Canada Receives Cold Call

In a surprisingly tight election, the International Olympic Committee on Wednesday awarded Vancouver, Canada, the 2010 Winter Games.

Vancouver, long the front-runner, defeated Pyeongchang, South Korea, in the second round of balloting, 56 votes to 53. Salzburg, Austria, was eliminated in the first round.

Pyeongchang, a resort about two hours east of Seoul, made an impressive presentation Wednesday before the full IOC membership, suggesting that the Games could help promote prospects for peace on the divided Korean peninsula, and led the voting after the first round. But apparently most of the 16 votes that went to Salzburg in the first round switched to Vancouver in the second.

The vote returns the Olympics to Canada for the first time since 1988, when the Winter Games were staged in Calgary. The Summer Games were held in Montreal in 1976. Uncertain is the implication for the 2012 Summer Games, which the IOC will award in 2005. New York is among several world-class cities already in that race.

The decision comes just weeks after NBC paid the IOC $2.001 billion for the U.S. rights to televise the 2010 and 2012 Games, $820 million of that for the 2010 Games -- which will now be in the ratings-favorable Pacific time zone. NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol issued a statement offering Vancouver “our sincere congratulations.”

The 2004 Summer Games will be held in Athens. The next Winter Games will take place in Turin, Italy, in 2006. The 2008 Summer Games will be in Beijing.

The IOC votes in a secret ballot. After the voting closed, suspense built for an hour until IOC President Jacques Rogge, in a ceremony televised worldwide, announced the results with, “The International Olympic Committee has the honor of announcing that the 21st Olympic Winter Games in 2010 are awarded to the city of,” and here he paused again, to let the suspense build, “ ... Vancouver!”

That triggered what Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien described as a “long and joyful” day among Canadian supporters here and nine time zones away, in Vancouver and Whistler, the mountain resort where skiing and snowboarding will be staged in 2010.

Here, dozens of Vancouver supporters, including Chretien, clad in gray suits with red-striped ties, jumped into the air. The prime minister and bid President John Furlong exchanged a high-five. Even two sober-looking Mounties, clad in the traditional red coats, exchanged happy handshakes with other Canadian boosters.

Chretien called it a “photo finish.” But he noted, “Winning is winning.”

“It’s great, it’s just great,” said Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell, wearing a red-and-white baseball cap that said, “Canada,” signed by Wayne Gretzky, the former NHL star who was involved in the presentation to the IOC on Wednesday.

In Vancouver and Whistler, the results prompted wild cheering and flag-waving.

“Obviously, the best bid won,” Rogge said. He also said with a smile, noting that Canadians celebrated Canada Day on Tuesday, “I think they will celebrate today too.”

Pyeongchang’s showing immediately made it a formidable contender for the 2014 Winter Games. The South Korean government has pledged to spend $3 billion transforming Pyeongchang into a destination location.

“We did our best,” said Kim Jun Sun, governor of Gangwon province, where Pyeongchang is located. He said Pyeongchang will definitely be in the hunt for 2014, and Rogge said, “While there’s only gold, not silver and not bronze in this competition, Pyeongchang is now definitely on the map. That was not the case before.”

Egon Winkler, head of the Salzburg bid, called it, “A result I didn’t expect.” He also said, “I didn’t know if I expected to win, but I didn’t expect to be out in the first round.”

Pyeongchang led after the first round of voting with 51 votes, Vancouver next with 40 and Salzburg last -- and thus out -- with 16.

In the second round, almost all the Salzburg votes shifted to Vancouver to produce the final count, 56-53.

Because of the secret ballot, the IOC could not explain why there were two fewer ballots cast in the first round.

“You don’t win [by winning] the first round,” longtime IOC member Anita DeFrantz of Los Angeles said afterward. “You win by winning the final round.”

The election was the first conducted under the leadership of Rogge, a Belgian physician elected IOC president in 2001, replacing Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain. Under a series of reforms the IOC enacted in the wake of the Salt Lake City corruption scandal, which erupted in late 1998, IOC members were forbidden from visiting Vancouver, Salzburg or Pyeongchang.

The 2010 race has been going on in earnest for two years. Each of the three candidates had about an hour Wednesday for a final attempt to sell its city to the IOC.

Vancouver’s plan relies on something of a dual identity -- skating sports in Vancouver, skiing and snowboarding up the Sea to Sky Highway, about 90 to 120 minutes away, at Whistler, the resort that can sometimes feel like a California bedroom community, especially at winter and spring school-break times. Overall, about 7% of Whistler’s hotel guests in recent seasons are from California, according to local officials.

For the first time, the opening ceremony of the Winter Games will be held indoors, at Vancouver’s 55,000-seat BC Place.

Vancouver officials disclosed Wednesday that there have been tentative discussions about moving Olympic hockey games, perhaps the women’s final, into the huge indoor arena as well.

Operational expenses for the 2010 Games are projected at about $960 million. Capital costs, typically the domain of government entities, are estimated at roughly $460 million. Chretien, speaking to the IOC on Wednesday in both French and English, offered the IOC the “unconditional support” of the Canadian government.

With security always the IOC’s leading concern -- in the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Games massacre by Palestinian terrorists of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches -- Chretien said security at a Vancouver Games would be overseen by the Mounties, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. “The Games will be secure,” Chretien vowed.

Gretzky, the NHL’s all-time leading scorer, played in the 1998 Nagano Games, where the Canadian men’s team finished fourth. Last year, at the Salt Lake Games, he served as executive director of the Canadian men’s team that won gold, the first for the Canadian men since 1952.

In comments before the vote that one IOC member, Thomas Bach of Germany, said “sent me shivers,” Gretzky said: “The impact the [gold medal-winning] game had on my country was amazing. But what the Olympic movement has done for my country is invaluable and irreplaceable.

“Entrust us with your Games,” he said, “and we will make you proud.”

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Olympic games held and/or scheduled in North American cities:

*--* 1904 Summer St. Louis 1932 Winter Lake Placid 1932 Summer Los Angeles 1960 Winter Squaw Valley 1968 Summer Mexico City 1976 Summer Montreal 1980 Winter Lake Placid 1984 Summer Los Angeles 1988 Winter Calgary 1996 Summer Atlanta 2002 Winter Salt Lake City 2010 Winter Vancouver

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