Olympic clock outside the Vancouver Art Gallery

He popular 2010 Olympic clock outside the Vancouver Art Gallery, which stirred so much emotion in the run up to the Winter Olympics was dismantled Wednesday are two faces to be moved to other prominent places.

The clock is a landmark in downtown Vancouver for 1,340 days. The electronic display that the countdown to the Olympics marked to be moved in BC Place, the arena that the opening and closing Olympic ceremonies and the awards night hosted.

Not sold out Vancouver Olympics

Arrangers of Vancouver’s Winter Olympics sold 110,000 fewer tickets than they originally forecast.
VANOC claimed during February’s Games that it had a 1.6 million ticket inventory, but the International Olympic Committee’s Vancouver 2010 marketing report said 1.49 million tickets were sold from a pool of 1.54 million, “generating approximately $257 million in revenue.”
“It’s best to wait until we do our report,” said VANOC chief financial officer John McLaughlin. “Their number is pretty close to the actual (Olympic) ticketing numbers.”
McLaughlin said a breakdown would be in the final VANOC report due this fall. VANOC budgeted for $260.4 million in ticket revenue, which includes Paralympic and Cultural Olympiad sales.
As many as 50,000 tickets to sliding and skiing events in Whistler were unsold. VANOC also reduced the inventory during the Games when it cancelled and refunded 28,000 general admission tickets to Cypress Mountain events because of weather and service issues.
The report said 71% of tickets were sold in Canada. International buyers accounted for 16% of purchases and 11 percent were bought by sponsors and broadcasters. The remaining 2 percent went to the IOC and international sports federations.
McLaughlin said it could take “months” to resolve the $2 million loss caused by Latvian fraudsters who used stolen Visa card numbers to buy tickets on the official VANOC scalping website. McLaughlin said talks with an insurer and Visa are “slow.”
Meanwhile, the IOC report said there were approximately 1.8 billion viewers of the Vancouver Games globally and the potential audience was 3.8 billion

