KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia '€” Canada'€™s Own The Podium sport development program may have worked well for the host team at the 2010 Games, but that model might not work for other countries, International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said this week.

In an exclusive interview with Canwest News Service at the 2010 debriefing in this mountain resort town near Sochi, Russia, Rogge said he watched as OTP was born amid public and political criticism and yet became one of the two major successes of the Vancouver Games.

KRASNAYA-POLYANA, Russia - The Vancouver 2010 Games left a positive legacy not only on in sports venues and sustainable buildings but also in a new sense of national pride, sport development and international awareness, according to a report released by the Vancouver Organizing Committee.

The report, prepared by journalist Kate Zimmerman, was commissioned by the Vancouver Organizing Committee as the last in a four-part review of the legacies of Olympic Games held in North America since 1980. She had earlier looked at the legacies of the 1980 Lake Placid, 1988 Calgary and 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games.

EventStar Services, a Surrey-based event production firm, says it is owed $80,000 for work done on broadcast centres used by CTV during the 2010 Olympics.

EventStar official Cary Campbell said Tuesday that his company provided crews to Blackwalnut TV, an American company, hired by CTV to build and maintain sets used by the Canadian television network at Olympic broadcast centres in Vancouver and Whistler.

BARCELONA, Spain (AP)—Juan Antonio Samaranch, a reserved but shrewd dealmaker whose 21-year term as president of the International Olympic Committee was marked by both the unprecedented growth of the games and its biggest ethics scandal, died Wednesday at a hospital. He was 89.

Samaranch, a courtly former diplomat who served as Spanish ambassador in Moscow, led the IOC from 1980 to 2001. He was considered one of the defining presidents for building the IOC into a powerful global organization and firmly establishing the Olympics as a world force.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP)—A jersey worn by Sidney Crosby during a Team Canada game against Switzerland at the Vancouver Olympics has sold at auction for $35,034.

A puck from the overtime period of the gold-medal hockey game is in an Ohio resident’s hands at the cost of $13,088. A tray that held the medals presented to the gold-medal winning women’s hockey team sold for $4,990.

That’s according to Dennis Kim, director of merchandising for the Vancouver Olympic organizing committee.

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA(AP) —A jersey worn by Sidney Crosby during a Team Canada game against Switzerland at the Vancouver Olympics has sold at auction for $35,034.

A puck from the overtime period of the gold-medal hockey game is in an Ohio resident’s hands at the cost of $13,088. A tray that held the medals presented to the gold-medal winning women’s hockey team sold for $4,990.

That’s according to Dennis Kim, director of merchandising for the Vancouver Olympic organizing committee.

LONDON (AP)—The light towers are in place atop the Olympic Stadium. The diving pool is filled with water. The athletes’ village is expanding daily.

With less than 2 1/2 years until the opening ceremony, the Olympic Park is rapidly taking shape for the 2012 London Games.

A bus tour of the 500-acre site on Friday revealed steady and visible progress in turning a once-unused swath of east London into the centerpiece complex for the Olympics, as well as a new city neighborhood after the games.

By STEPHEN WILSON AP Sports Writer

LONDON(AP)—The light towers are in place atop the Olympic Stadium. The diving pool is filled with water. The athletes’ village is expanding daily.

With less than 2 1/2 years until the opening ceremony, the Olympic Park is rapidly taking shape for the 2012 London Games.

WHISTLER '€” The 2010 Paralympics, breaking new records in attendance and visibility around the world, closed out in a flash of colour and patriotism Sunday night as athletes from around the world gathered under a basketball court-sized Canadian flag and wished the Games goodbye.

In the end it was as much about the game itself as it was about the gold.