VANCOUVER – It wasn’t until the complaints started pouring into his office that Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson realized there was a small issue with the Olympic flame.
The distinctive four-pronged cauldron was behind a big, ugly fence. People were upset they couldn’t see it or take pictures of it.
And no one from the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee had mentioned to Mr. Robertson that this is how it would be displayed.
He went down to see it.
“It was upsetting but it was fixable,” he said.
And overnight, he and his team worked with VANOC and “got the whole thing shifted.”
Now, he says that crowds have tripled and VANOC volunteers are out on the streets having to direct people to where it stands.
“I think it has turned a positive to a negative and back to a big positive,” he said.
This is Mayor Robertson doing damage control.
Yesterday, the Mayor also appeared on CNN and CNBC to talk up the Games and talk down what he refers to as the “challenges.”
The cauldron “access issue”, he says, was one of the “challenges.” Indeed, it has become a metaphor for the glitches and missteps that seem to be bedevilling the early days of these Games.
“It’s a tricky situation where this is the most accessible an Olympic flame has ever been to the public in terms of the proximity,” he said in the interview with the Globe.
The Olympic flame is burning on a site by the water with the mountains as a backdrop. It’s lovely.
“And yet fences had to go up to keep people safe from big giant burning flames and to keep troublemakers away …,” he said.
A British newspaper has referred to these Olympics as the “worst Games ever”, providing another one of those challenges for Mayor Robertson.
“They are setting themselves up for a couple of miserable years,” says the Mayor, referring to the fact that London is the host of the 2012 Olympic Summer Games.
“Every Olympic city frets and moans and groans about the cost and chaos and construction. We went through all of that.
“And it doesn’t help to accentuate all the negatives and drag everyone down into the muck especially now when … we are setting all kinds of records for viewership and attendance,” he says.
The other challenge: the lack of diversity in the opening ceremonies, especially Canada’s francophone culture.
“I talked to people involved in the ceremonies, he said. “They acknowledge the difficulty in reflecting so much diversity and doing justice to all the different peoples who are part of Canada.”
He is hopeful this will be addressed in the closing ceremonies.
However, the most difficult challenge has been that of the young Georgian luger, who was killed last Friday on the luge track.
There is not much that Mr. Robertson says about this.
Rather, the most “powerful moment” of the Olympics for him, he said, was last Friday when everyone stood in BC Place as the Georgian team marched in.
“Everyone was feeling it,” he said. “It was heartbreaking and it was so powerful that all of us grieved and channelled our support for the Georgians.
“It really comes down to how we have dealt with whatever challenges come up … we’re being good Canadians.”
(Photo: Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson. Jeff Vinnick/Getty Images)