Vancouver Olympiv: One Olympic medal in Vancouver cost Russia 388 mln rbls

In cash terms the Vancouver Olympics proved a far worse failure for Russia than it was from the standpoint of unachieved sports achievements. Billions of rubles were wasted, corrupt functionaries made fortunes, and each Olympic medal cost Russia a disgraceful 388 million rubles, Russia's Audit Chamber said after a probe.
On its website the Audit Chamber published a report of what it called an inquiry into the effectiveness of the use of funds disbursed for the preparations for and holding the 21 winter Olympics and 10th Paralympic Games in Vancouver. The 70 page report lists dozens of instances of outrageous corruption by sports bosses.
Audit Chamber chief Sergei Stepashin reported the findings on Monday, when the presidium of the presidential council for physical culture and sports met in session.
"There are direct financial violations. This will be a subject matter for scrutiny by the law enforcement agencies in the future," Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov, just currently elected president of the Russian Olympic Committee, told the media.
In Vancouver, Russia placed 11th in the unofficial team standing - the worst result in the whole history of Soviet and Russian athletes' participation in Winter Olympics.
As soon as the Olympics were over, ROC President Leonid Tyagachyov tendered his resignation and Alexander Zhukov was elected his successor.
If the Audit Chamber is to be believed, Russia's preparations for the Vancouver Olympics devoured 6.2 billion rubles of budget and extra budgetary funds. While one medal at the Paralympic Games cost Russia ten million rubles, each Olympic medal's price tag carried a nine-digit figure - 388,000,000 rubles.
According to the Audit Chamber's report, the hotel suite of Tourism and Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko cost 1,500 dollars a night, and tickets were sold to Russian fans at eleven nominal prices, says the daily Moskovsky Komsomolets.
As the Audit Chamber has found out, functionaries spent on hotel accommodation tens of times more than they were allowed by the law. Sports functionaries defrauded budget using a variety of schemes, and people having nothing to do with the Olympic team went to Vancouver as its official members.
Tourism and Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko stayed at Fairmont Hotel Vancouver. The Russian delegation paid for that 34,000 Canadian dollars. Two of Mutko's deputies were in the same hotel, too. Their bills were paid from the overall sum transferred for the accommodation of the official Olympic delegation. Nobody has even recalled the government's resolution to the effect the hotel accommodation of employees delegated by budget financed organizations shall not exceed 130 US dollars a day.
Mutko's wife, Tatyana, used the official delegation's charter flight to Vancouver, but she paid the 52,000 rubles for the ticket only in May - after the Audit Chamber launched its probe.
Part of the report exposes how Olympic tickets were sold from the Russian quota. The Russian organizing committee and the Olympic committee of Russia concluded a contract on distributing the tickets in the territory of Russia with a closed joint stock company calling itself Olympic Panorama. That intermediary purchased the tickets at their nominal price. Then it resold 40 percent of the tickets to foreign companies. The remainder was offered to Russian fans at a price eleven times above the maximum level established under the agreement.
The Audit Chamber's report contains detailed information about the theft of money that had been allocated for athletes' training, for purchasing sports gear and for holding competitions, and also other information explaining the Russian team's disgrace in Vancouver.
The athletes' training in compliance with a unified calendar is ineffective and breeds corruption, says the Audit Chamber. Some firms having a staff of just several employees received up to 3.5 billion rubles a year for financing athletes' training process.
As the probe has found out, a center for the training of Russian national teams subordinate to the Sports Ministry purchased sports gear from a provider company without a prior bidding contest and the surplus at the moment of resale to the state reached 66 percent.
The auditors said that many of those who were sent to Vancouver with the Russian sports team had nothing to do with it whatsoever. More facts from the Audit Chamber's report. The national figure skating team included Yana Rudkovskaya, wife of figure skater Yevgeny Plushchenko, and daughter of Figure Skating Federation President Valentin Piseyev went to Vancouver as an interpreter of the snowboarding team.
At the same time a number of athletes' coaches remained overboard.
As it probed into the spending of Olympic money, the Audit Chamber arrived at another remarkable conclusion concerning the team's coaches. Many of them lacked the required qualification and education. The general conclusion is this. "In Russia up to this day there has been no unified agency (or organization) responsible for the special training and participation of Russian national teams in Olympic Games, having all the necessary material resources for this and prepared to bear responsibility."
The results of the inquiry will be reported to President Dmitry Medvedev. The Audit Chamber also dispatched messages to the Prosecutor-General's Office Investigation Committee, the Interior Ministry, the Cabinet of Ministers, the Federal Tax Service, the insurance watchdog Rosstrakhnadzor, the federal agency for the management of state property, the national union of physical culture and sports associations Olympic Committee of Russia and Moscow's Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. The daily Moskovsky Komsomolets quotes a presidential staff official as saying that the Kremlin is waiting for the government to react.
The online periodical NEWSru.com recalls that after the Winter Olympics President Medvedev cracked down on functionaries for the failure of Russian athletes. He did not rule out that the findings of probes might be handed over to the prosecutor's office.
"All that happened despite the fact that investments into the training of our athletes were similar to the costs of other countries. And if one is to be very frank, they were ABOVE those in other countries. The way we see it, the problem is not about a shortage of resources, but about their ineffective use," Medvedev said.
For his part the Minister of Sports, Tourism and Youth Policies, Vitaly Mutko, said about the results of the Audit Chamber's probe that he saw no great problems with sports in the country.
"In the operation of any vast industry one will always be able to find violations," Mutko said.

Vancouver Olympics : Time for a patriotic flashback

As we prepare to celebrate Canada Day, thoughts about what to barbecue brings up some long-dormant memories of the Vancouver Olympics. (Remember them? Huge!)

Head to theprovince. com/gobig, where sports editor Jonathan McDonald remembers the wonderful, unscripted, 40 or so seconds when double-medallist Marianne St-Gelais cheered on boyfriend Charles Hamelin in his own short-track final. While reading it, share your own favourite memories. Canada Day seems like the right time to do it.

