IOC Coordination Commission chair Rene Fasel with Jacques Rogge during a stop on their tour in Vancouver. (ATR/B.Mackin)(ATR) IOC President Jacques Rogge heads back to Europe from a three-day visit to Vancouver where he says preparations for the 2010 Olympics are showing "a great state of preparedness". He is less sanguine about the chances for women’s ski jump to join the 2010 program.
Rogge was making his first visit to Vancouver since 2005. He toured Olympic venues in the city and held meetings with government leaders involved with the staging of the Games, including the mayors of Vancouver and Whistler and British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell.
Rogge’s trip was timed with the latest visit of the IOC Coordination Commission, which apparently has found few concerns as organizers head into the final two years to the Olympics.
Even questions about accommodation do not worry coordination commission chairman Rene Fasel. He tells Around the Rings that the allocation of rooms to the Olympic family, press and sponsors is a difficult issue to solve with every Olympics, but that Vancouver is on its way to settling this concern.
Fasel says the successful staging of the first test event-- a FIS Alpine World Cup last weekend in Whistler -- shows that Vancouver is on the right track with its planning for sport.
One outstanding issue is the location of the drug testing lab for the Games. Vancouver organizers are hoping to use the IOC accredited lab in Montreal, a four-hour plane flight away. The IOC is insisting that the lab be locally based, as is now the custom in Olympic host cities.
Rogge’s visit was carefully controlled to help avoid brushes with a small band of anti-poverty protestors and First Nations activists.
Exact details of Rogge’s itinerary were not disclosed to the press. For a speech Wednesday to the Vancouver Board of Trade, dozens of police formed a line at the entrance to the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre to keep control over three people bearing protest signs. An anti-Olympics poster seen earlier in the week proclaimed "Dead IOC Prez", but leaders of one group denounced the threatening language.
Rogge admitted he had not checked out the notorious section of East Hastings Street near downtown Vancouver where hundreds of street people The IOC president says the Olympics may not be able to solve all the problems in a host city, such as the homelessness on Vancouver’s east side. (ATR)mill about during the day. But Rogge told reporters he is aware of "everything" in Vancouver.
In a speech about legacy to the Board of Trade, Rogge said that Vancouver will serve as "a role model" for future Olympic hosts to follow. But he says the Games cannot fix every wrong in a host city.
"Olympic legacies cannot solve all of the world’s problems. Nor can they address all of the challenges the host city or country faces. What they can do is position sport as an agent of change," he told the crowd of 600.
Women’s Ski Jump Chances Look Slim
With pressure mounting from Canadian politicians to add women’s ski jumping to the 2010 Olympics, the IOC president told reporters Thursday that IOC President Jacques Rogge mugs with one of the Vancouver mascots. (ATR)gender has played no role in the decision to keep the event off the program from Vancouver.
He says that by the IOC count, only about 80 women around the world compete at an elite level, not enough to warrant a spot on the Olympic program in 2010.
"The decision of the International Olympic Committee not to include women’s ski jumping was taken on technical grounds, not gender issues," Rogge said.
"That will change in the future, this we have no doubt about. Today they’re not ready for it."
Rogge was due to speak by telephone before he left with Helene Guergis, minister for sport in the Canadian government, who has been one of the vocal advocates for the female jumpers.
But judging from his comments to the press, as well as those of other IOC members in Vancouver for the coordination commission, there seems to be little interest in reconsidering the November 2006 decision of the IOC Executive Board that turned down the event for 2010.
Written by Ed Hula . The Golden 25 special edition magazine is now available in PDF. Click here to see who will be most influential in the Olympic Movement in 2008.
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