Temporary Hostels Planned for 2010

If you're stuck in the early morning Vancouver rain, a long way from home, with an aching in your heart and your pockets full of sand during the 2010 Winter Olympics, VANOC will have a place for you.

Olympic organizers aim to set up one or more temporary hostels to accommodate several hundred young people expected to show up before, during and after the Games with little more than an unfocused desire to be in Vancouver for all the excitement and maybe find a way to make a buck or two.

A call for hostel proposals was posted Friday on the provincial government's official bid website.

Donna Wilson, VANOC executive vice-president for people and sustainability, said the hostels will exist as an accommodation safety net to ensure that existing low-income housing and shelters for the homeless are not affected by a Games-time influx of visitors without an arranged place to stay.

Ms. Wilson said VANOC wants to avoid what happened in Salt Lake City during the 2002 Olympics when Games planners, unprepared for hundreds of young people who flocked to the city, wound up housing them in an abandoned mattress factory.

"Our expectation is that there will be kids who come here with a bit of money in their jeans to have a good time, or to find work, and haven't thought about where they're going to stay," she said. "Salt Lake City didn't plan for this kind of thing and we want to make sure we do."

Asked why anyone would make the trek to Vancouver without a plan or assured accommodation, Ms. Wilson laughed and replied: "Do you have an 18-year old? The Salt Lake experience showed there are a lot of people, generally from 18 to 25, looking for a great time at this great event. They want to be part of it."

She said VANOC is seeking bare-bones facilities that will provide little more than a bed and a bathroom for a nominal daily fee. They are to remain open from Nov. 15 to March 15, with the ability to take in as many as 400 people during February, when the Olympics take place.

There have been concerns that shelters trying to cope with Vancouver's severe homeless problem would be even more hard-pressed during the Olympics, but Ms. Wilson said VANOC made a commitment long ago to do everything possible to mitigate that potential pressure.

"The world will be watching, and we want to make sure the Olympics are as positive an experience for everyone as we can make it," she said.

VANOC wants a single operator or consortium to be responsible for the temporary accommodation, likely to be run on a non-profit basis. The organizing committee has set aside $250,000 to help pay the cost of upgrading and necessary renovations for the hostels. There is no intention for existing backpacking hostels in the city to make room for the young, temporary visitors, Ms. Wilson said.

She said VANOC envisions local church or other community organizations might want to take on the responsibility as a way of contributing to the Olympics.

VANOC does not intend to advertise that there will be low-cost, basic accommodation available during the Olympics. "If nobody shows up, that's fine, that's great," Ms. Wilson said. "But we'd rather be prepared in case they do show up."

The plan, she added, is to have operators of existing shelters for the homeless refer visitors looking for an overnight crash to the one or more temporary Olympic hostels.

 

SOURCE: http://www.ctvolympics.ca/

 

Home Sweet Home

Is Canada's dubious distinction about to become history?

It's one Olympic record we can't wait to shed.

By now you've probably heard the embarrassing statistic: Canada, the only country to host multiple Olympic Games without winning a single gold medal at home.

The Montreal Summer Games of 1976? Non.

Calgary's Winter Games of '88? A horse-bleep total of just five medals, including two silver.

That's 244 chances, in all kinds of events, in all types of conditions, and nary a win.

If this is the mother of all sports curses, it's time for somebody to cut the umbilical cord.

As we speed our way toward Vancouver 2010, a nation that has discovered its inner conqueror is ready to do whatever it takes to climb to the top of the podium, even if it means elbowing aside a few people along the way.

Sound un-Canadian?

That's the idea.

Those brash Yanks have nothing on us anymore. Haven't you heard -- we want to Own the Podium in Vancouver, and we spent more than $100 million to do it.

So the feeling right from the boardroom down to the bobsled run is not if Canada breaks the jinx, but when.

"When you look at the goal of this team, to be the No. 1 in the world, we've got to get on a roll," Nick Bass, the high-performance adviser for the Own the Podium program, said.

Getting on a roll means striking gold early. That usually sets off frenzy, and you don't have to go back to the Klondike Rush 113 years ago to see it.

It happened at the Turin Games of '06, too.

So who's our top candidate? Learn from history and, if we're lucky, we'll be doomed to repeat it.

Three years ago, Alberta's Jennifer Heil pulled on her goggles, hit the moguls run and struck it rich -- on Day 1.

That sparked the Canucks to their best-ever Winter Games: 24 medals overall, including seven gold.

Guess who's going mining on the first full day of competition in Vancouver?

None other than the queen of the bumps, making Heil our choice to hit the first gold vein on Canadian soil.

"Best bet for the first gold medal," Bass said. "She is one of our stars."

Bass isn't alone in his prediction.

