The Legacies of the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Vancouver
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The legacies of the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Vancouver By Bruce Kidd1 Introduction On July 31, 1976 in Montreal's Olympic Stadium, with one eye on the Closing Ceremonies of the Montreal Olympics taking place before me¸ tired and hoarse from cheering, I wrote an assessment of the legacy of those games for the Canadian English- language weekly magazine, Weekend. The title of the assessment was 'Future games', and the sub-heading, 'The Olympics cannot survive many more Montreals'. I wrote For two weeks all the contradictions seemed to stand still. But now that the Olympic flame has been extinguished, I fear that all those moments when we felt we soared—and the athletes who gave us the moments and shared them with us—will be forgotten in the bitter runaround of who's going to pay the bill. The balance sheet is not a happy one: a $1 billion deficit for facilities that will rarely ever fully be used again and which will cost a small fortune to maintain. In Montreal and all across Canada, funds are desperately needed for the most basis facilities, better physical education and community fitness programs and professional coaches…. The list of black eyes is a long one: the refusal to hold a plebiscite on whether Montrealers really wanted the Games; construction deaths, delays and scandals; commercialism so rampant that it would almost have been more appropriate for the athletes to compete by corporation than by country; social services cut back or postponed; and civil rights ignored in order to keep the Games 'secure'… The problem is how to reconcile the tremendous highs with their enormous social costs (Kidd 1976). This grim pronouncement held up for many years. Several of the major facilities, notably the velodrome, the aquatic centre and the rowing basin, had to be de-commissioned for want of program and maintenance funds. The attractive Olympic Village had to be completely retrofitted, and was never made available as promised for social housing. The Olympic Stadium, which became known as the 'Big Owe' because the huge cost over- runs triggered unpopular new municipal and provincial taxes, became the home of non- Olympic professional sports. To this day in English-speaking Canada, Montreal remains a by-word for extravagant and wasteful public projects. 1 Professor, Faculty of Physical Education and Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada. Paper written in the framework of the IOC’s OSC Postgraduate Grant Selection Committee (2010 meeting) January 2011 But, slowly, things began to change. Gradually, the generation of sport and physical education leaders inspired by the aspirations and performances of Montreal in 1976, with the support of social democratic provincial governments, turned the Olympic facilities into accessible centres of opportunity and excellence. The aquatic centre and rowing basin were reopened in the 1990s to stimulate significant increases in participation and performance. The Quebec government instituted compulsory physical education right up to junior college, the only province in Canada ever to do so, and encouraged innovative after-school and community sport. These initiatives significantly raised Quebeckers' fitness levels and transformed their participation on representative teams. Prior to 1976, Quebeckers rarely won more than 2% of the places on Canadian Olympic teams, and most of those athletes came from the Anglo-McGill elite. Since Montreal, francophone Quebeckers regularly comprise 25-35% of those teams. The entrepreneurial skills, cadre of volunteers and international branding Montrealers gained from the Olympics enabled them to specialize in sports tourism, too, so that today the city hosts some 80-100 events a year in addition to the events conducted by professional sport. Montreal has become one of the most advanced and accomplished Olympic sports communities in Canada. Moreover, the lessons from the Montreal Olympics were quickly applied to other major events across the country (Kidd 2004). To be sure, it took more than the Olympics to bring about the transformation of sport and physical activity in Montreal and Quebec. The driving energy for these changes came from the 'quiet revolution' of the 1960s and 1970s—the transformation of a traditional, inward-looking, priest- and Anglo-capital dominated backwater into an au courant, secular, and pluralist centre of politics and culture. It was also enabled by a series of social democratic provincial governments, ideologically predisposed to stand up to the tide of neo-liberalism sweeping other parts of North America and to continue to invest in public opportunities, during the 1980s and 1990s. But the Olympics (and the 1967 World's Fair) gave voice to the aspirations for international engagement, and an expectation of excellence to be upheld long after the athletes departed. Among sport and physical activity leaders, the 1976 Games are always signaled out as playing an important part in the story. Moreover, the