Morgan:News:2010:Bronze Edition: January 2005

Monday, January 31, 2005

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Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #796
SIGNIFICANT INTEREST SHOWN BY CONSTRUCTION FIRMS IN FIRST 2010 VENUES

Steve Matheson, the senior vice-president of Venues for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), told a meeting of contractors interested in bidding on the first two major projects that about C$15 million worth of the work -- about 15% -- will be contracted to the Squamish and Lil'wat aboriginal companies.

The total budget for building the Whistler Sliding Centre (WSC) and the larger Whistler Nordic Centre (WNC) is about C$100 million, meaning that about 85% of the work would go to non-aboriginal operations. The funds will be spent on various packages of work that will be done during six-month construction 'seasons' during the 2005, 2006 and 2007 summers.

Matheson was taken aback by the amount of interest shown by firms interested in getting information on the venues. He had expected, until a few days ago, that about 50 or 60 representatives of contractors and subcontractors would show up for a meeting VANOC called in downtown Vancouver, but more than 150 people registered for this afternoon's session, which was held in two-thirds of a large hotel ballroom.

Matheson, flanked by VANOC's newly hired WNC project manager, Doug Ewing, and executives of the engineering firms for the projects, Stantec, which is dealing with the WSC, and Sandwell, supervising the design of the WNC, provided an overview of VANOC's strategy of how the construction work would proceed, and how the tenders for various types of work would be organized. Although specific packages of work were outlined, it was obvious that VANOC was still working on whether some of the packages of work would be combined, particularly during 2006 and 2007.

Ewing told the contractors to think of the work as essentially large earth-moving projects, since there would be large amounts of rock and dirt excavated or moved to prepare for the skiing, in the WNC project, and the bob-luge-skeleton sports in the WSC, and that, for instance, the extensive network of ski trails associated with the WNC would be similar in construction to well-designed and drained logging roads, which would be about 16 to 17 metres wide.

Matheson noted that aboriginal interests and involvement has been built into the Vancouver/Whistler Games from the early days of the bid, and were formalized in a Shared Legacy Agreement signed by various governments and the Bid Corporation; the construction work was a realization of the intentions in that agreement. However, Matheson said, talks were still underway with the two aboriginal bands on just what types of work would be contracted to aboriginal firms, and how it would be organized, but he said that the bands have indicated they have expertise in clearing, grubbing and some types of building construction. It was still undecided whether VANOC would contract directly with the aboriginal firms, whether the tender packages would have aboriginal subcontracting requirements, or whether there would be a mixture of the two.

He also said that band councils would not have direct influence in the make-up of the job allocation within those contracts -- something that plainly worried some of the contractors during the feedback session of the meeting -- as aboriginal companies would be formed to deal with that. And, he added, that aboriginal contractors will be subject to the same scrutiny and oversight from VANOC -- no more and no less -- than non-aboriginal contractors.

Matheson says VANOC will be issuing a formal Expressions of Interest request on each project that will be published throughout Canada within the next two weeks, with four or five companies shortlisted. Tenders for specific packages of work will be issued by the end of March, and construction work will start about June 1. "We'll be making a big effort to engage companies from coast to coast on the work, and we'll be setting the bar high for us and for the firms for construction performance."

The main design documents are expected to be finished by early March. They will then go to the VANOC Board of Directors meeting that month for approval to proceed. The environmental review for the WNC is expected to go to the respective government ministers for signature by the middle of February, and signed off by the end of March. Permitting is expected to be completed by June, with land-tenure applications completed by June as well.

He also told audience that within the next few months, VANOC would be making announcements about ways to ensure that people working on the Olympic venues will take pride in being identified as being on the Olympic construction teams. "We want to ensure the folks you hire," says Matheson, "Will take the Games home with them. You've heard [VANOC CEO] John Furlong talk about delivering quality Games. Well, flawless delivery of the Games starts with the construction worker. We want them to have a cachet, a sense of prestige, and to take pride in what they're doing on the job." And, he said, VANOC would also be spending quite a bit of time ensuring strict adherence to safety during the construction of the venues.

BACKGROUND

Here's the general types of work packages envisioned by VANOC for the WNC and WSC venues over the next three years. Essentially, tenders and budgets will be matched to the actual work offered in the tenders. The work season is, generally, June to October, depending on weather.

Package 1 and 2, to be issued in April; covers the WNC, WSC - Includes work on the biathlon, cross-country and ski-jump venue areas and their associated stadiums. This also includes areas such as the 12.5 hectare parking lot, which will be big enough to accommodate buses during the event as well as for the on-going commercial operations after the Games. The construction offices will be at the entrance to the area, on the north side of the Callaghan Valley highway that has yet to be built into the area from Highway 99. Ewing says that the areas involve a lot of wet soils, with up to a metre of peat in some places. Examples example of the scales involved: The cross-country venue alone is about the size of a football field; between 100,000 and 150,000 cubic metres of rock will need to be excavated.

Package 1 - The major package for 2005.

Site preparation - 32 hectares
Clearing & Grubbing
Stripping land surfaces - 128,000 cubic metres
Soil stabilization
Bulk excavation of soil and rock
Stream protection - about eight kilometres
Winter close-up work before the heavy snowfall that occurs each winter

Package 2 - Onsite work would probably be part of Package 1, but offsite work would probably be contracted out.

Aggregate production for fills
Borrow-pit development
Rock excavation
Rock crushing and screening
Pit remediation

Package 3, to be issued in May, with work to be accomplished between now and 2009:

Competition trail construction - about 15 kilometres
Recreational trail construction - about 75 kilometres

Matheson says that the competition trail construction will proceed first, because negotiations by VANOC are continuing with aboriginal bands on portions of the recreational trails and their management, particularly those that VANOC feels are required for on-going commercial success of the WNC following the Games, but which intrude on areas the bands feel are traditional "Wild Spirit" locations in parts of the Callaghan. Matheson says the aboriginal groups have signed off on the trail locations required for what he calls the "Olympic footprint."

Package 4, to be issued about the middle of this October - Site Grading and Venue Development - The big package for 2006, but some might be rolled into Package 5, depending on work progress

Roads and pathways
Olympic compounds - there are about 30 ha of compounds.
Electrical distribution (which will all be underground, including the main 25 kilo-volt transmission lines that will go about nine or 10 kilometres from Highway 99 to the venues, communications will be served by a fibre-optic channel from Highway 99 to the projects)
Area lighting
Water and sanitary systems -- these include a water-storage reservoir above the venues, a wastewater treatment plant that will achieve secondary treatment, a groundwater water-supply well and a related chlorination plant, and various pumping stations.
Fuel storage, in a small tank farm
Bridges and retaining structures - About seven or eight permanent bridges over various creeks, plus several temporary ones
Site drainage

Package 5, to be issued about the middle of this October - Ski Jump Structures -- the two ski jumps, which will be side-by-side are now confirmed as temporary. That is, they will only be used up to and during the 2010 Games, then decommissioned.

Procurement and fabrication
Subgrade preparation
Foundations
Structure installation

Package 6, to be issued about the middle of this October, but the work will carry on through 2006 to the end of 2007 - Site buildings and the Day Lodge

Foundations and superstructure work, as well as tenant improvements for a variety of buildings, such as a 15,000 square-foot day lodge, which will be important to the commercial success of the project after the Games and there could be aboriginal involvement in its operation, as well as used in the time leading up to and during the Games, athlete and operational compounds, a broadcast compound for the ski jumps, and commentator cabins. There are about 6,000 square feet of compounds to be built.

Package 7, to be issued in 2009: Re-grading and paving

Access roads - there will be two main paved roads into the site; one for the public, and one for accredited personnel, such as athletes and broadcasters. There will be several construction roads, including those two, but some will not be kept. There will be a total of six kilometres of roads in the WNC area alone.
Pathways
Trails
Parkground grounds
Plazas

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 31, 2005

Friday, January 28, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #795
2010 LEGACIES NOW TO SET UP LEGACIES SPEAKER SERIES AS PART OF 5-YEARS-TO-GO EVENTS

2010 LegaciesNow and the Spirit of BC Community Committees, with which it has worked during the last few months to organize, will host what is being called a Legacies Speaker Series. It's 10-day provincial tour and live webcast featuring international experts from Australia, which hosted the 2000 Summer Olympics, and Salt Lake City, which hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics.

The tour of 10 communities in B.C. is expected to take place between February 11 and February 18. It will include two webcasts that will allow most communities in British Columbia to hear from the experts, but also share information and ask questions about what it takes to create Olympic legacies for their own community. The timing is to support a number of events expected to be taking place in several communities to highlight February 12, the five-years-to-go mark before the 2010 Games Opening Ceremonies.

"Creating lasting legacies in British Columbia is about creating long-term benefits for B.C. communities," says Marion Lay, the president and CEO of 2010 LegaciesNow. "Building a legacy happens by sharing ideas, setting goals now and for the future and working together to reach those goals."

The Speaker Series' experts will visit Vancouver, Prince George in the north-central part of the province, a number of towns on Vancouver Island, including Nanaimo and the Comox Valley towns of Courtenay, Comox and Cumberland. The will also visit Kelowna and Kamloops, Keremeos and Penticton in the southern-central area, along with Powell River on the coast north of Vancouver, the city of Abbotsford, which is east of Vancouver to share their success stories of how they created and levered opportunities for their communities and individual businesses with previous Olympic and Paralympic Games.

