Patriot Hearts (7 page)

In Lausanne, we sat through many different sessions. During one, Terry had a question that was answered by an
IOC
official. I then asked Terry if he understood the response and expected him to say, “Yes, thanks very much,” or whatever. Instead, he whispered a little too loudly, “Yes, what he’s really saying is they are going to ding us for a bunch more money.” Well, the whole room heard the aside. My jaw dropped. By the end of the day, word had spread about Terry’s retort. Committee officials weren’t impressed, and more than a couple told me so. They said that the comment had made us look like rude, arrogant know-it-alls.

That night I went to Terry’s room and told him what people were saying. He felt sick. It could never happen again, we both agreed. That’s the way this thing worked. The smallest setback seemed like a bid-threatening development that could throw us into depression.

We managed to right the ship in Lausanne. Terry worked extra hard to make sure people didn’t think he was too self-assured or cocky. At the end of the final session, I got up and thanked the
IOC
officials on behalf of all of the bid cities for their time and guidance. We took a lot of notes. We realized our competition was extremely tough.

The next few months I would have to maintain a brutal pace. I would be flying around the world a couple of times.
Votes. Votes.
Votes.
That’s what it was all about.

Our international strategy was pretty straightforward. We would have to count on Europe to get us over the top. We knew we weren’t likely to get far in Asia or most of South America or Africa. We had the U.S. onside—or so we thought. That left Europe, which we felt optimistic about. And our odds of making inroads there improved after Berne dropped out when an Olympic plebiscite in the city failed to produce the required number of votes to go ahead. Little did I know we would be facing a similar referendum of our own in a few short months. With Berne out, Salzburg and Vancouver were chasing many of the same delegates.

The bid process could hardly be described as logical. Sometimes we sought out Hail Mary opportunities on the off-chance something might work out. Delegates were scattered all over the world, so face time with them was often hard to arrange. When we had an opportunity, we pounced on it immediately. One such occasion occurred that August. Canada was hosting the women’s U19 World Cup of soccer. Sepp Blatter, the iconic head of the International Federation of Association Football, or
FIFA
as it is commonly known, was in the country and, we were told, was going to be passing through Vancouver on his way to Edmonton, where the tournament was being held. Working with our friends at the Canadian Soccer Association, we arranged to squirrel him away for an evening to talk Olympics. Sepp was an
IOC
member and an influential one at that. We wanted to make an indelible impression on him. We decided this would be a night for Jack Poole and his wife, Darlene, to put on the ritz at their sprawling estate in Mission, a rural community 90 minutes east of Vancouver. The plan was to send a helicopter for Sepp and fly him to Jack’s place, while showing off a little of the local geography at the same time.

We met Sepp when he touched down on the estate’s landing pad. Yes, Jack had his own landing pad. The Pooles poured on the charm. The steak was brilliant and so was the apple pie. We had a great evening talking to one of the most influential sports kings in the world, who waxed eloquently about sport politics, including those that surrounded the
IOC
.

Sepp was in his element—at the centre of attention with no pressure. I asked him at one point what his vision was for the game of soccer. “I will not be satisfied until every child on the planet owns a soccer ball,” he said. And he meant it. Sepp was a formidable man, short and stocky and with an imposing face, who seemed to dominate his surroundings the way someone much bigger might. By the end of the night we were friends. As always, we didn’t ask for Sepp’s vote but we were all smiles when he told us we could count on him.

One person who became important to our effort in Europe was Pat Hickey. I didn’t know much about Pat, only that he was from Dublin and was a heavy-hitter in the
IOC
. I figured if I couldn’t wrap up the vote of a fellow Irishman we were doomed. I phoned up my brother-in-law, Padraig MacDiarmada, in Dublin and asked him what he knew about Hickey. Padraig said he didn’t know much other than that Hickey was often in the news and seemed to be a controversial fellow. Padraig said he’d do a little more digging and get back to me. He phoned back a couple of days later. “You’re never going to believe it. Guess where Pat Hickey went to high school? St. Vincent’s!”

