Following a presentation by the Vancouver 2010 organizing committee Thursday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) didn’t question the increased cost of the 2010 Winter Games, reports CP.
Vancouver 2010 CEO John Furlong said there were no questions following the 30-minute report, only a comment by Hungarian member Tamas Ajan on how he observed during a visit to the city that Vancouver residents seem to support and be aware of the Games.
Furlong also said Ajan and IOC President Jacques Rogge commended the Own The Podium program formed to help Canada produce a winning team in 2010.
Canadian IOC member Dick Pound said the cost increase doesn’t sound alarm bells within the organization. He added that the difficulty cities face in submitting bids in current dollar figures is that it is difficult to predict what the economy will do.
“Everybody knows over a period of six, seven or eight years, with inflation, those numbers won’t be the same, but the IOC likes to compare numbers on a level playing field. This is not so much an over-run as what you might expect in the ordinary course”.
Pound conceded that higher costs can make the host’s population nervous. “When it goes up everyone says ‘Oh my God, there’s an over-run. Life as we know it is about to end, and that’s just not the case”, he said. “The organization committee then has trouble persuading the public that they run a good ship and they have to try and raise the money elsewhere”.