One of the experts, Maxine Turner, owner of Cuisine Unlimited in Salt Lake City, Utah, says, "We used our food business to get into the Games, but the opportunities don't stop there. I British Columbia you have B.C. produce, wine and seafood, but you also have your unique arts and culture. It's about finding the niche and building it into an opportunity to showcase to the world." Another of the experts, Graeme Hicks of Albury, Australia, adds, "Our region of Albury-Wodonga has had great success as a result of the 2000 Sydney Games and the AlburyWodonga Festival of Sport. Our opportunities to be a part of the Olympic torch relay, host international teams, and celebrate our community spirit through sport and culture started well before 2000 and continues today. British Columbia communities have that same opportunity with the Vancouver 2010 Games."

The Spirit of BC Community Committees were organized out of local committees originally organized spontaneously to see if they could get their town involved in the 2010 Games after the bid was awarded. The 2010 Legacies Now organization visited each, and other communities as well, to focus the efforts to leverage Olympic and non-Olympic community opportunities in the areas of sport and recreation, arts and culture, tourism and conventions, trade and investment, procurement, human resources, literacy and volunteerism. The Legacies Speaker Series and live webcasts will help communities to map out the steps to realize their goals.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 28, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |IOC| #794
IOC'S ROGGE TO BE KEPT BUSY ON CANADIAN TRIP

International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge, who starts his first trip to Canada on Monday since the IOC awarded the 2010 Winter Games to Vancouver in July 2003, President Rogge will visit Montreal, Vancouver and Whistler, and he's getting a lot of face time with a wide range of dignitaries. There will be no shortage of news coverage, and they've got him working pretty hard during his whirlwind visit.

He'll be doing speeches in all three centres, touring the 2010 venues as well as holding meetings. For instance, he'll be meeting Monday morning in Montreal at 8:30 am ET with the federal minister in charge of sport and the federal governments interests in the 2010 games, Stephen Owen, at the Hotel Le Germain. 2050 rue Mansfield. Three hours later, he'll be meeting with Quebec Premier Jean Charest at the premier's office at 777 Sherbrook Street. Half an hour later, he'll be at the Montreal Le Centre Sheraton Hotel, where the Board of Trade is hosting a luncheon at which he'll speak. That's at 1201 René-Lévesque Blvd West, Montreal. He then makes the five-hour flight to Vancouver, where he'll arrive at 8:30 PM Pacific Time.

At 9:45 the next morning, Tuesday, he meets with B.C. premier Gordon Campbell at the premier's Vancouver office, which is at Canada Place. By shortly after 11, he'll be meeting with mayor Larry Campbell at Vancouver City Hall. President Rogge then makes his way to the Vancouver Board of Trade luncheon at the Hyatt Regency's ballroom at 655 Burrard St. for another speech. By 2 pm, he'll be meeting with René Fasel, the chairman of the IOC Coordination Commission for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, at the Hyatt.

He starts his tour of the 2010 venues on Wednesday, arriving about 11:15 am in Whistler for a meeting with Whistler Mayor Hugh O'Reilly at the Municipal Hall at 4325 Blackcomb Way and half an hour later, he'll be at a lunch sponsored by VANOC and the Whistler Chamber of Commerce at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler, 4599 Chateau Bvld., where he'll give yet another speech. At the end, there'll be a news conference with the Squamish and Lil'wat aboriginal bands, who are working with VANOC for the Whistler portion of the 2010 Games. Once that's done, probably around 2:45 pm, he'll walking around Whistler Village, then head back for Vancouver, where he'll meeting at Richmond City Hall with the municipality's mayor, Malcolm Brodie. 6911 No. 3 Road.

By the way, Mosi Alvand, the owner of a Vancouver pizza shop, Olympica, who has so far refused to remove the Olympic Rings and Torch from his signage because, as he puts it "It's just not fair!", hopes the media will put him together with Rogge either before or after the Vancouver Board of Trade speech so he can plead his case to have VANOC back off its demands. The name doesn't bother VANOC, just the symbols, which Alvand says he's been using in his signage for 15 years, and that people should have told him before this that he couldn't use them, an argument that never carries much weight in a legal court, but resonates publicly.

Alvand has until Monday to take the sign down or face court action. He also rebuffed yet another attempt last week by VANOC for him to come to VANOC's headquarters, a few blocks away, and resolve the matter, because he couldn't bring his lawyer, who was in Victoria, to the meeting at the time VANOC suggested.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 28, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #793
VANOC SKI JUMPS LIKELY TO BE MADE OF WOOD IF TEMPORARY; WHISTLER ATHLETE'S VILLAGE HAS SOME ENERGY OPTIONS; NHL ASKED TO PAUSE FOR COUPLE OF WEEKS DURING 2010 GAMES

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

You'll recall we've been writing for some time now that the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) is working toward the decision to make its ski jumps in the Callaghan Valley temporary instead of permanent, because business models show it couldn't receive enough economic support when it was turned over for commercial operations after the 2010 Games. VANOC designers are working on building the facility mostly from wood -- permanent jumps would be building using steel and concrete. The decision on construction materials makes a difference to whether and how those materials are recycled after the Olympics. VANOC people haven't yet started on a detailed costing for a temporary facility.
Keen Engineering consultant Jennifer Sanguinetti has reported to Whistler municipality that she and her co-workers have considered a number of energy sources to heat the Whistler 2010 Athlete's village, which will later become Whistler employee housing, but that methane from the nearby garbage dump, which is to be closed and which has been suggested by others as the primary heating material, would only provide about a third of the energy required, although it would reduce the emission of the greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. The gasification process suggested is that sold by Enerkem of Quebec. She estimates that the landfill would only provide sufficient methane for somewhere between 10 and 20 years. Other sources listed in her report include ground-source heating, a gasification plant using municipal solid waste possibly in combination with biological waste, which would all have to be used in combination, and even then the sources would only create enough power to just make peak demand for the 30,000 square-metre facility, so it's likely the complex would also need to be hooked into the provincial power grid. The report was provided to Whistler municipal council for research purposes; a power-source decision hasn't yet been made. Whistler is examining the various alternative heating possibilities because one of the main thrusts of the 2010 Winter Games is environmental sustainability.
Assuming (a) the National Hockey League lockout has ended by 2010, and (b) it's in the contract, the NHL Player's Association would like the NHL to suspend its operations for at least two weeks during the 2010 Winter Olympics so an NHL hockey team can end up on the ice representing at least Canada and the U.S. The league shut down during the 1998 and 2002 seasons for that reason. The possibility is among the bargaining ideas for a new contract to settle the lockout.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 28, 2005

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #792
PART 2 OF THE SERIES "60,000 MILESTONES" - AN INSIDE LOOK AT THE FUNCTION STRUCTURE OF THE 2010 GAMES

This is part 2 of a detailed look inside the planning process of the 2010 Winter Olympics. The series will provide an overview of the planning process as well as outline the distinct life-cycle of the 2010 Games in Vancouver. It's based on comments by Marti Kulich, the director of Project Management for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC).

VANOC's project-management department manages the benchmarks of most of what the organization will do over the years from now throughout the lead-up to the Games, during the Games themselves, until it begins to decommission the Games in the latter part 2010, and as it either turns over or returns the venues to those organizations that will be responsible for them after VANOC winds up. "The current master plan has about 60,000 milestones during the course [before, during and after] the Games," he says. "We look at the plan, the actuals, and the corrective action that needs to be taken if there's a deviation, and we report that back to senior management."

In this part of our series, Kulich maps out how VANOC's functions determine how it works.

The project manager says that besides the major drivers of the Games flagged in part 1 of our report, he also notes that governments at all levels are deeply involved with VANOC in affecting how the Games take place. These include the federal government, the provincial government and the civic governments of Vancouver, Richmond and Whistler, as well as the two regional governments. Their requirements and standards, he says, will also play a significant role in the development of the Games, and an example is their current focus on the environmental review now nearing completion, which is also expressed by the design specifics that will come to bear on VANOC's first major venue, the Whistler Nordic Centre, when that aspect of the project begins construction late this spring.

Kulich points out that while VANOC is required to have specific venues for the various sports, and Athens built 21 of the 29 venues it required for its much-larger Summer Olympics, "We have the luxury of having all but four areas completely done, although we will do some improvements to the rest. We're going to do some enhancements to the Coliseum [in eastern Vancouver], for example, and upgrade it to international figure-skating standards and short-track speed-skating. We're also building some things. Richmond is building one, the long-track speed-skating oval, we'll be building hockey rinks at [the University of British Columbia], and at the Callaghan Valley, near Whistler, which is the major cross-country, biathlon and ski-jumping facility, and the Whistler Sliding Centre, which is where all the really fast sports go, such as skeleton, bobsleigh and luge.

Kulich, whose background over the years has focused on ceremonial planning for a wide range of other events, has been working on the overall project plan for the 2010 Games for the past year or so. He says VANOC's master plan is in specific stages and that there is a full life cycle to the Games that encompasses all of the stages and all of the functions. VANOC has identified -- so far -- 64 functions, such as transportation or security, that range from small to large, and, he says, most of them are defined by the International Olympic Committee's requirements.

"We're doing, and going to be doing, certain things at the same time in all the different parts and pieces of our organization," he says. "We have to set goals now, so that we can be sure that everybody's following the same path, and so that there's cross-pollination between all the operating functions of VANOC. We call them functions, because it's an IOC term. It's like a department. Those functions all have to be able to talk to each other. And, quite frankly, what happens in the early days is that those functions plan in 'silos', and it's our job to ensure that besides planning vertically, people in the organization are also planning horizontally. Part of the strategy for us is clarity, particularly at the stage we're now in; it's clarity of roles, structure, responsibility and communication. Those are the things, right now, that will determine our success in the future and we're ahead, right now, in terms of what has happened with other Games in the past. We're working hard right now to set up a clear structure, with clear guidelines, roles and responsibilities that, down the road, will be executed as we go."