Pat had graduated four years ahead of me, but it was a wonderful tidbit and gave me a great conversation starter when I called to see if we could meet. A month later Bob Storey and I met him at a restaurant in Dublin. Pat is one of those guys who fills a room when he walks in, a real bon vivant. I told him we were new at this Olympics game, and didn’t have enough confidence and needed his help. I wanted him to adopt his former schoolmate. Take me under his wing. It worked. Pat would sign on to “help an old friend” as he often put it, doing as much intelligence work for us as he could.

He became an important insider for us. Whenever he heard any negative scuttlebutt about our bid, he passed it along. One time he told me that someone, likely another bidder, was spreading a rumour that we had no intention of fixing the road from Vancouver to Whistler, which needed to be widened in order to give our bid a shot at success. The B.C. government had committed to making it happen. Pat’s tipoff was important because it allowed us to go out and address the misinformation that was being spread.

It had become clear that the Russians would be crucial to our bid. They had six or seven votes, and we had already done quite a bit of spadework to get their support, telling their officials that we’d be happy to help them launch a later bid of their own. The person who ultimately influenced where their votes would go was a man named Yuri Luzhkov. Luzhkov had been mayor of Moscow since 1992, having been appointed by Boris Yeltsin. Since then, he had consolidated his power base in the region and had become one of the most influential people in the country. He owned all the McDonald’s restaurants in the city and was quite wealthy.

Late in the game we had arranged to meet Luzhkov during a trip to Moscow. His office was near Red Square. There were about a dozen people milling about in the foyer an hour before the meeting was to start, though I wasn’t sure who they were or what role any of them played. We weren’t there long before a message was delivered that Luzhkov wasn’t going to be able to make it and was sending his deputy. I choked. We had come halfway around the world for this. He was the key guy. He was the one who influenced all of the Russian votes. The room quickly cleared after that news arrived.

Bob Storey and I were then told of another change of plans and were soon escorted into a large, ornate room with massive chandeliers and billboard-sized oil paintings. Within minutes the door swung open and who should walk in but a short, powerfully built man with a bald head and a general demeanour that suggested you didn’t want to mess with him. It was Luzhkov.

As it turned out, the earlier message had been a ruse. If he said he wasn’t coming, all the would-be power chasers, sycophants and hangers-on would disappear, we were told. We quickly got down to business. Moscow was now fully declared and bidding on the 2012 Summer Olympics. Luzhkov said the country wanted our help with the planning of its bid. We talked about the deal we had earlier worked out with Russian officials: we would show them the ropes, explain how a bid was prepared, and give them our campaign strategy in exchange for their votes.

It seemed perfectly reasonable to me. Bob had structured the deal, and we had spent months finessing it. There was certainly nothing illegal or unethical about it. When we shook hands I never doubted for a second Luzhkov would be good for his word. Say what you want about various aspects of Russian life, the people are loyal. We kept our word and staged a formal workshop for the Moscow 2012 team. We got Russia’s crucial support in return. Moscow would lose out to London for 2012.

By the time the bid phase was over in July 2003 I had travelled nearly 2 million kilometres chasing down votes. There were days I could really feel it and had to push myself to go out to some restaurant or cocktail party in Madrid or Reykjavik or Mexico City to have a chat with an
IOC
member. But I figured that as long as I was asking my staff to test the limits of their endurance, to work harder than they’d ever worked before, I had to do the same. Also, I believed that the tiniest, seemingly most inconsequential gesture or conversation could affect us. That extra mile we went to get a single vote could be the difference between utter joy and utter dejection.

There were days, though, when I was seriously beat. I remember one trip to St. Moritz. It was at the end of a long European jaunt, and I had travelled by car through the mountains most of the day and evening to get to the famous Swiss resort town. It was almost midnight when I finally checked into some no-name hotel, got to my room, threw on my pajamas and flopped into bed. In seconds I was out cold. I woke up around 3 o’clock in the morning in an utter fog. I honestly had no clue where I was. I looked around the drab room for hints, but nothing helped me.

