Patriot Hearts (33 page)

For instance, I had Dan Doyle, our executive vice-president of venue construction, head up to Whistler and oversee things there for a bit. The idea wasn’t to be looking over people’s shoulders but rather just to have someone people could turn to if doubt started to creep into their decision making. More a guiding hand than anything and Dan was a pretty good shoulder to lean on. Donna Wilson, our vice-president of human resources, went to Cypress Mountain to boost morale of a Games team that was exhausted, wet and frustrated.

The warmest February in eternity was causing massive headaches at Cypress, and there was the rain to contend with. It was literally threatening to wash out events. This was leading to the second-guessing we’d anticipated about why we had planned so many events on Cypress instead of Whistler, where cold weather and snow were more of a sure thing. The short answer was that Cypress offered advantages that Whistler didn’t. It was a lot closer to more people, for starters. That allowed us to get more Olympic tickets in the hands of more spectators. Not such a bad motivation. On a beautiful day, the view from Cypress over Vancouver was one of the most stunning in the world. And, frankly, we didn’t anticipate we’d be dealing with weather that hadn’t been seen in the area for more than a century. Whistler was already over capacity with five stadiums, an Athletes’ Village, a Celebration Plaza and other facilities.

THE IOC HAD
required us to stage test events in the period leading up to the Games. It was a chance for them to see us under the kind of pressure we would face at Games time. And for us it was an opportunity to face the stresses of competition, a chance to put ourselves through the wringer. Chances were that if there was a flaw or weakness it would reveal itself during these test events, and there would still be time to fix them.

We had scheduled 21 such events and boasted an impressive report card at the end. Almost straight A’s. The program allowed our team to test transport, technology, security, accreditation, scoring systems and food and beverage. All the venues but one seemed a perfect fit: Cypress. The venue was tight, access tough, the owner not wildly enthusiastic that we were there, and there was always the worry that snow conditions might be problematic.

The test events at Cypress in 2009 were far from Olympic-calibre, with one postponement, so we had serious work to do. This fairly modest mountain was to face its stiffest test—ever. It had a year to become world-class. We worked hard to ready the hill, develop a spirit of teamwork on the site, recruit the best kinds of volunteers, install snow-making and lighting equipment and create an upbeat stadium atmosphere. By Games time, one of the most stylish grandstands ever built on a North American mountain was in place, a full 14 storeys top to bottom. Looking straight down on the finish corral for ski and snowboard cross (fairly recent Olympic disciplines) and other events, it looked like a giant Meccano model. Eventually the mountain, with its multiple venues, was transformed. We had turned water into wine. In its coverage,
NBC
favoured Cypress for its amazing vistas.

The organizing committee had taken painstaking measures to prepare for every kind of weather. Unique weather station technology had been installed in the mountains through a partnership with Environment Canada—the sole purpose to help us get in front of every imaginable winter challenge. Too much snow, too little snow, none at all, rain, sun, flying saucers—the system could tell. For years we watched, analyzed and tried to predict what was coming—usually with bang-on certainty. The data said don’t worry. The data said we would manage. In Whistler, if the same weather technology said we’d have a clear window at 10
AM
to start a downhill event, then
voilà
that’s what we got. Pretty impressive stuff . . . until we needed it most.

In the months leading up to the Games, Cypress had looked good. But then conditions started to bounce around a bit. The mountain was acting strangely, just not co-operating. We thought that, based on previous years’ data, it would right itself and the snow would come, and plenty of it. Just after Christmas the situation was beginning to look dire. No snow or so little it hardly mattered. The little snow that the mountain got was in the wrong places. On top of that, it wasn’t cold enough to make any snow artificially.

Early work we had done on the mountain was destroyed by warm winds. January was the warmest in Vancouver since record-keeping began in 1937, with a mean temperature of 45 degrees Fahrenheit, or more than seven degrees higher than normal. It was El Niño Plus. At Capilano Golf and Country Club, a few kilometres from Cypress, men and women were playing golf in short sleeves. The fields of play on the mountain were breaking up. With the start of the Games closing in on us, the condition of Cypress had become the daily focus of our mountain operations team. New plans were drawn up. Still parts of the mountain were more brown than white, and pretty soon the media were going nuts with doom-and-gloom stories that went around the world.
Will they make it? Is
there any hope?

The pundits were having a field day predicting it was only going to get worse. The sport and venue teams collaborated endlessly, new money was found as contingencies for other things were reduced and major decisions were made to shore up our position. Creativity was the order of the day. We were now looking for bales of hay to protect and stabilize the runs, creating false but strong and effective bases to hold the snow. Meantime, we were hunting for other snow that was compatible with the snow on the mountain.

The crew was determined not to let the mountain defeat them. Every day was a new adventure with very little help from the sky. Every ounce of snow was taken from other sites on the mountain and stockpiled for emergencies above the runs. Erickson Air-Crane helicopters carrying the hay to key locations made for dramatic pictures, and when trucks started to haul snow from Manning Park it was clear to all it was game on—man versus mountain.

As the days ticked down, the mountain operations team, led by Paul Skelton, was exhausted after practically living on the mountain for weeks. I went up many times to see the work and cheer them on. Their Olympics had started and they were after a gold medal—nothing less. If something was humanly possible then they tried it. Dave Cobb, Terry Wright and Cathy Priestner Allinger worked day and night making key strategic decisions with the crew, and while there were many setbacks they chewed their way through each one. This was not going to be the site of the first-ever Olympic event outright cancellation.

To provide encouragement, I asked the premier to visit the workers. He had lunch with them and told them how proud he and the people of the province were of their heroic work. It meant the world to them.