From Kulich's point of view, clarity now will help prevent, or at least reduce, disfunction later on, as VANOC's review of previous Olympic Games has revealed. "In other Games, for many reasons, they were unable to do that [get clarity] -- sometimes it was the governments that didn't want to participate, sometimes it was the organizing committee itself that was unclear about what it wanted to do, and so they went through several iterations of the management structure." Kulich says VANOC is particularly fortunate because all of the governments involved with the Organizing Commitee, are "very much on side with us."

Kulich says that snow removal provides a good example of why clarity at this stage is required in planning the 2010 Games. "Who's responsible for it? Within the fence line of the venue, we are, although we may subcontract it out. In order for people to come to the venues, in, say, Vancouver, the city is responsible for snow removal, too. Where does the city's responsibility end and ours start? In order for people to get to Whistler from Vancouver, the province is responsible for snow removal, too, to keep the highways clear. And there's the town of Squamish, which is on the way, and it gets involved, and in Whistler, it's the Resort Municipality of Whistler that's responsible. And with the [still-to-be-built] extension of the highway that goes into the Callaghan Valley [to the Whistler Nordic Centre venue], who's responsible? Are we, or the municipality? That's one very simple example of how we need to plan, at this stage, how all this works, and there's gravity to these decisions because somebody pays. We need to be clear about who's paying for what, and who's doing what. And it's better to do that now than later."

Kulich says that VANOC has two major things that it delivers: products -- such as venues and other tangibles -- and programs, which, he says, are the bulk of what VANOC does. On the product side, "We focus on the production of those things that we need to do to actually deliver a venue. How will we know that we've succeeded? Because we've guaranteed the delivery of the venues on time." And, on the program side, "We have sport programs, culture programs, communication programs. These are all intangibles; nobody can really define them. So we focus on the requirements from the various parties involved, the operational procedures and the constraints -- such as the things that can prevent us from doing what we want to do. We'll know we've succeeded because we also guaranteed the quality of the event. The quality is important to how the project is managed, because it relates to service levels."

Kulich offers three functions - transportation, the look of the Games and security - to show how each of VANOC's functions has different ways of delivering what it does, or intends to do. Transportation, for example, shows how service levels affect how VANOC does its job, and, because there are service levels in a wide range of VANOC functions, they, in turn, illustrate how these might present various types of opportunities for business.

"We have a series of transportation levels in the Games structure -- T1, T2 and T3 -- that the Games 'family' is entitled to," he says. "T1 people are those in the teams, they get primary service. T2 people have access to motor pools, which will be stationed in various places. T3 gets to ride the bus. Determining who is at each one of those levels is key because it relates to the population size within that level. If you have 50 T1s, that makes VANOC's life easy. If there are 500 T1s, that's a different equation, so we look at what drives the particular framework."

Kulich also notes that VANOC also has a Look Program, which involves every aspect of what people see that identifies the Games -- such things as a wide range of graphics and so-called super-graphics -- such as building banners, fence wrap, logos and signs -- what colours will be used, what the designs and icons for every sport will look like. "It's one program that goes all the way through what we do. But it's not really defined [by others]. It's up to VANOC to decide exactly what that program is and how it's going to be applied. The intangible part is left up to us, but it becomes tangible as we move along, because we will provide the graphics manual for the Games, with the colour scheme and the logos, and we will decide how we will produce the look, then we'll contract lots of it out."

The project manager says that some of VANOC's 64 functions also require varying degrees of VANOC involvement. The security function, for example, is almost solely provided by the Vancouver City Police within the city and the RCMP for Richmond and Whistler, and they provide liaisons to VANOC staff and management. Although it's done through liaison work, security affects a lot of what happens in many parts of VANOC's operations. "Right now we're dealing with them on a whole host of things, such as security for the venues -- where does the fence line have to be, what about the 'blast radius, so that we are covered in the event of a mishap. We're also dealing with where people will be required to park, or where we put the 'venue bag', which is the security that everybody's required to go through -- such as the device like they have at airports that people walk through. We're dealing with questions such as how we accommodate crowds of people who are going to go through it and, what the distance will have to be for it from the venue."

Although most functions are driven by the IOC, Kulich says some are unique to VANOC, such as aboriginal participation and inclusivity, and these will have their own sets of deliverables.

Next, in part 3 of our feature on VANOC's project management, Kulich talks about how the 64 functions are apportioned within the organization, and how time affects both the activity within the functions and the delivery of the products and programs by those functions.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 27, 2005

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #791
A FEATURE SERIES: PART 1 OF "60,000 MILESTONES" - AN INSIDE LOOK AT THE DRIVERS OF THE 2010 GAMES

Marti Kulich, the director of Project Management for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), says there are more than 60,000 milestones that have so far been identified by the organization as it completes its major planning process and switches to the construction of the 2010 Games.

This is part 1 of a detailed report of a look inside the planning process of the 2010 Winter Olympics, and, during it Kulich will be offering an overview of the planning process and life-cycle of the 2010 Games in Vancouver, starting with a look of how VANOC is structured and operates; this part of the series deals with the major drivers of the Games, which Kulich says is key to understanding why VANOC does what it does, and, more importantly, what it will be doing over the next few years.

"The Organizing Committee goes through very specific phases of its development," Kulich says. "If you know those phases, at least what I can tell you at this point, then you will know when opportunities will arise."

Kulich says it's important to see who the drivers of the Games-development process are. He notes that when Canada last hosted the Games, in Calgary in 1988, the Paralympics, which in 2010 will begin on March 12, two weeks after the end of the main Olympics, were not part of the process as they are now and, except for some specifics aspects, the Paralympic Games organization is being done essentially at the same time and encompasses much of the same process as the Winter Olympics.

The drivers of the 2010 Games start with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Lausanne, Switzerland, and its equivalent, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), which is based in Germany. The 2010 Games, he says, "are enshrined in the Host City contract, and for which we're beholden to the IOC and the IPC. That contract we signed the moment after we won. The first thing I had to do after the announcement was to round up the key players [such as the head of the Bid Corporation, John Furlong, B.C. premier Gordon Campbell and Vancouver mayor Larry Campbell] in Prague, and get them over to a table so they could sign the Contract. Basically, it was signed unread, which is interesting." A cheque, for US$1 Million, according to the agreement, also had to be turned over to the IOC within a week of signing the Games. "In the Host City contract are general aspects, such as how we're going to market and operate the Games," says Kulich. And the IOC and the IPC have, in many countries around the world, national equivalents, such as the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC), based in Toronto.

"The next major driver of the 2010 Games are the IFs, the international sports federations. The Games are actually put on by a series of international sports federations which actually control the activities. The best way to think of this is a sports festival. All these different federations, for example FIS, the Federation Internationale du Ski, which is skiing and snowboarding, the ISU, the International Skating Union, the Hockey Federation -- every single sport in the Games has a federation. All these federations determine a whole host of things, which are important: the rules of play, the field of play, how teams are eligible -- everything to do with operating their sport. And they create requirements for us to satisfy about how that sport is going to be conducted here, and how it's going to be operated: the venue requirements, what the athletes need, in skating, for instance, how the 'kiss and cry' area really works, what we are supposed to provide for them in terms of props, when we can put lighting on the athletes, when we are forbidden to do that. All of those things are spelled out in advance by those federations. And it's an on-going process, because the federations change the rules and other aspects on an on-going basis. Skating, for instance, is going through some of that right now."

The federations also have organizations that represent them in countries around the world, such as Skate Canada or Alpine Canada.

A third major driver is the athletes themselves, and people who are called "the Olympic family." The athletes represent their countries, and the "family" are all the support personnel who are required to deliver the athletes to the Games. "Each team has a whole host of support personnel that marshall and train the team members: their chefs, their management, their doctors, their physiotherapists." The Olympic Family also includes all the members of the national and international sports federations, the IOC, IPC, COC and VANOC, the representatives of all the sponsors of the Games.

Another major driver are the group that broadcast and report on the Games. "We are looking at numbers in the thousands in that category. In fact, they completely overwhelm the number of athletes at the Games."

An aside: Kulich says that if all the TV coverage from all the programming from around the world that occurred during the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City were played on one screen, without repeating a frame, and it was done non-stop, 24 hours a day, it would take 474 days to complete it. "That's a mighty machine and it needs to be fed. It has to be fed not only with the Games, but they also go into the community for stories. The wander through stores, they talk about the culture, they talk about food, about all the things that are going on around the Olympics. And, frankly, that's one of the key reasons you want to do the Olympics. It's marketing like you've never seen before."

The spectators in the communities, he notes, are also a key part of the drivers of the 2010 Games. "We have to service them; we have to provide for their needs. That includes everything from the moment they're ticketed, through the transportation process, the venue process, anything to do with food on site, all the souvenirs, and we want to make it a quality experience for them."

Another major driver are the sponsors, such as the C$200 million dollar Bell Canada agreement in the telecommunications category. "That was a record-setting deal for the Winter Olympics overall. The sponsors are key to what we do in the Games generally, and, these days, you can't hold Games without them. The sponsors do a lot of things for us, and we are obligated, and quite rightly so, to use their products. There are 10 TOP sponsors that come to the Games" -- these are sponsors that have the right to market the IOC's Games internationally, and they negotiate their arrangements directly with the IOC -- "Coca-Cola, for example, is one of them. It's a world-wide, multi-term, multi-Games sponsorship deal. Coke has certain properties that they deal with. Coke sponsors the Torch Relay, for example. as part of that and they are entitled to a number of other things. So, as we work with the sponsors, we also have to incorporate them into all our planning and, in fact, all of our operations."

