Authors: John Furlong
Patriot Hearts (8 page)
I continued to have serious words with Larry right up until voting day. I think he came to realize how ugly it would have been if the No side prevailed. It would have tarnished his term as mayor, without a doubt. The business community would have been furious. So he was probably as relieved as anyone when on February 22, 2003, the Yes side prevailed, 64 per cent to 36 per cent for the Nos. It was not a landslide, that’s for sure, but it was a solid victory. And more importantly, the bid corporation wasn’t put in the position of deciding what to do if the vote had gone another way. Jack was of the opinion that no matter the outcome we were going ahead. I didn’t agree. I felt that if we lost it was pretty much over. I just couldn’t see how we could go ahead without a mandate.
WE NOW HAD
just a couple of weeks to prepare for the visit of the
IOC
’s evaluation commission. This was going to be a seminal moment. It was the commission’s job to take stock and compare the relative merits of each bid city’s plans. The visit would mean driving up to Whistler and not only showing commission members the infamous road we vowed to fix but the sites we had chosen for various sporting competitions. The climax of their visit would be a day-long presentation on 18 different aspects of our bid.
The commission’s opinion was hugely influential. If it liked what it saw, word spread, not just among members of the
IOC
executive in Lausanne but among all voting delegates. A thumbs-down would almost certainly be the kiss of death.
To prepare, we had months earlier put together a mock commission made up of several members of our international team, plus a few people who had experience working on other Games. The group included people like George Hirthler, an Olympic bid consultant from the U.S.; Charlie Battle, an executive member of the organizing committee of the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta; Richard Bunn, a former Swiss television executive and insider with the International Ski Federation; Roger Jackson, a Canadian with loads of Olympic bid experience; Petter Ronningen, the chief operating officer of the Lillehammer Games in 1994; Bob Storey and others.
We wanted our presentation team to be ready for anything, so in that spirit we asked our mock commission to be tough and unrelenting. It was. Almost too much so. Some of the sessions got derailed by the caustic manner of some of the faux commissioners. “Your plan is shit,” I recall someone saying about one presentation. “It’s garbage and you sound arrogant.” The harsh tone was not helping build confidence among members of my executive team. I decided to step in and get our mock commission to dial back some of the caustic remarks. “You need to cool it,” I said to Richard Bunn after one particularly gruelling and testy session. “We’re not going to perform open-heart surgery in that room. We’re two weeks away from the real evaluation commission being here. You’re supposed to be helping this team, not making them a bundle of nerves.”
The head of the evaluation commission was a guy named Gerhard Heiberg. He was from Norway and a bit of a legend in Olympic circles. He had been brought in to help rescue the Lillehammer Olympics when organizing went off the rails. He did a masterful job and Lillehammer became the gold standard against which all other Winter Games would be compared. Early on, it was suggested I get to know Gerhard because he was such an important figure within the
IOC
. I set up a meeting with him in Oslo before new rules were brought in prohibiting bid cities from visiting
IOC
officials in their home towns. We met for breakfast in a hotel and talked for a few hours. I was well prepared and knew lots about his life, from his time in the military to his career as a successful businessman. I knew his opinion carried enormous weight with the
IOC
. It was the beginning of a strong and lasting friendship. It was after Gerhard and I had established ties that the
IOC
announced he would be heading up the evaluation commission for our bid. I thought our ship had come in. It was a huge break.
He would turn out to be one of the key individuals upon whom I relied heavily for advice along the way. And because he was head of the
IOC
’s marketing committee, he had top-level corporate connections all over the world and was clearly someone who would be able to help us over the long term were we to succeed in Prague. I liked him very much as he had great values and deep integrity. I also wanted him to have a soft spot for us. And while I didn’t expect him to play favourites, I was hoping he would help us avoid a bidending mistake.
The 18
IOC
evaluation commissioners arrived in Vancouver at the beginning of March. The visit was tightly scripted, with almost every minute of every day accounted for. The second day included the trip to Whistler. The weather was magnificent and the drive up magical. It would be the one occasion where my friend Gerhard didn’t do me any favours.
We knew he was going to get questions from the media about the road to Whistler. It was a lingering issue. It was narrow and unsafe. But the province was committed to improving it so it could accommodate more traffic more safely. Still, as Jack Poole had once put it to reporters, it was the Achilles heel of our bid. “Rocks as big as Volkswagens are falling on the road,” he’d said.
When Gerhard was asked by a reporter about the road, he said, “It’s too far to Whistler.” I was standing beside him at the time. My heart sank. Gerhard had just given the media a juicy sound bite that would reverberate around the world in a matter of minutes. We now had a problem on our hands, one we needed to remedy quickly. I found some time alone with Gerhard to discuss what had happened. I knew he was not feeling good about what he’d said and I didn’t want to rub it in, but I was honest. “Our team is a bit ruined by what you had to say and they’re not sure what to make of it,” I said. He nodded understandingly.
“Look,” I continued, “it’s not for me to say ultimately, but if I were you I think you could rectify the situation by saying that the distance of the road is a given. But efforts to make it safer and more efficient would materially affect the bid and you are confident it will get done.” He agreed.
Gerhard would later clarify his comments, which some media took as backtracking from his earlier remark. But the tempest wouldn’t last for long. We had arranged for Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to be in Whistler at the same time as the commission. I asked the Prime Minister’s Office if it was possible for Chrétien to spend a little time alone with Gerhard, maybe over a beer. I knew that the prime minister would be comfortable in that setting and, more importantly, I knew Gerhard would be thunderstruck by the honour. So we made it happen. The pair spent more than an hour drinking beer and talking. I waited outside the pub praying it was all going well.
