SLAM! Sports
Winter Games
INTERACTIVE
ALSO ON SLAM!
Games all about image, not athletics
Huh?
What do you mean you didn't know they were even going on?
You mean you didn't while away your afternoon hours watching TSN's coverage? You weren't excited by the 23-0 score in ringette (officially listed as 7-0 because, as one official said, "we don't want to turn anyone off the sport")? Or the fact the Ontario women's hockey team trounced just about everybody in winning the gold medal, getting as many as 80 shots on goal in one game?
London, you're next.
The next Games will be held in London. They will be aptly named the 2001 Canada Summer Games because they will be held in 2001 and sometime during the summer.
Corner Brook, Nfld., passed the torch to the organizing committee from London Saturday, as the two-week Winter Games officially ended.
This is the biggest thing to happen to London since we aren't sure what.
London has 30 months to prepare. This event could be a huge boost to the city in terms of image but if things aren't handled correctly, it could turn out to be a nightmare.
Reality is key here. Let's not try to sell this event as a highly competitive, top-notch athletic event. It isn't and likely never will be. In fact, most major newspapers gave it scant notice. While there are some extremely gifted athletes, the Games are held so that many athletes who wouldn't have a chance to compete at the national level now get to do so.
It matters not how many press release adulations are printed or how hard everyone tries to make it something it isn't. These Games are about facilities and image.
Don't waste energy on trying to sell the Games as anything other than what they are mass participation sport. That will leave time for concentrating on doing the important things right.
Start with the facilities. If there is anything to celebrate about the Games, it's the legacy the facilities will provide. These will remain in what is now facility-poor London.
They must be constructed so that they can be useful to more than just the athletes who will hang around for two weeks. Make sure that such things as dressing rooms, playing surface, training facilities are built with a look to the future and the needs of this community.
Do not scrimp. Remember London's aquatic centre where squeezing nickels and dimes led to sardine-can size dressing rooms and no warmup pool.
When you are dealing with a $21-million event, spending wisely is important but so is making the most of that money. Facilities that can't be used to the max will benefit no one. That would be a waste of money.
Hire someone who knows how to deal with the media and train volunteers in handling the media. The image of London will come from television pictures and the pens of reporters and columnists. It's important the media liaison understands the needs of reporters, their deadlines, their need for access to athletes. Make the Games smooth for the media and half the battle is won. London suddenly becomes a well-organized, with-it town rather than Backwater, Canada.
And it's the athletes and their families who will carry the word back to the rest of Canada on how they were treated.
Thirty months. It's never too early to do things right.
MOBITS:
Craig Boydell is a highly successful basketball coach. But after his Western Mustangs men's team won the OUA West title on Saturday, he ran around Alumni Hall like someone who'd eaten too many jalapenos, hugging and jumping anyone in sight. Too uncool, coach.