Kulich notes that the Olympic Games are based on what he calls "three pillars": sport, culture and, as of 1994 in Lillehammer's Games, the environment. "Now, what we have done, and this has been happening slowly, but it has really been pushed by the Vancouver bid and now VANOC, is the concept of sustainability, not just the environment. It includes the environment, but it's also social and economic sustainability, so we have no plans to build white elephants. We are going to do everything in our power that, environmentally, for example, we can do with technology." Kulick gives as an example, the decision to put the grass surface on the roof of the new Trade & Convention Centre, which will be used as the Games' International Broadcast and Reporting Centre. "That's being done to help the environment. But there are other aspects of sustainability. We are asking ourselves, 'How can we be inclusive of the broadest spectrum of our society? What about the people who are living in the downtown east side of Vancouver, who cannot afford to attend some of our events, but can afford to go to some. How can we bring schoolchildren into this? How can we make this sustainable as a whole in our community? It's interesting; Whistler tends to move toward environmental sustainability, while Vancouver tends to be more inclusive and focus on social sustainability and, provincially, the government tends toward more economic sustainability, because it doesn't want to be stuck with a tax burden from the Games."

Kulich says there are also large cultural programs that drive the development of the 2010 Games, which tie in with the communications and marketing programs. "Unlike the sports side, where the federations tell you exactly how it's going to be, when you get into the cultural side, we have no such grounds. With culture, we, for both the Olympics and the Paralympics, we have the four Opening and Closing Ceremonies, we have Medal and Welcome Ceremonies, we have the Torch Relay programs. Back in 1988, we had the most powerful youth tie-in this country had ever seen during the Ceremonies; it was an amazing, dynamic event, and that's the kind of extensive power the Olympics has. And we have the Cultural Festival. We run the Cultural Festival that starts with our part of the Closing Ceremonies [a year from now] in the Torino Winter Olympic Games. Our Olympiad is a four-year period. It starts the moment we accept the Olympics flag of the previous Games, which is, for us, in 2006. And it ends when we hand that flag to the next host city, which has yet to be determined. The Olympiad cultural festival programs slowly build until what is called the Olympics Arts Festival, which is a massive cultural festival that takes place two weeks prior to the Games and, significantly during the Olympic and Paralympic Games."

Next in the series: Kulich looks at the 2010 venues.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 26, 2005

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #790
BC HIRES EX-EMPLOYEE TO HELP SETTLE 2010 LAND-USE ISSUES WITH SQUAMISH ABORIGINAL BAND

The provincial government's Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management says it intends to spend C$80,000 over the next year with a consultant who used to be a ministry employee to help it work on negotiations with the Squamish aboriginal band on 2010-related land-use planning, among other things.

Peter Jones, the regional manager for the ministry's South Coast division, indicates the project to "Lead and complete negotiations, consultations and discussions with First Nations in the Squamish Forest District on the Sea-to-Sky Land and Resource Management Plan and related resource management matters" will be going to Cordillera Environmental Services, and won't be offered for bid. The contract is to start January 28. The ministry isn't calling for tenders because of "the confidential nature of matters related to the contracted services; and he specialized knowledge and qualifications required."

The Sea-to-Sky highway is the local name for the portion of Highway 99 that connects Vancouver with Whistler, and the Squamish band is claiming large portions of the land, and has not yet agreed on a treaty with the federal and provincial governments. Squamish band chief Gibby Jacob is one of the 20 directors on the Board of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee.

The consultant who runs the firm, Kevin Kriese was, until last spring, the Skeena regional director of the ministry and was based in Smithers, a town in northwestern British Columbia. After he left the ministry, he became the vice-president and executive director of the Bulkley Valley Centre for Natural Resources Research and Management, which is also based in Smithers. Kriese has a BSF from the University of British Columbia, a Masters of Natural Resource Management from Simon Fraser University, and a Certificate in Conflict Resolution from the Justice Institute of BC, and he's also a member of the Association of BC Forest Professionals.

For the past 10 years Kriese worked on resolving strategic conflicts surrounding forest management. This has included work on Land and Resource Management Plans, First Nations negotiations and organizational leadership. According to background documentation on him, "The underlying principle behind this work is to empower people, teams, and communities to solve conflicts using collaborative processes."

RESOURCES
Details of the Sea-to-Sky Land and Resource Management Plan
http://srmwww.gov.bc.ca/cr/resource_mgmt/lrmp/s2s/s2soverview.htm

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 25, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #789
IOC'S ROGGE TO SPEAK TO VANCOUVER BOARD OF TRADE; COC LOOKS FOR SCHOLARSHIP CANDIDATES; GOLF, BUMPED BY 2010, LANDS BESIDE LAKE MICHIGAN

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

The president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, will be speaking to the Vancouver Board of Trade during his visit to the city from January 31 to February 3. The Board of Trade event is a luncheon at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, 655 Burrard, from 11:30 AM to 2 PM. Details and registration are at http://www.BoardofTrade.com. It's Rogge's first time to the city since it won the 2010 Winter Games bid, so he'll be meeting management of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) and they'll be squiring him around the venues.
The Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) has begun accepting applications for the 2005 Carol Anne Letheren Leadership and Sport Scholarship. It's worth C$1,500 per year for three years at a Canadian university, and is awarded to one outstanding female high school graduate. The award, named after a former Chief Executive Officer of the COC who died in 2001. To be eligible, the woman must be in a private or public school in their graduating year and applying to a Canadian University or college for a courses involving the fields of business, sport management, marketing or physical education. She also has to demonstrate "qualities and personal values that personify the Olympic values of excellence, leadership, respect, human development, fun, fairness and peace"; have an "outstanding academic performance with a minimum grade average of 85% or above in their final year of high school"; and provide an "accomplished performance as an athlete in high school, community or provincial level competitive sport"; and be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident. Applications must be in by March 30. The application process is at:
http://www.olympic.ca/EN/funding/letheren_award.shtml.
Whistling Straits, the golf course beside Lake Michigan that hosted the PGA Championship last year, will get golf's fourth major contest in 2010 and 2015, along with the Ryder Cup in 2020. The 2010 PGA Championship was scheduled for Sahalee Country Club outside Seattle, but PGA officials said last week they would reschedule it because of the effects of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, a rationale that seems to have puzzled just about everyone. The 2010 Games are held in February and March that year; the PGA contest is in August.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 25, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #788
CONTRACTORS' INFO MEETING ON C$125 MILLION OF 2010 VENUE CONSTRUCTION SET FOR MONDAY

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) is arranging an information meeting in Vancouver next Monday for qualified contractors who want to take part in the developing the Whistler Sliding Centre and the Whistler Nordic Centre, about C$125 million worth of construction for two 2010 venues going into the Callaghan Valley, southwest of Whistler and Blackcomb Mountain.

The WNC will be the site of the cross-country skiing, biathlon, ski jumping and nordic combined events during the 2010 Winter Games. The smaller WSC, located at the base of Blackcomb Mountain in Whistler, will be the site of the bobsleigh, luge and skeleton events at the 2010 Winter Games.

Construction of the WNC and the WSC has been scheduled to start this spring and early summer, and be completed by October or November, 2007. Individual contracts, according to 2010 planners, will be generally in the C$5 million to C$30 million range. The first phase of the work to be awarded this spring will be for site clearing, preparation and servicing. Other work, to be subsequently awarded, will include construction of roads, bridges, trails, at least two major ski jumps, the bobsleigh/luge track, water treatment and wastewater plants, and a number of buildings.

VANOC is planning to issue a formal Request for Expressions of Interest and Statement of Qualifications next month to pre-qualify construction contractors that have the experience and financial capability to deal with the projects is has in ind. The Request for Expressions of Interest and Statement of Qualifications will be posted on BC Bid, the provincial government's electronic bid information distribution system.

BACKGROUND

The three-hour information meeting will be held at the Vancouver Marriott Pinnacle hotel, 1128 West Hastings Street on Monday, January 31, starting at 1 PM.

RESOURCES
VANOC is asking contractors to let it know by Thursday at 9 AM if you'll be attend the meeting. Contact info:
The e-mail address is:
;
The phone number is: 604.696.1136.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 25, 2005

Monday, January 24, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #787
"BUSINESS AS USUAL" BOARD MEETING GETS QUITE A BIT DONE, EVEN WHEN NOBODY TALKS ABOUT IT

Not all the snow that one encounters around projects of Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) is located on the mountain sides.

For example, here is an interview we conducted with VANOC chair Jack Poole shortly after the end of the January Board of Directors meeting. We asked what he considered were the most important decisions the Board made that day. His response: "It was more a session of approving work plans, giving management the authority to spend additional dollars to keep moving things forward. The Board of Directors has got management on a fairly short leash, in terms of authorizations; anything over C$100,000 requires Board approval. It was a good day, but nothing out of the ordinary, just business as usual."

What we discovered later happened at the meeting we were asking about: The Board, as we noted would likely happen in articles last fall, approved a recommendation by the International Skiing Federation that the slalom and giant slalom alpine races be moved from Blackcomb Mountain, where they were listed during the bid stage to be located, to Whistler Mountain for technical, cost and efficiency reasons. Among other things, the speed events and the technical events will now be in the same location.