What I wanted the prime minister to impress upon Gerhard was just how committed the country was to this bid. When they shook hands at the end, I wanted him to feel that there would be no problems with support from the federal government. That was an important stipulation in the minds of the
IOC
. It was pretty clear talking to Gerhard on the drive back to Vancouver just how much his time with the prime minister meant to him. He’d never get easy one-on-one time with the prime minister of Norway, a country a fraction the size of ours. From that point on, I thought he had a quiet personal desire to see us succeed. He liked us. As we moved forward, I thought we could count on him to sing the praises of our bid in private conversations with his
IOC
colleagues around the world. That was huge.
After Whistler, we returned to Vancouver, where we had to make our presentations to the commission, covering plans for everything from transportation and sponsorships to tickets and venues.
We had built a stunning presentation hall at the downtown Pan Pacific Hotel. We put the commissioners in big padded seats on an elevated dais to make them feel special. I thought we really nailed our presentations. After we were done, Gerhard told me there were two or three aspects of our plan that we should not make public again because they were so good. The next time you talk about these things, such as the torch relay, should be in Prague, he said. Why reveal our best weapons to competitors?
The final day was going to be capped off with a dinner planned by Darlene Poole, a consummate hostess, and an entertainment extravaganza at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. The commissioners would be leaving the following morning, so the idea was to send them off feeling as positive about Vancouver as possible. We packed the theatre with almost 3,000 friends of the bid. While Gerhard and the commissioners were at a reception, I slipped over to the theatre to prepare the crowd for their arrival. I went onstage and told the audience how important it was to make the commissioners and, in particular, the chair, Gerhard Heiberg, feel important.
Prime Minister Chrétien, Premier Gordon Campbell and the commission members arrived and were waiting outside the auditorium doors for their introduction. When the commission members entered, the place went bonkers. It was just the kind of over-the-top reaction I was hoping to get. The astonished look on Gerhard’s face said it all. He looked over at me and broke into a wide smile. The commissioners took their seats for the show, which included Aboriginal performances, singing and, of course, speeches.
Acclaimed music producer David Foster came up from Los Angeles to perform. The passion was a mile high that night. At one point during Jean Chrétien’s speech, he said, in fun, “What’s all this talk about if, if, if we win the Games? There’s no
if,
there’s only
yes.
” The crowd ate it up. (One commissioner from Japan was less than impressed and suggested the next day at the airport that we keep that kind of bravado under control in Prague. A little more humility would reflect better on us, was the message.)
Eventually, it was time for me to speak and to introduce Gerhard, and when I did the crowd stood on its feet and cheered as if Brad Pitt had arrived. He couldn’t even begin to talk for several minutes because of the ovation. Over the next 10 minutes he would be interrupted constantly by screaming and clapping and shouts of “We want the Games, We want the Games.” At one point, Gerhard raised his hands and said, “Okay, okay, stop, we’ll give you the Games.” Mission accomplished.
The next day, we took the commission members to the airport. We were in the Maple Leaf Lounge when Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands took me aside to say he had a problem: “I have a bit of a rip in my pants.” He then bent over and showed me a tear that went from the top of his pants to his crotch. One of our team members, Andrea Shaw, was nearby and realized what was going on. She told the prince that she was a seamstress and that she could probably find a needle and thread somewhere in the airport if the prince was willing to surrender his pants. So right there in the middle of the lounge, the Prince of Orange stripped down to his boxers. For the next 20 minutes he sat in his chair, white-legged, reading a paper as if nothing had happened. Eventually Andrea returned with the pants sewn up nicely and the crisis was averted.
“You know,” I said to the prince as we walked to the gate, “if we don’t get the Games this story might get out.”
He laughed.
“I hear you,” he said. “I hear you.”
W
ITH THE EVALUATION
commission gone, our focus turned toward decision day in Prague. It was less than three months away, and if I thought about it long enough I began feeling queasy. At stake was nothing less than the dreams of millions of Canadians. Polls showed the country supported our efforts. And while there were people in Vancouver and Whistler who were not Olympic boosters, I knew that on July 2 the big city and the small town would stand still when Jacques Rogge strode to the podium to deliver the verdict.
Before then, there was plenty of work to do. I still had a couple of big trips, including another SportAccord conference, this time in Madrid. When I walked into the conference this time, however, there were few people I didn’t know. My nervous introduction to the
IOC
world in Singapore two years earlier now seemed ages ago. I knew that in Madrid our two rivals would be making strong final pushes for votes as well, especially the Koreans, who many felt were in third place heading down the home stretch.
I didn’t share this view. All of our closely guarded intelligence indicated that we were in front, with South Korea a nose behind. If what we were hearing was correct, and the promises that
IOC
members were making held up, we had Salzburg a distant third. But in the often murky world of the
IOC
, you never knew.
The meetings we had internally to discuss delegate support sometimes got rowdy. They usually involved Bob Storey and I and certain members of our international team, many of whom had been on the mock commission we formed to test our presentation to the evaluation commission. We would go down the list of
IOC
voters, from top to bottom, discussing where we saw each one of them: solidly for us, solidly against us, on the fence.
Disagreements about where a particular delegate stood often got loud. “You’re full of shit,” you might hear someone bark. I didn’t care too much if feelings were hurt. I just wanted an honest debate; if we couldn’t reach consensus around a particular person, we had to go back out and see if we could find additional information or focus on a new strategy that might help us land that extra vote. It was a thankless process. Even when you thought a vote was secure, it took about five minutes for doubt to creep in. Trust was in short supply.
I was worried about the Koreans. I thought they were walking a fine line when it came to honouring the
IOC
’s rules around gifts or incentives you could give voters. Everything had been tightened up in this area after it was revealed that organizers of the Salt Lake City Olympics had offered
IOC
delegates an estimated $10 million in cash and gifts in exchange for their votes. Now the most you could offer an
IOC
member was a present of trinket value.