In Calgary, the president of that city's Canadian Sports Centre, which services our high performance athletes, echoed Bass's sentiments.

"I'm going to say it's Jenn Heil, women's moguls," Dale Henwood said. "Just based on history, she's a pretty good shot."

A poll of Sun Media journalists and commentators from TSN/CTV produced more votes for Heil than anyone.

So we have an early favourite in this thoroughbred race. Post time, 7:30 p.m., Pacific time, Feb. 13.

Perhaps the best news, though: Canada has plenty of horses around Heil, in men's moguls, on the speed skating oval, the short track course, even on the slopes.

No Beijing

This should be no Beijing, where day after day after medal-less day went by, and all our athletes produced was sweat.

"It won't be like the Summer Olympics," Bass said. "We didn't have a lot of depth in the first week."

By comparison, Team Canada is swimming in world-class talent going into the early events of 2010.

Alexandre Bilodeau, Heil's training partner and male equivalent, with gold medals in his last five World Cup events, not to mention at the world championship in March, comes to mind.

At the tender age of 22, Bilodeau will hit the moguls on Day 2, the same day Canada's powerful long track speed skaters bust out of the gate, led by Kristina Groves, Clara Hughes and, we presume, a recovered Cindy Klassen, queen of the Turin Games.

At this point, Groves is the better bet in the women's 3,000, while Klassen's stock -- she took the year off to have orthoscopic surgery on both knees -- will rise or fall on the World Cup circuit next season.

Still at the oval, we won't have to wait long to see if Jeremy Wotherspoon can bury his Olympic demons, and bounce back from a badly broken arm -- the men's 500 metres is set for Day 3.

Neither our experts nor our media panel expect the drought to go beyond three days.

The revival of the men's alpine team has even created more than a passing interest in the men's downhill, the first medal event of Day 1.

"We have multiple medal threats in that event," Bass said. "And with a little bit of home field advantage where they've been training on that course, I would not be surprised if we had an athlete on the podium."

Bass is referring to John Kucera, Manuel Osborne-Paradis and Erik Guay, long shots for gold, perhaps, but in the unpredictable world of alpine, who knows? Kucera shocked everyone by winning gold at the world championship -- despite being ranked 19th.

Call them crazy, but the Canucks see that kind of magic happening more than once in Vancouver.

 

SOURCE: http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Olympics/2010Vancouver/News/2009/05/17/9485616-sun.html

 

Flyin' High in 2010?

All hail – or inhale – the 2010 Olympic Torch.

Or, as it's jokingly known around Vancouver, the Olympic Toke.

Composed of stainless steel, aluminum and sheet moulding, the torch was designed to evoke snow, ice, skiing and skating, but to many, the metre-long white torch looks suspiciously like a marijuana joint, especially when lit.

The observation has become so common in this city that it's hard to know who was the first to say, "Hey, doesn't that look like ..."

But the torch's resemblance to British Columbia's biggest cash crop was evident right away to Jodie Emery, editor of Cannabis Culture magazine.

"A lot of people come to Vancouver because it's marijuana-friendly, so I think people who already enjoy a joint themselves will feel a little more kinship to the Olympics," said Emery, who ran as a Green party candidate in the provincial election this month.

"I'm sure the organizers didn't intend for it to look like a joint, but that's what a lot of people are seeing."

The association between toking and the Olympics didn't begin with the torch, of course.

At the 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan, Whistler skier Ross Rebagliati won, then lost, the gold medal in snowboarding after testing positive for marijuana. The medal was returned after Rebagliati explained he had inhaled second-hand smoke. And Olympic swimming sensation Michael Phelps was photographed in February smoking pot from a bong.

Industrial designer Mark Busse said he doesn't see a joint so much as a tweezer or scalpel.

"Sure, it may look a little bit like a joint, but I can tell you that what they were going for was ergonomics, sleekness, modernity," he said.

Suzanne Reeves, the Vancouver organizing committee's director of communications for the Olympic torch relay, said she has taken the torch across the country and people's faces light up when they get the chance to hold it.

At Nathan Phillips Square a couple of weeks ago, Reeves said she had the torch in a bag when a cyclist went by and did a double-take when he saw what she had.

Reeves said what she sees when she looks at the torch is the edge of snow and an unfurling flag.

"It's quite magical. Most people's reactions are emotional," she said.

The torch will be carried by 12,000 people over 45,000 kilometres as it makes its journey across Canada.

Because the torch will travel through the winter months, it had to meet some tough technical requirements, including being able to withstand high winds, cold temperatures and different altitudes.

The torch officially is meant to resemble the lines left behind by skiers and skaters on snow and ice.

Any double – or doobie – entendres, officials say, are purely unintentional.