We asked Poole about the status of the master marketing agreement between VANOC and the International Olympic Committee, which we expected would, at this meeting would like be approved. His reply: "Well, its very close to being settled. Perhaps within days; worst-case, weeks. There are no controversial points we're aware of to negotiate." VANOC CEO John Furlong expressed similar sentiments a few moments later in a separate interview.

What we discovered later happened at the Board meeting: The directors finally approved management's latest version of the master marketing agreement, even though it still has to be approved by the IOC, giving VANOC management enough wiggle room to tweak the agreement if required by the IOC. As well, the IOC has agreed, as it did with the telecommunications sponsorship category, to free up some of the sponsorship categories so VANOC can finalize deals on them. Expressions of interest have been sought for the past four months, with the Financial Services and Automotive categories believed to be the front runners at the moment. (Other major categories which could have been released involve airlines, liquor and fuel.)

The Board meeting, apparently still under Poole's "business as usual" category, also approved the decision, finally, to hire Donna Wilson, the veteran human resources director of Vancouver City Savings Credit Union, the second largest credit union in the world VanCity, as the senior vice-president of Human Resources, to replace Jeff Chan, who suddenly resigned November 23, exactly six months after he was hired. His job was covered by his second-in-command, Rene Murdoch during the interim. In part because of Wilson and her policies, VanCity has regularly appeared in lists of the best place to work. She has begun work at VANOC's headquarters.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 24, 2005

Friday, January 21, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #786
BELL, VANOC TOOK FOUR MONTHS TO NEGOTIATE DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE DEAL; FURLONG GETS "A++" RATING; POOLE UNFAZED BY ABORIGINAL WORRIES

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

The decision by Bell Canada, as part of its sponsorship agreement with the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), to put C$2 million into The Vancouver Agreement for its use in a plan to "revitalize" Vancouver's downtown east side, came about as the result of negotiations over the last four months. Stephen Wetmore, the Group President of National Markets for Bell Canada, says, "The downtown east side is the first community to benefit from Bell's partnership with VANOC. Supporting the downtown east side makes sense for Bell. Our community-investment strategy is founded on being connected to communities. I think it's safe to say that most businesses today understand the need to support communities. One of the best ways we can do that is to support local economic development. We're hoping other companies will join us in supporting the downtown east side. It takes money to get the ball rolling, and it takes collaboration to sustain it." Some reaction to the decision: From VANOC Board Chair Jack Poole: "We signed the contract with the International Olympic Committee, and it's up to us to live up to it." Poole says the spending of the funds will be up to the Board of The Vancouver Agreement, "We'll have a role in that." From the federal government's minister in charge of Sport and Ottawa's interests in the 2010 Winter Games, Stephen Owen: "It helps VANOC meet the social-inclusion objectives of the bid by the Organizing Committee, and to start showing, in real terms and in real dollars and in real plans, our determination to make the 2010 Games an extraordinary event ever." From the City's deputy Mayor, Anne Roberts, "Strong partnerships between governments and the private sector will help build sustainable communities, and to achieve that we have to work with existing businesses as well as find ways to attract new businesses, and to work with those businesses and the residents, so they can all benefit from increased economic activities and job opportunities." When the decision was announced, it was a who's who in the audience: VANOC Board member and Vancouver City manager Judi Rogers, a Vancouver city counsellor whose name is synonymous with the downtown east side over the last 20 years, Jim Greene, and VANOC board chair Jack Poole, CEO John Furlong, senior vice-president of Sports, Cathy Priestner, and the provincial government's minister who has interests in the social spending that occurs in the area, Murray Coell, just to name a few of the roughly 50 executives. Furlong gets the last word on this, "One of the things we asked of Bell during our negotiations with them was to embrace the projects that mean a lot to VANOC, and this means a lot to us because we've made promises to keep everybody involved in the Games, and make them fully inclusive. We have to step up fairly early on to really demonstrate that you're serious about what you say. It'll say a lot about us if we can trigger this sort of activity over the coming years. This is our first significant contribution to anything."
Board chair Jack Poole says the first year's review of the performance of VANOC CEO John Furlong is just about finished and, "I would say the result will be A-double plus. We're in very good hands. We were so fortunate to have a man of John's business ability, integrity and so knowledgeable about sports. You don't often get that all in one package, and we've got it all with him." Poole says that he expects the Board to fully approve Furlong for his second year, which starts in February.
Poole also says he's quite comfortable with the process that VANOC has in place to deal with aboriginal concerns, expressed during the environmental review of the proposed Whistler Sliding Centre in the Callaghan Valley. "The First Nations partners [of VANOC] are fully involved every step of the way," he says, conceding, "There are issues, they're being managed and addressed." The tone of the complaints by the Lil'Wat and Squamish bands, who are claiming the land on which 2010 venues are being built, is that VANOC is talking a good deal, but not actually accomplishing a resolution of aboriginal concerns. "I think [Squamish] Chief Gibby, a 2010 Board director, is as comfortable as we are that there is an honest process in place, and we're not just paying lip-service, that they're actually involved."

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 21, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #785
MAKING SKI JUMPS PERMANENT NOT A WISE BUSINESS DECISION, ACCORDING TO SVP OF SPORTS

The chairman of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Organizing Committee's Board of Directors, Jack Poole says the decision about whether to continue with the decision to make VANOC's two ski-jumps temporary or, as the national sports federations are urging, to make them permanent, "is very much under review now."

And, he adds, "It's all going to be a question of sustainability, and whether there will be the need and the utilization of that, post-Games. I think we're moving toward it being a temporary facility for the Games, rather than permanent, but that decision hasn't been finalized. That's the direction it appears to be going, but we want to wait and see what the final outcome is in Calgary, and it's close to being settled there."

That's not going to make the Canadian Ski and Snowboarding Association, which represents 77,000 participants in nine types of winter sport, nor Ken Read, president of Alpine Canada, or other national snow sports organizations happy. CSSA managing director, David Pym, says the Calgary Olympic Development Agency's decision to end its financial support for ski jumping and shut down the Calgary Olympic's seven ski jumps at the end of this season, will kill any change for Canadians to compete in ski-jumping, "The current VANOC plans for the Ski Jumps to be built, which will cost many millions to construct do not make any provision at all for athlete development, no provision for the important summer training and will not be available to Canadian developing athletes and will likely be dismantled after the 2010 games leaving no legacy. With the withdrawal of CODA and the shut down of the Calgary Ski Jumps this sport will have received a death sentence." The CSSA is the umbrella organization representing the nine snow sports federations in Canada: Alpine Canada, Cross Country Canada, Canadian Snowboard Federation, Canadian Freestyle Association, Speed Skiing Canada, Ski Jumping Canada, Nordic Combined
Canada, Canadian Association of Disabled Skiiers and Telemark Canada.

As Read tells Morgan:News:2010, "As a sister discipline of ski jumping and nordic combined, we have endorsed the CSSA position of supporting both disciplines. We understand that both sports are in final development of a business plan and will be meeting shortly with the funding partners - VANOC, the COC, Sport Canada and CODA. It is our belief that the Canadian public wants to see Canadian athletes be
successful in 2010 and support all sports that are on the 2010 calendar, to provide Canadian athletes and their sport organizations the opportunity to perform their best, and to build a sustainable sport system to ensure continued Canadian sporting excellence in 2010 and into the future."

VANOC's senior vice-president of Sport, Cathy Priestner, says that before CODA made its decision, she asked the CSSA and others how the Whistler ski jumps could be sustained if it was made permanent. "Not one organization was able to come forward and say, 'Yes, we can support this, we have a plan, we can make it work'. In light of that, we made the decision we would only address the Games requirement, and that's the status right now."

Priestner says it would simply not be a smart business decision to have a legacy portion to the venue. "Whether CODA is there -- or not -- is really not all that relevant. When you look at the community, the location, the population that you'd be drawing on, and then the lack of resources that goes toward those sports, the decision is obvious. VANOC and the Legacy Trust [which will run the portions of the venues that will continue in operation after the 2010 Games with a C$110 million endowment from VANOC] does not have the resources for that. The funds are intended to go toward the operation of the facilities. If you operate them, but don't have programs for them, it's not a smart decision. It's not VANOC's responsibility to support the development of sport; we've take the position to encourage the high-performance initiatives in sport, but certainly we can't be everything to everyone."

Priestner agrees, however, that VANOC is getting a lot of pressure to make the facilities permanent. "Remember that we made the decision to make the facilities temporary, believing that CODA was staying in the ski-jump business. CODA making their decision after ours is not overly relevant. We made our decision based on the facility and what we knew after going to the sport and asking how they could support it. Whether CODA's there or not is not going to impact the long-term availability of the facility in the Callaghan."

Priestner says the design of the WSC is nearly finished, "it's looking good", and, although the project is still about six months behind VANOC's internal planning, that it's "pretty much on schedule."

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 21, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #784
MASTER MARKETING AGREEMENT TO BE SIGNED "WITHIN DAYS" BUT FUNDAMENTAL DECISIONS STILL TO BE MADE

The Chairman of the Board of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), Jack Poole, following the January Board meeting, says the master marketing agreement between VANOC and the International Olympic Committee is still not completed, despite the decision by VANOC CEO John Furlong and his senior vice-president of Marketing, Dave Cobb, to travel to Lusanne, Switzerland to negotiate it.

