THE NEIL WILSON COLUMN – An authoritative, exclusive new series only from Sports Features Communications
LONDON, Mar 10: Anja Paerson’s 2010 Winter Olympics may be remembered more for her spectacular crash at the final jump of the women’s downhill that the bronze in the combined that was to be the sixth Olympic medal of her career.
The Swede should though be best remembered for what may be the most perceptive athlete’s remark of the entire Games in Vancouver and Whistler: “This Olympics has been definitely about the weather .”
VANOC spokesperson Renee Smith-Valade agreed: “The weather has pushed us to the very limit of our creativity.”
The Winter Olympics, according to International Olympic Committee rules, are all about sport on snow and ice. At these Games you had to go a long way to see the snow. It was either absent, or so enveloped in low cloud and fog that it was beyond the capacity of cameras to capture or skiers to compete on.
Everybody locally knew Cypress Mountain was too close to the sea to be guaranteed the white stuff. Everybody knew Whistler was subject to warm, wet winds off the coast that created fog. FIS had been forced to postpone enough World Cup races there to know it.
Next year the IOC has to make a choice for 2018. Just for its members’ information, so they cannot say in hindsight that they did not know, I have ascertained the following facts on the three candidate cities – on February 28, the final day of these Winter Olympics, the temperature in Munich was 13C, in Annecy 16C and Pyeong-chang 4C.
Shouldn’t take a genius to work out where best to site those Games.
Sochi’s turn
Meanwhile, it might care to know that in Sochi, where the Winter Games go next, the temperature that day was a balmy 15C. So trouble ahead.
Why, I wonder, does the IOC not find a place for Winter Games where the weather is guaranteed to be wintery and stick with it? A permanent Winter Olympic site. No further need for the quadrennial spend on another bobsleigh run or speed-skating oval the world does not need.
Build them once and just keep them up to date. No need even to make it a cost to the locals. The IOC’s own TV and marketing budget would cover it.
Might I suggest a place not un-adjacent to IOC headquarters, a place with the necessary altitude, historic background in winter sports, hotels and mountains. It is called St Moritz.
The only problem I can foresee is persuading the locals to give it house room. The Olympic Family might be a bit low rent for the local burghers.
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