Meanwhile, our World Cup player poster series starts Tuesday in The Province. You voted for the top 11 players at theprovince. com/2010worldcup (follow Kyle Benning's Inside the 18 blog, and vote in our World Cup of Women contest, while you're there). We'll deliver a player a day until the July 11 final, starting with Spain's Fernando Torres -- appropriate, since he's got a do-or-die match Tuesday against Portugal -- and continuing Wednesday with Brazil keeper Julio Cesar.

Finally, at theprovince. com/mmablog, E. Spencer Kyte's Keyboard Kimura blog celebrates Fabricio Werdum's Strikeforce win Saturday night.

Vancouver Olympics: Vancouver's Winter Olympics not a sellout

Transport troubles kept the Vancouver Olympics from being a true sellout.
Of the 1.55 million tickets available for the Vancouver Games, just under 1.5 million really sold. The numbers were revealed at a meeting in Krasnaya Polyana, Russia, between Vancouver 2010 arrangers and the team for the next Winter Games in Sochi.
Caley Denton, vice-president of ticketing for Vancouver's organizing committee, said the vast majority of unsold tickets were for mountain events where sales were restricted by an overloaded transportation network.
"We only sold tickets to people within Whistler because our transportation was full," Denton said in a phone interview from Russia.
Ticket sales for Vancouver were ahead of the 2006 Turin Games, where about 80 per cent of tickets were sold. Arrangers of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, meanwhile, said they had the first sellout in the history of the Summer Games.
How much Vancouver organizers made from ticket sales won't be revealed until their final financial report is released, likely this fall.
But the domino effect of transportation on ticketing is one of several lessons Vancouver organizers are hoping to impart to Sochi organizers. There are 45 staffers from the Vancouver organizing committee currently meeting in Krasnaya Polyana, the mountain resort town that is to Sochi as Whistler, B.C., was to Vancouver.
Sochi organizers are building much of their Olympic infrastructure from scratch, while in many cases Vancouver was able to use existing venues.
But there are other similarities, which make the meetings in Russia this week quite relevant, said Dennis Kim, director of licensing and merchandising for the Vancouver team.
"The similarity is the vastness of the country geographically," said Kim. "So there are similarities in that sense: how do you get merchandise and marketing initiatives across broadly when you are challenged by geography?"
In Vancouver's case, they signed a deal with HBC to be the official retail supplier, which allowed Games merchandise to be sold at hundreds of retail outlets across the country.
But that came with challenges of its own.
In her presentation to Sochi organizers, Vancouver's Andrea Shaw noted they didn't realize signing such a deal might create a conflict with another sponsor, VISA.
Shaw said HBC presumed that they'd be able to make the bags for Olympics merchandise but Vancouver staff later learned that right always fell to VISA, a sponsor that's part of the International Olympic Committee's TOP program.
"That was probably one of the biggest challenges, us engaging and understanding the TOP contracts," said Shaw, vice-president of sponsorship sales and marketing.
As part of their meetings, Vancouver also released its 2010 Legacies report Tuesday, the fourth in a series of studies they commissioned on what's been left behind by the Winter Games.
The report illustrates a tension in hosting an Olympics, as it includes projects like highway upgrades and rapid transit expansion which some argue would have been done without the Games and therefore shouldn't factor into their overall cost or benefit.
"It's clear that as of spring 2010, the legacies of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games are still in their infancy. They exist and have a defined path, but it will take years before many of them are fully realized," reads the report.
It concludes: "It's the intangibles that seem to be dominant now - impressions, memories, patriotic feelings, a national sense of pride. They, too, are valid legacies of the Games."
They're also the hardest thing for Vancouver organizers to teach Sochi, other than to think about finding a red mitten campaign of their own.
Over 3.5 million pairs of mittens sold during the Games, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into athlete development.
"You certainly can't plan for the emotion," said Kim.
"We certainly got lucky."
A trend that's emerging at the meetings in Russia is taking the role of the organizing committee global.
Internet sales are a way to put Olympic merchandise in the hands of fans around the globe, noted Kim.
"The expectation for anybody is that if I'm a consumer here in Canada I'd like to get Sochi products because I'm a Sochi fan or maybe I'm a Russian immigrant living now in Canada and really want to get the Russian team gear," said Kim.
"Global sales are timely for Sochi, for other (organizing committees) and certainly the IOC to ensure that global market is achievable through online sales which is the most effective way."
The Internet should also allow great control over ticket sales, suggested Denton. Right now, organizing committees can only sell in the host countries but global sales should become the norm.
"It is going to be easier for the average person to purchase tickets," said Denton.