"It's very close to getting settled," says Poole, "Perhaps within days, and worst-case, weeks. There are no controversial points that we're aware of." Poole dismissed concerns that under VANOC's planning, the deal was supposed to have been done by last October. "It's an important deal to negotiate, and the IOC think we're moving with lightning speed, so we're, by nature, impatient and our schedule was quite ambitious. For example, the IOC released the telecommunications category so we could do the deal with Bell Canada -- there's very much a sense of partnership with us, and the IOC did not want to stand in the way of business getting done. On the other hand, it's a document that we'll have to live with through 2010, so nothing was taken for granted, and that's why it's taken a while." Poole says that despite the fact the start of the eight-year marketing period for VANOC, January 1, has passed, companies should not read into the delay that things have been on hold. "There's been some important work going on in the meantime in anticipation of the agreement being signed; we haven't been sitting on our hands. I think as the weeks and months unfold, you'll see some results."

Furlong agrees, "There are no sticking points, so my feeling is that the agreement will be signed within a very brief period of time. Days. We're pretty well there. Most of it's our own ambition. We're still doing it in record time, as far as we're concerned. Typically, what happens is these negotiations often start late and end late. We will have a marketing agreement to support eight years of marketing activity for VANOC, so it's a great situation. In the past, Organizing Committees have struggled to get this done, and it's taken them months, and months, and months. Well, every month you take off the agreement with the sponsors is less money for that sponsor to get a return on their investment, and it's less opportunity for us to achieve more revenues. There's a lot of complexity to this agreement, there's a lot to understand, and there are a lot of moving pieces. There are TOP sponsors [those who deal with the IOC], there are some that may be here and may not be here, and there are all sorts of little things. All of that is pretty much behind us, and we're just waiting to do revised editions of where we're at. But we're there; there's nothing standing in the way of signatures now."

Furlong says VANOC has had "well over a hundred meetings" -- and he's been involved, he says, in about half of them -- "with potential sponsors in Canada the last four months. We're working extremely hard to attract Canadian companies to the Games, and it's going well. It's hard, hard work because, in order to be effective at this, the vast majority of the work in the early stages takes place in Eastern Canada."

Despite Furlong's comments that the master marketing agreement is essentially a done deal, he says there are still some fundamental questions about how the process of bidding on sponsorships will take place. "Category by category, we're not sure how each one will go. Market conditions could drive some of it, and we have to make application to the IOC as we go along, after the agreements are signed, to have sponsorship categories released. As each one is released, we'll look at the marketplace and decide what's the protocol, what's the process, what's going to work best for us, because, ultimately, our job is to get the best deal we can. So we might use entirely different protocols for different categories. We just don't know yet. But what we will try to do is use the best business protocol for us."

Not only that, but Furlong says that even the order of category will be flexible. For instance, the Financial Services sponsorship, in which it is known that at least the Royal Bank and the CIBC bank will be making approaches, will not necessarily be resolved next. "And even if categories were released together, or in a sequence, like 1-2-3, they could reverse the order in negotiations. Some of them could be quite a bit more technical, some of them could be fairly straightforward, and some will overtake others, depending on how long it takes to get an agreement. So it will depend on each one. In some cases, sponsorship agreements are often weighted very heavily on Value In Kind. That sometimes takes a long time to work out. If it's just straight cash, well, sometimes that's a little easier to get to. So there won't be any sort of consistent protocol."

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 21, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #783
BELL TO MAKE "EXTRAORDINARY" CONTRIBUTION TO 2010 "OWN THE PODIUM" PROGRAM

The CEO of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), John Furlong, says that under the "Own The Podium" program, in which he committed VANOC to raise C$55 million through sponsorship funding, Bell Canada will be making a significant contribution to program, but he declined to provide the amount. As well, he says, he expects that companies doing business with VANOC will continue to the program's support.

"I'm not going to say today what Bell Canada is going to contribute because they will be making their own announcement," he told Morgan:News:2010, adding that Bell Canada's world-record telecommunications sponsorship arrangement, worth $C200 million to VANOC, "includes an extraordinary commitment to this program at a level never seen before in Canada." Furlong says that he has personally participated in more than 50 meetings with potential corporate sponsors of the 2010 Winter Games over the last few months -- and, he noted, there were others in which he was not personally involved but included Dave Cobb, his senior vice-president of Revenue, Marketing and Communications. "In our discussions with corporations who might become sponsors or partners with VANOC, that a perfect partnership with us is to support the staging of a perfect Olympic and Paralympic Games, and to support the preparation of the athletes, and nobody is fighting that. All of the organizations that we talked to are interested in this. They all see the definition of success as we do; great Games and great results. Our view is that most companies that join us, especially at a very high level, will participate in this program and support it, to get the results that we all so badly want."

The "Own The Podium" program, authored by VANOC's senior vice-president for Sport & Venues, Cathy Priestner, calls upon all the organizations involved in the development and support of high-performance sport in Canada to unite under a common vision of funding the things that are needed to recruit, develop and support athletes in the 13 major winter sports so they can place as high as possible in pre-Olympic contests, such as World Cup events, and convert their placements into medal performances during Olympic Games. "We have to bring about 60 athletes into the system if this [program] is going to work. We can do it, and we know they're out there."

In part, that means providing a specific development plan for each sport, and finding the financing for it. The "Own The Podium" report written by Priestner had completed that part of the research and analysis, and now the sports organizations, various government levels and VANOC will sell the program's concepts to companies to pay for it. She adds that while 2010 seems far away, many countries start between eight and 10 years out from a specific Olympics to begin support for it. "The technical implementation needs to start now, and we need to recruit, starting now, and we need to get start getting the performance-enhancement teams in place."

Preistner says there are a number of things that can -- she says "must" -- be done immediately, and they support the concept of continuity for high-performance support between Olympic Games, which, she says, Canada is not good at. "One of the things we found was that 90% of the team leaders going to Olympic Games have no Olympic experience; 70% of the coaches who will be taking Canadian teams to the Torino Olympics next year have not been to an Olympic Games, and yet they are taking three-time Olympian athletes. We've got to do something to help them."

Priestner says that in order to become a number-one contender in winter sports -- Canada was fourth in the 2002 Winter Olympics, and 13th in the Calgary Olympic Games -- all the sports had agree "they wanted to be number one in 2010 and, in doing that, they took some risks [with their own agendas].

This is not a part of the "Own The Podium" program, specifically, but as part of its arrangements in setting up the marketplace for the 2010 Winter Games, VANOC, according to the president of the Canadian Olympic Committee, Chris Rudge, last fall took over the marketing function of the COC for the next eight years, until the master marketing agreement between VANOC and the International Olympic Committee ends with the start of the 2014 Winter Games. Rudge says COC sponsorship arrangements contributed between C$10 million and C$12 million per year to the COC, but, as Rudge puts it, "The COC is out of the marketing business for now." He says that VANOC will, during that time, support the COC, instead of being directly supported by the IOC. As a result, VANOC will take the lead role in the non-governmental fund-raising. Rudge says that the COC's goal now is to provide the support for the sports, but not be intrusive or "intrude on the management of the sports," which is handled by the national sports organizations.

Alpine Canada president Ken Read says some of the funding goals that the "Own The Podium" program hopes to achieve in supporting high-performance athletes win medals in 2010 include collaboration with VANOC by specific sports, and a range of specific purchases by specific national sports organizations, such as his and Cross-Country Canada.

Read says, for instance: "Sport sciences: Alpine and Cross-Country are looking at getting a base grinder, so we can work on the sliding side with our skis; Cross-Country sliding across the flats and Alpine, sliding at speed, using gravity. In safety, crash barriers for the short-track speed-skaters at their facility in Montreal... so they can train optimally. Equipment: for skiers, that's a very important piece, with skate technicians so our athletes can focus on preparing themselves, or in venues, a strategy to give athletes access to build off that home-field advantage, and we'll be working closely with VANOC and our athletes so they are extremely well-prepared for the pre-Olympic competitions before 2010, and also for the Games... in 2010 itself."

A base grinder? "A lot of the Olympic sports are based on sliding on snow. Each of those sports, individually, doesn't have the resources to buy a base grinding machine. But if we work together with our funding partners, we will. And that means that in alpine, cross-country, biathlon, snowboarding and freestyle can have access to something we can use as a research tool to give our athletes an edge, because the Americans and the Austrians have it. Those are the kinds of pieces that give us a step up."

As Read points out, "Canadian winter sports right now is enjoying success... but the goal is to convert that success into results in the [Winter Games in Torino, Italy] in 2006, and in Vancouver in 2010, and that's going to take a lot of work."

Priestner says there was one major question the "Own The Podium" report needed to answer: "How can success on an Olympic Games podium be predicted? There were lots of different challenges and issues that needed to be discussed and achieved. Our history isn't very good. When we've hosted a Games in Canada, we've never won gold, and we don't want to be in that position again. We're forecasting for Vancouver [under the OTP program] 12 gold medals and, hopefully, 35 medals overall. If we don't do anything, we're forecasting we'll have 16 medals overall in 2010, and that's based on what's in the system now and what's happening with the system."

Priestner says she looked at two different criteria for predicting the number of medals Canada could achieve. "We had to first establish who was a potential medalist. In our research, if you had two top-5 placings in World Cups in the season directly before the Games, you were a medal-potential athlete. Two out of three medalists in all countries prove this to be correct. [The second criteria involves] how many of those athletes are converting their success to an Olympic medal. We used a formula that took the number of potential medalists times what we hope historically and in the future will convert into a medals. We took the top nations in the world, the ones that Canada is competing against and the ones that we want to beat. Overall they averaged a 45% success rate. Canada, and in particular, the top formations, were converting at a 27% percent rate. So, one in four of the athletes going to our games are winning medals. When you look at the leading nations -- Norway, the U.S., Germany -- anywhere from 55% to 92% are converting their performances to medals. We saw this as a huge gap in our system, and we had to explore the reason for that. We're among the lowest in the world, and, in fact, many of the smaller nations are converting at a higher rate than Canada."