I walked downstairs to the lobby, but there was no one working at the front desk. I still had no idea where I was. I went outside and started walking down the street. I was in my pajamas. I had no shoes on. I remember thinking:
What on earth are you doing, man?
But I was genuinely lost until I came across a confectionery shop a couple doors up from the hotel. I looked in the window and there were some cakes with little bobsleds and curling rocks on top of them. Bobsleds. That’s right. I was at the World Bobsleigh Championships in St. Moritz! I felt like such an idiot. And I was scared. I scampered back to the hotel on the balls of my cold feet, praying no one would see me.

MOST OF THE FALL
of 2002 was spent preparing our bid book. The organization was just over 50 strong by now. Linda Oglov, our marketing chief, had raised over $30 million and signed many sponsors big and small. So our bid book would be top-drawer and we could afford a world-class campaign. The bid book had to include our definitive plans and cost estimates. This was the document against which the
IOC
and the Canadian public would hold us to account. It was a massive undertaking and we had been working on it for the better part of three years. It would be made public in January 2003 and be the basis of a major presentation to the
IOC
’s evaluation commission in the spring.

But the civic elections of November 2002 threw us a curve. Mayoral candidate Larry Campbell had promised during his campaign that if elected he would hold a referendum on whether to host the Olympics. It was a pure populist move, and I was livid at Larry. Still, I didn’t think he’d follow through if he got elected. Well, he won in a landslide, and he quickly made it known he had no intention of backing off his pledge to voters.

Jack went to visit Larry to see if he could move him off this promise. He had no luck. So I decided to take a run at him myself, two Celts going head-to-head. I didn’t mince my words. “You know what you’ve done, don’t you?” I said.

“What?” responded Larry.

“You’ve sent a message to the
IOC
that their time is worth nothing,” I continued. “You’ve indicated that everything we’ve said so far about the city being behind this exercise is questionable. You’ve suggested that we don’t fully believe our own story anymore, that we’re second-guessing if we should be in this thing. And in the process we’ve tied up the
IOC
’s time through visits and presentations and now we’re saying that we may not have really meant it after all.”

Larry was having none of it. He said his position was a matter of trust and integrity; he’d made an election promise and he was going to honour it. I told him he could easily tell the public he’d reconsidered his position on a referendum and had decided it would not be in the best interest of the bid for a vote to go ahead. Or he could say it was too expensive. But he was adamant. The best he could do was promise me that he’d campaign for the Yes side.

I was furious. A similar vote had killed Switzerland’s bid, and now there was a chance the same thing could happen to us. Publicly, I took a different position because I felt I had no choice. If I railed against the plebiscite it would look as if I was worried about the outcome. Instead, I chose to take a positive view, suggesting that I was convinced that the vote would be overwhelmingly in our favour. Others weren’t so sure.

David Podmore, a local developer who headed up Concert Properties, the firm he had founded with Jack Poole, came to our offices one day shortly after the referendum was announced and offered us some blunt advice: if we didn’t have a Vote Yes campaign the 2010 bid corporation was going to be out of business. Even though a majority of Vancouverites might be in favour of hosting the Games, he said, they might not feel it was important enough to waste part of their day going out and casting a ballot. And if those people stayed home, the bid was going to be in trouble.

He was right. Thankfully, David agreed to chair the campaign and bring his trademark energy and focus to the project. With David out front, Jack was sure we would succeed. There were few people in the city with David’s skills package. It was why he was so often asked by government to help turn around troubled projects.

In the run-up to the plebiscite, he was relentless. He went on radio talk shows to debate those opposed to the Olympics. He opened up a Yes campaign centre that hundreds of canvassers he recruited used as a base. He raised an estimated $700,000 to finance the campaign. I don’t even want to think what might have happened without David’s efforts.