investments in environmental controls, public transportation and new technology accelerated by the Games contributed to the economic prosperity of the region, while the experiences of those associated with the Games continue to be played out in still other ways. These reflections on the long fuse of the Montreal Olympics have led me to adopt three cautionary rules of thumb on issues of legacy. In the first place, following John MacAloon (1987), we must regard games as 'multiple narratives'—in their pursuit and preparation, in the remarkable athletic, cultural, and festive performances they stimulate, and in the environmental, economic and political effects they generate. In almost every games I have witnessed, there have been significant benefits alongside white elephants and abuses, and rarely have the benefits and costs been shared equally. No single sentence or report grade can do justice to the complexity—it has to be a multi-factor calculation. Secondly, we must realize that Olympic benefits can be significantly affected—enhanced or constrained--by the changing social, economic and political 2 context. Thirdly, we must be sensitive to the maturation of Olympic legacies over long periods of time. What are the legacies of the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Vancouver/Whistler? It's just been one year since I shouted myself hoarse on the last days of those Games. But my assessment of them will still be a 'work-in-progress' for many years to come, framed by the rules of thumb set out above. This paper sets out my impressions of the post- Games impact to date, my hopes for their further development in the months and years ahead and the lessons they offer for the Olympic Movement. The paper draws upon interviews and regular visits to Vancouver and Whistler, including attendance at the Winter Olympics and Winter Paralympics in February and March of 2010, and the literature to date, including the commendable documentation, monitoring and evaluation provided by the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC). Enhanced infrastructure Vancouver sought to improve the transportation, housing and facilities available for sports and physical activity in the communities where the Games would be staged, with a focus on strengthening the Four Host First Nations (Lil'Wat, Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Wahtuth), on whose traditional lands most of the events would be staged, and ensuring environmental and financial sustainability.2 The investments were substantial. The Games accelerated the construction of two major transportation improvements, a new rapid transit line from the international airport to downtown, the 'Canada Line', and long overdue safety and capacity upgrades on the 'Sea to Sky' highway between Vancouver and Whistler. They added significantly to the region's housing stock. 1,100 new units, plus a new community centre, day care, retail facilities and space for a regional office of the Canadian Sport Centre Pacific were constructed in the spectacular athletes' village along False Creek in Vancouver (that housed 2,800 athletes, coaches and officials during the Games). 225 of these units, 125 which have been sold and 100 of which is rental housing, are 'affordable', defined as costing no more than 30% of a household’s total gross monthly income. While many of the luxury condos in the new community remain to be sold, a consequence of a downturn in Vancouver's housing market and the premium required for the top-of-the-line environmental features, the City of Vancouver, which acquired the properties, is confident that they ultimately will find buyers: the village was the last development site along the vibrant and attractive False Creek waterway. In Whistler, 20 town houses and a 100-room lodge were built (to house 2,400 during the Games). The townhouses are being privately sold, although they too have not all been sold. The lodge became a dormitory for high performance athletes using Whistler facilities. All of the new Whistler housing is considered 'affordable'. In addition, 156 units were built elsewhere in the province. 2 While strictly speaking the capital costs of infrastructural improvements are not considered part of the Games budget for the IOC's purposes, the benefits they promised were integral to the Games ambition and the popular discussion of 'legacy'. They must be considered in their entirety. 3 Whistler also gained a new central park and plaza, upgrades to its convention centre, and a boundary expansion that will give it greater control over its watersheds and growth management. The Squamish band received a new community centre in Whistler, and the Aboriginal Pavilion located in downtown Vancouver during the Games will be moved and re-assembled on the territory of the Musqueam. Every aspect of Olympic construction aimed at achieving a minimum of LEED silver standard. The Vancouver village attained LEED gold status, with a neighborhood energy system that draws upon the burning of sewage, solar panels and green roofs to significantly reduce the carbon emissions from heating the buildings.