Priestner says there are two different approaches to correcting the gap. "One is to increase the number of potential medalists that we have. We identified the sports that are in the program that still have an opportunity between now and 2010 to increase their potential medalists. We are a little short in some of the sports, and we may have to bring them in from other sports where they are already high-performance athletes, train them in the sports we're focusing on, and have them ready to go. The second piece was to increase our success rate. There are a number of things we have to do. Our goal is to get to 50%, which is still lower than the lowest of the top nations we're competing against, which is at 55%, but if we get to 50%, we think we can accomplish our goals."

Producing the report involved several technical reviews for each sport, and Priestner's conclusions involved a detailed sport-by-sport plan, but it meant, once the results were in, targeting specific sports for support, and releasing others, such as the decision by the Calgary Olympic Development Agency to drop funding support for ski jumping after this season, even though it's a sport that will take place in 2010. "There's never going to be too much to go around as far as resources are concerned, so we have to target sports, and do the right thing with them." It also focused on Canadian sport culture -- defined by the amount of Canadian participation in the sport -- Olympic success back to 1994 and the potential for 2010 in each sport. "Tier 1 were flat-ice sports. We're a skating nation. We do well at it, we have a lot of history and success with it. And we predict that if you're in a Tier 1 sport, without doing a lot about it, we'll probably achieve medals. Are we going to win gold? No, not unless we implement some of this program. Tier 2, we have a pretty good chance and they met two out of the three criteria. Tier 3 sports are there for an obvious reason: they are facility-based sports. They can only be done in one or two cities in Canada, and it limits the opportunity of our youth and their number."

The VANOC svp also says that the OTP organizations need to build a Canadian identity for winning. "We need to say we want to win, We need to set benchmarks for our athletes and our NSOs [national sports organizations]. We have to know if our athletes are on track to be medallists and, in fact, until recently, we haven't been able to measure that and track it, and give valid information to the NSOs as our athletes are working towards Olympic Games. We also needed a united funding program, and leadership for it, and we needed all of our funding partners to unite behind it, with the same sort of criteria, with the same sort of mission and goals."

Priestner says there is one type of athlete that's not part of the prediction formula, what she calls the dark horse, and that's the other third of athletes that convert their performances to medals. "These are athletes that are coming from the 9th to 18th-place ranking, and really isn't on the radar screens. Canada is the only national in 2002 who did not have a dark-horse performance. With the leading nations, somebody predicted to win a medal couldn't do it, and someone else came along, a dark horse, and won the medal, and we are not doing that in Canada. We have to figure out what we can do with these athletes, who are special. Were they injured and coming back, or do they need a different type of preparation, and they could be responsible for one-third of the medals, possibly, and we've really ignored them so far."

Priestner says her report lists needs and gaps in each of the sports. But, she says, there are some overall themes. A major weakness is in the area of direct athletic support: physiologists, nutritionists, psychologists and the like. "We don't have enough of them. We have one physiologist that every one of the sports named as the physiologist for their team. And I happen to know that he's also working with half a dozen summer sports. We have to put together comprehensive teams to support each of our NSOs and their athletes."

In addition, she says, Canada has too many athletes going to Olympic Games who don't have what they need when they arrive.

She also says that a major gap the "Own the Podium" program identifies is, as she puts it, "having the edge." Priestner says she no athlete or sport she talked to during her research went into the Games have an advantage. This, she defines as "having an edge over other countries. We believe that if we take a pro-active role in research and development, technology and human performance, then we can be ahead of the world." But, she adds, that, perhaps ironically, this is the one area that needs to remain, by definition, secret. "What we're using right now is what Austria or Norway used three years ago. We have to target what we want, then we have to go after it, so we'll have something everyone else wants."

Priestner agrees that home-field advantage is one potential edge for Canada in 2010.

RESOURCES

Summary of the "Own The Podium" program:
http://www.olympic.ca/EN/organization/news/2005/0121_background.shtml

A PDF file of the full "Own the Podium" report:
http://www.olympic.ca/EN/organization/news/2005/files/otp_final.pdf

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 21, 2005

Thursday, January 20, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #782
VANOC TO HELP RAISE "OWN THE PODIUM" FUNDS; PGA MOVES 2010 CHAMPIONSHIP OUT OF PACIFIC NORTHWEST TO AVOID OLYMPICS; IOC SETS KEY DATES FOR 2014 WINTER GAMES

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

When the Canadian Olympic Committee discusses tomorrow its "Own The Podium" program -- which calls for spending C$110 million over five years, an amount that's roughly double what the federal government already gives the 13 winter sports federation in this country -- the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) is expected to confirm it will try to find half the funds for the concept through sponsorship. VANOC CEO John Furlong and one of his senior vice-presidents will be involved in the discussion. The Own the Podium plan was written by VANOC's senior vice-president of Sport & Venues, Cathy Priestner, an Olympic silver medallist for Canada in speed skating, who completed the first major draft just before she was hired by VANOC last summer, and she's still has more work to do in connection with it, following revisions during the past six months. The plan is expected to provide more funding for resources -- travel to international camps and competitions, equipment, sport science and the like. Priestner said she and the COC learned lessons from the 2000 Sydney's Summer Olympics and the 2002 Winter Games at Salt Lake because of the working relationship between the organizing committee, the national Olympic committee and the various sport groups for those Games.
The 2010 PGA golfing championship that was expected to be played in August, 2010, at Sahalee Country Club in Redmond in Washington State, south of Vancouver, will be rescheduled because officials believe the event will clash with Vancouver's 2010 Winter Olympics. PGA of America said on Thursday. Even though the contest would occur well after the 2010 Winter Games finished that March, officials were worried that the impact of one of the world's biggest sporting events would detract from the golfing tournament. Sahalee Country Club president Jack Calabrese says that, "While we are disappointed... we can not overlook the obstacles we would face with the Winter Olympic Games being conducted on our doorstep in the same year. We look forward to working with the PGA of America to bring a major championship to the Pacific Northwest." The PGA has not yet made a decision where it will stage the 2010 event, but did say it would return the championships to Sahalee someday.
The International Olympic Committee said today that it will open the bidding process in May for the 2014 Winter Games -- the Games that will be a part of the closing ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Games, and whose officials will be observing how the 2010 Games are conducted -- by sending invitations to bid to the National Olympic Committees around the world. The initial short list of candidates will be announced in June 2006, bid books will be due January 10, 2007 and the winner will be announced July 2007 in Guatamala.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 20, 2005

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #781
BELL CANADA SPONSORSHIP WITH VANOC PRODUCES C$2 MILLION FOR VANCOUVER "ECONOMIC REVITALIZATION"

Bell Canada says it will "invest" C$2 million over the next four years to help the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) keep a promise to the International Olympic Committee that it would include Vancouver's inner city in its plans to benefit British Columbia.

The funds will be donated through VANOC to the Vancouver Agreement, a partnership of various governments and NGOs, to support the VA's economic revitalization plan for Vancouver's downtown east side, one of the roughest urban areas of Canada, and the funds, a straight cash provision, are part of the telecommunications sponsorship VANOC estimated was worth C$200 million when it confirmed Bell as its telcom provider last October. How the funds will be spent will be determined by the executive of the Vancouver Agreement.

In addition, politicians of all stripes plumped for additional corporate sponsors to become involved in the Vancouver Agreement -- the federal government minister responsible for sport and the 2010 Games, Stephen Owen, the City of Vancouver's current deputy mayor, Anne Roberts, who attended while Mayor Larry Campbell is on economic business in China, and the provincial government's minister of Aboriginal and Women's Services, Murray Coell, whose department is heavily involved in provincial funding in the stricken area. "This unique partnership," suggested Owen, who claimed today's decision was what he termed a magic moment, "will inspire more business to get involved and help make the 2010 Olympic Games the most inclusive Olympics ever held."

Stephen Wetmore, the Group President of National Markets for Bell Canada, says Bell is familiar with the downtown east side, since it already has a number of pilot projects underway there, and says he expects his company's funds to create business and jobs, to "fill the empty storefronts we see as we drive through." The company has provided satellite television receiving services to the Portland Hotel, an apartment-style hotel for the poor, and various other Internet or telephone services for similar organizations in the area.

Ken Lyotier, the executive director of the non-profit self-help organization, United We Can, says that, "as any dumpster-diver will tell you, you have to dig to get anything. We've been digging for the good stuff. This is a demonstration in practice of the spirit of inclusiveness and sustainability that underpins all the planning done through the Vancouver agreement and will become a 'light on the hill' by 2010."

BACKGROUND

Dumpster-diver: a slang term for a person who sifts through dumpsters -- large garbage cans -- for cans, bottles and other cast-offs that may be worth money. United We Can collects recyclable materials and pays dumpster-divers for them.

Key Lyotier's last name is pronounced "Ly-OH-tee-AY".

