place your loonies.
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
