Less than three weeks until the Sochi Olympics
Posted January 17, 2014 12:50 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Russian Olympic organizers are busy putting the final touches on everything with just 20 days to go until the world’s eyes are on them.
Former VANOC CEO John Furlong says four years ago at this time, our organizers were experiencing high but positive anxiety and that’s likely what’s going on there too.
“I suspect that the Russians are bracing themselves as we would have been. You go through this period where you’ve double, triple, quadruple checked absolutely everything,” he explains. “They were awarded the games seven years ago, when you get awarded the games seven years out you have no sense of how long and how demanding and how challenging and project like this is and it takes every second, every piece of energy you have to deliver it.”
He says they are probably running into some surprises too, just as we did when there wasn’t any snow up on Cypress Mountain.
“It was the ultimate test for us to see if we could solve that problem. Whoever thought that we’d be harvesting snow from 110km away and moving it down the highway to Cypress and then pushing it up the hill and fine tuning those venues to make sure they are perfect for the games.”
The Games get underway on February 7th.