Comittee President Leonid Tyagachev resigned.

The former head of the committee Leonid Tyagachev resigned on March 23 after Russia's poor showing at this year's Vancouver Winter Olympics.Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov may become the new president of the Russian Olympic Committee, the Russian businees daily Vedemosti said.

Russia ended a disappointing 11th place in the overall medals table, winning three golds, five silvers and seven bronzes. The southern Russian town of Sochi will host the next Winter Games in 2014.

Zhukov's appointment has already been approved by the heads of the committee and several sports federations. It has also been commended by the Russian government. Tyagachev earlier suggested that a deputy prime minister might become the committee's new president and Zhukov is one of the most likely candidates.

The election of the committee's president is scheduled for May 20, but the deadline for applications is April 19.The committee's first vice president Igor Kazikov will serve as acting president until the committee convenes on May 20.

Vancouver Olympics: Where have all the Olympic crowds gone?

While there is much going on in Vancouver and Whistler this week to remind us of those 17 glory days in February, and while Friday's opening ceremony was every bit as spectacular and entertaining as its predecessor a month ago on Feb. 12, make no mistake: The 2010 Vancouver Winter Paralympics is not the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
And much of that is good.
The lineups? They're gone. If you want to get close to the relit outdoor cauldron, for instance, you can walk right up on to the viewing platform and snap away, because on Sunday, arguably the busiest day of the 10-day Paralympiad, there were only a few dozen folks milling around the site.
Never made it to Canada's Northern House? Wander in, until April 18. The big white tent that is Canada House? It's still on the LiveCity Downtown site at Georgia and Cambie and, on Sunday, both were open, with a wait of about 45 minutes.
Across the street, at the Vancouver Public Library, where the Royal Canadian Mint has relocated its popular display, it was also 45 minutes to see the coins and three to four hours to see the medals, half the time it took during the other Games.

Talk of Vancouver: Sven Kramer apologizes after outburst

VANCOUVER — Dutch speedskating superstar Sven Kramer tried to move on Wednesday.
"It is not going to help anyone if I tear the whole place down," he said a day after his stunning disqualification from the 10,000-meter long-track race he was heavily favored to win. His coach, Gerard Kemkers, misadvised him on a lane change after 17 laps of the grueling, 25-lap event, and officials disallowed the result after Kramer completed the race — and appeared to have easily won.
"I am not the person that will stay angry for a long time. It is not going to help me, the team or Gerard," said Kramer, the world's most dominant long-distance speedskater, who earlier in the Games won gold in the men's 5,000 meters. "It happened and it is really sad, but we are not getting that medal from Korea (and Lee Seung-Hoon) back."

Vancouver hands over athlete's village to Olympics

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) -- With 100 days to the opening of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, the athletes village was handed over to the Games organizers Wednesday.
The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Winter Games now begins preparing the 1,100 unit village to house 3,000 athletes.
The eight-acre site has waterfront views of the two stadiums that will host the opening ceremonies and hockey events. Beyond are the snowcapped mountains of Canada's pacific coast.
The steel, concrete and glass buildings surround a central courtyard open to Vancouver's picturesque waterfront.
Vancouver Olympic CEO John Furlong said the location of the village, with its views of water, mountains and downtown towers, will help inspire the athletes to the performance of their careers.
The village will have a bank, cafe, stores and a post office.
The $940 million village did not come without controversy, going millions of dollars over budget and requiring the city of Vancouver to come to its financial rescue after New-York-based hedge fund Fortress Investment Inc. pulled their backing when global economic crisis hit.
"This has not been an easy project," Furlong said.
After the Games the village will return to the city of Vancouver, which will try to sell the suites as condos to recoup its investment.
"I would be surprised if we're anything beyond a break-even," Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson said.
Of the 1,100 units available, 737 will be available as condos, with the remaining used as affordable housing and rental properties.
Robertson turned the village over to Furlong in a ceremony at the site.
Furlong said representatives of the 2014 Sochi, Russia and Rio de Janeiro 2016 Games have already visited the Vancouver village as they plan their own.
Organizers also announced this week that accommodations for more than 6,000 people working in and around the Whistler ski resort have been found. Whistler is the site of the alpine and sliding events, cross country, biathlon and ski jumping.
The International Olympic Committee said in a statement that the all of the venues for the Vancouver Games are now complete and they "will give athletes, spectators and TV viewers some spectacular backdrops as they compete and watch the world's best winter athletes go for gold next February."

