Following a two-day visit to Vancouver, Gilbert Felli, International Olympic Committee (IOC) Games executive director, said both Vancouver and Beijing, host of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, were better prepared than other cities awarded Olympics. He said, “in both cases, on the day you were awarded the Games, the next morning you could start”.
“The other organizing committees all the time have to wait a little bit because of their organizational structure”, he added.
And the chairman of the IOC 2010 coordination commission, Rene Fasel, said the agreement the Vancouver bid committee had in place with the city, the province, the federal government and First Nations are a model other bid cities should follow.
“This is something very good that we should ask for from future bidding cities”, he said.
“We experienced with other candidates cities that we were losing time. Right after the success of the bid we were waiting one or two years sometimes for people to put together an organizing committee”.
The Vancouver 2010 Bid Corp. will be dissolved by the end of September and will be replaced by the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games Organizing Committee (OCOG). The Vancouver OCOG will be run by a 20-member board of directors who will select the person overseeing the 2010 Games.
Jack Poole, chairman and chief executive officer for the bid committee said, “by the end of the month the OCOC will be incorporated and probably the directors will be named but they won’t have met”.
Poole expects a CEO will be named before Christmas.
In November the IOC will host, for the first time, an orientation seminar where Olympic experts will offer advice to the Vancouver organizing committee, and IOC president Jacques Rogge will be there.
Felli said, “we will bring here some people with experience with what you need to do in the first year of your organizing committee, so as not to lose time and to save money”.
The Vancouver OCOG board of directors will include two members appointed by the city of Vancouver, two members appointed by Whistler, three members appointed by the federal government, three members appointed by the B.C. government, one member appointed by the Canadian Paralympic Committee, seven members appointed by the Canadian Olympic Committee, one member from the Lil’Wat and Squamish First Nations and one member appointed by an agreement between the city of Vancouver and the First Nations.
Ted Nebbeling, B.C.’s minister in charge of the Olympics, says there will be many more visits in the six-and-a-half years leading up to the Games.