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 19, 2005

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

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Morgan:News:2010 |IOC| #780
CANDIAN OLYMPIC COMMITTEE TO SPELL OUT FRIDAY C$110 CALL FOR SPORT FUNDING FOR 2010 DEVELOPMENT

The Canadian Olympic Committee is expected on Friday to outline a sport-by-sport program, an elaboration, apparently of the "Own the Podium" program, designed to make Canada the top medal winner of the 2010 Winter Games, a program that will reportedly cost C$110 million in spending over five years. In order to accomplish that goal, Canada would need to win a total of 35 medals, compared to the 17 it won during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

COC executive director for sport Mark Lowry is expected to call on governments and the private sector to split the cost of the program, and he says the deal the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) made with Bell Canada when it agreed to sponsor the telecommunications requirements for the Games gave the COC considerable confidence that the private sponsorship funding is potentially available. The Bell Canada deal was worth about C$200 million to VANOC, although it will not cost Bell as much as that in outlay, as it combined cash and marketing spread over the years leading up to the 2010 Games. Lowry figures that, if split and over five years, the total for governments is about C$11 million per year, and the same for the private sector. And VANOC could, if it chose, assign C$15 million or C$20 million of the Bell Canada deal to the "Own the Podium" program.

Lowry is hoping some of the funding will appear when the federal government tables its budget in Parliament next month for the upcoming government fiscal year, which starts April 1; Ottawa put in what it said was a one-time bonus funding of C$30 million on top of its normal contribution to high-performance sport, last year, but federal minister of Sport, Stephen Owen, who's responsibilities include the federal government's interests in the 2010 Winter Games, is reportedly in favour of the "Own the Podium" program as developed so far.

International Olympic Committee president Jacque Rogge is expected to discuss Canada's participation in high-performance sport during his visit to this country at the end of January.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 18, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #779
VANCOUVER AGREEMENT TO INVOLVE VANOC IN VANCOUVER SKID-ROAD "REVITALIZATION"

The Vancouver Agreement, an organization that, until now, has been fairly low profile, will parade a who's who of 2010 executives and various government and social representatives at a news conference late tomorrow afternoon to detail how the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) will help "revitalize" Vancouver's infamous skid-road area, called the Downtown East Side.

The news conference is to announce "a new partnership to support the economic revitalization of the Downtown East Side," according to spokesman Jean Kavanagh, although the plan was first made public last March. The news conference attendees, however, will include Jack Poole, the chairman of VANOC, the federal minister responsible for Sport and Ottawa's interests in the 2010 Games, Stephen Owen, who is also minister of Western Economic Diversification, the provincial government's minister of Community, Aboriginal & Women's Services, Murray Coell, The City of Vancouver's deputy mayor Anne Roberts and Ken Lyotier, the executive director of the agency United We Can.

VANOC spokesman Sam Corea says VANOC is taking part because it will be the group responsible "for facilitating this new partnership."

The Vancouver Agreement is charged with developing and implementing a two-year plan designed to "support community priorities and initiatives that will most directly and feasibly lead to a sustained increase in business activity and job opportunities in Vancouver's inner city. Year one will focus on establishing infrastructure to increase demand for Downtown Eastside goods and services, improve business capacity, and establish links in key sectors like construction, tourism, the arts and culture. In the second year, programs and partnerships will expand, and the plan will be flexible enough to take advantage of new economic opportunities like those linked to redevelopment of the former Woodward's department store, Trade and Convention Centre expansion, and the 2010 Games."

The Vancouver Agreement funded by the governments of Canada, British Columbia and the City of Vancouver. The Vancouver Police Department and the Vancouver Coastal Health agency are also involved in the organization's projects and initiatives.

RESOURCES

The main outline of the two-year plan is here in this PDF file:
http://www.vancouveragreement.ca/Pdfs/dtes-workplan-nov04.pdf

The Downtown East Side plan is here:
http://www.vancouveragreement.ca/Pdfs/Strategic%20plan-english.pdf

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 18, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #778
FEDERAL MINISTER FOR SPORT TO FOCUS THURSDAY SPEECH ON 2010 SUSTAINABILITY

The federal government minister that oversees the 2010 Winter Games, Stephen Owen, is expected to speak about the sustainable aspect of the 2010 Games when he addresses a breakfast meeting of the Vancouver Board of Trade this Thursday morning.

Owen's official title is minister of Western Economic Diversification and minister of State for Sport, and the Vancouver-based cabinet minister was listed just last weekend as one of British Columbia's most influential people involved in sport. Owen aides are suggesting the theme of the speech will bolster the concept that "creating sustainable communities does more than help ensure a better environment for future generations. The notion of sustainability is helping bring Canada, and B.C. in particular, to a new level of competitive advantage."

And, they add, "Environmental considerations are a key driver of innovation and competitiveness around the world, and Vancouver is well positioned to lead the charge. Our region is host to industries such as 'green' building design, alternative energies and marine health sciences, among others. We will also host the World Urban Forum in 2006. That's true, and the 2010 Games are being marketed these days as "the first sustainable Olympics."

Vancouver Board of Trade spokesman Tracy Wing says that "Business opportunities are growing as the idea of a sustainable economy expands, and the Government of Canada is helping drive B.C.'s economy towards the goal of creating a competitive economy anchored by a sustainable environment." She says that she expects Owen to discuss "the competitive advantages available to B.C. businesses who embrace the idea of sustainability."

This Vancouver Board of Trade program will begin at approximately 7:30 a.m. on Thursday, January 20, at the Pan Pacific Vancouver - Crystal Pavilion, A, 999 Canada Place. Owen is expected to begin speaking about 7:45.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 18, 2005

Monday, January 17, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |IOC| #777
BEIJING SUMMER OLYMPICS EXPECTED TO GENERATE US$3 BILLION, SAYS IOC MARKETER

The French Press Agency quotes the International Olympic Committee's head of marketing, Gerhard Heiberg, as saying today in Paris that the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics is expected to generate US$3 billion in revenue.

"The Beijing Games will be better financially than anything before," said Heiberg in a phone interview with AFP. "They will set a new benchmark for future Games such as 2012." The Beijing organizers have already raised US$600,000 from local sponsorship, he added, and Heiberg predicts the final total from that source alone will reach US$1 billion.

"That is the way it looks today," he added. "The Olympics have never been stronger. Beijing will be an excellent Games, Vancouver 2010 will be an excellent Games, so there is no reason why the winning city for the 2012 Games can not match the US1 billion raised by Beijing," he said. "The picture is a very positive one for cities considering about bidding in the future to hold the Olympics," he added. AFP says the Athens Summer Games generated a total of US$1.5 billion, the highest raised by a host city to date. Typically, winter Olympic Games are only a third the size of Summer Olympics.

Six major nationally-branded companies have already signed up with the Beijing organizers, including Volkswagen, the Bank of China and China Mobile, along with a number of smaller firms. The total doesn't include the international brands which buy marketing rights to packages of Games, typically a group of one winter and one summer games, and deal directly with the IOC.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 17, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #776
VANOC BOARD TO HEAR EXECS, NOT DELEGATIONS; TWO VANOC PEOPLE MAKE NEWSPAPER TOP 10; EBERSOL WORKING THE PHONES

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

There won't be any delegations appearing at the January Board of Directors meeting Wednesday of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), despite a request by those trying to persuade VANOC executives to make the 2010 ski jumps permanent. Instead, there will be an update from senior executive vice-president of Sport and Venues, Cathy Priestner. There will also be an update from CEO John Furlong, who has been in Lausanne, Switzerland, meeting with executives of the International Olympic Committee, an update on marketing, including the status of the master marketing agreement, plus the directors will also get a report on the upcoming visit by IOC president, Jacques Rogge from January 31 to February 3, and an update on the implementation plans of VANOC telecommunications sponsorship -- VANOC is calling it a "partnership" these days -- with Bell Canada. VANOC's also planning an announcement, presumably about marketing and sponsorships, though spokesmen will not say, specifically, following the Director's meeting.

Two of VANOC's senior executives and a politician connected with the 2010 Winter Games made the top 10 list of The Vancouver Province newspaper's top 20 most influential people in British Columbian sport. The number one spot was captured by VANOC's Furlong, while the number 10 position was held by Priestner. Stephen Owen, the new federal minister in charge of Sports in Canada was listed as ninth. They appear among various other sports figures, such as Stan McCammon, the senior aide to the owner of the Vancouver Cancuks; Bob Ackles, the president of the B.C. Lions football team, Ron Toigo; the owner of the Western Hockey League's Giants team; and, the director of operations for soccer, Bob Lenarduzzi. The newspaper says, though the CEO is only 11 months into his contract, "Furlong is proving equal to the enormous task of leading a staff that will reach 1,200 paid employees and 25,000 volunteers, and the decisions he makes will shape the B.C. landscape for years after the athletes have left." It adds, "But with a daunting schedule of speeches to groups around B.C., Furlong is spreading the Games' virtues. Whether he can influence the country will determine the success of the event." As for Priestner, the paper says she, "will have a say in virtually everything an Olympic athlete will encounter and, as such, her influence on legacy venues will impact the province's sports landscape long after the event is gone." The newspaper justifies the inclusion of Owen, the brother of former Vancouver mayor Philip Owen, this way, "Stephen Owen's ability to wrestle additional funding out of the Paul Martin [federal] government in the years leading up to the 2010 Games makes him a considerable power broker."

Dick Ebersol is starting to work the phones again, according to Hollywood publication "Variety." It said the NBC Universal Sports chairman, who is the senior executive in charge of NBC's extensive broadcast contract with the 2010 Winter Games, is still unable to walk as a result of his injuries during a plane crash last November 28 that also killed one of his sons, colleagues said, but he is expected to return to work later this year.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on January 17, 2005

Friday, January 14, 2005

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #775
INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE PRESIDENT TO VISIT MONTREAL, VANCOUVER AND WHISTLER

The President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will visit Montreal, Vancouver and Whistler later this month. It will be Jacques Rogge's first visit to Canada since