Vancouver Olympics: Carbon neutral status for push

Twenty five partners of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games have joined forces to help make the Games carbon neutral.
The partners including corporate sponsors, governments and broadcasters have volunteered to offset some of their own carbon emissions related to the Games, such as emissions generated by delegations travelling to and from the region.
These partners will invest in a portfolio of B.C. clean energy technology projects, as well as international Gold Standard offset projects. The 2010 Legacy Portfolio is developed and managed by Vancouver based Offsetters, the Official Supplier of Carbon Offsets for the 2010 Games.
The energy efficiency and renewable energy projects will help offset a newly updated forecast of 268,000 tonnes of carbon emissions 118,000 tonnes from direct emissions and 150,000 tonnes from indirect emissions resulting from Games-time travel by participants and spectators.
This updated estimate, prepared by the Centre for Sustainability and Social Innovation at the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business, was released this morning.
A preliminary estimate prepared by the David Suzuki Foundation and reviewed by PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2007 suggested the Games would produce approximately 330,000 tonnes (110,000 direct, 220,000 indirect) of carbon emissions.
"We're excited to announce that 25 of our partners are helping us make the 2010 Winter Games carbon neutral and we expect more to join in the near future," Linda Coady, VANOC's vice-president of sustainability, said in a release. "What's more, athletes at the Games will be the first carbon neutral athletes in Olympic and Paralympic history the result of our partnership with Offsetters where the travel and accommodation of close to 7,000 athletes, coaches and officials will be offset as part of the Games' direct carbon footprint."
The first companies and governments participating in the 2010 Carbon Partner Program for voluntary offsets include: Acklands-Grainger, Afexa Life Sciences (COLD-FX), Aggreko, Atos Origin, Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC), BC Hydro, Bell, Bombardier, the British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC), Canada's Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium, Canadian Pacific, Canwest Publishing Inc., City of Surrey, Coca-Cola, Hudson's Bay Company, the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC), McDonald's, Panasonic, the Province of British Columbia, Royal Bank of Canada, Resort Municipality of Whistler, Ricoh Canada, Samsung, The Globe and Mail, and Visa.
In another Olympic first, Vancouver 2010 Olympic Torch Relay presenting partners Coca-Cola and RBC joined VANOC in offsetting all their emissions arising from the 45,000-km journey across Canada, as well as from their entire operations related to the Games.
"We're proud to be the first Official Carbon Offsetter in Olympic and Paralympic history and have the opportunity to showcase how British Columbia is playing a leadership role within Canada and internationally in the fast growing clean technology sector," said James Tansey, president of Offsetters, a leading BC-based carbon asset management company and supplier of high-quality carbon offsets. "We also invite spectators participating at the Games, along with members of the public, to help play a role in making the 2010 Winter Games carbon neutral by voluntarily offsetting emissions from their travel to and from the Games region."
Spectators can calculate their carbon footprint and purchase carbon credits online at www.offsetters.ca .
As part of the offset portfolio for the Games, Offsetters is working with B.C. clean technology companies to establish demonstration projects, such as: biomass gasification systems for renewable heat and power production, manufacturing of cellulosic ethanol (biofuel made from wood debris), proton exchange membrane hydrogen fuel cell technology, computer controlled hybrid fossil fuel and electric building heating systems, and reduced carbon footprint silviculture.