Furlong Says Vancouver 2010 "Changed Our Country"

(ATR) Vancouver 2010 president John Furlong says the Games "live on today."

"The Games completely changed our country. They made us believe in things we didn’t believe in before, they united us and they made us love our country more, he said at the Smart Cities & Sport Summit in Lausanne.

The annual summit drew dozens of cities from around the world, all of them seeking to host international sports events, big and small.

Furlong, 65, led the bid for the Games from 2001 and then the organzing committee when the city won the Winter Olympics in 2003.

"The vision for Vancouver was to change everyone’s life – to make the Games matter to everyone in a very profound way."

"The expectations were very high in Canada and the pressure was enormous to deliver on the vision for the Games," he said.

Furlong captivated the audience as he told how he nervously sat next to IOC president Jacques Rogge and International Ice Hockey Federation president René Fasel at the thrilling gold medal hockey game on the final day of the Games between the U.S. and Canada.

Half-jokingly, Furlong said he believed "that there was no force on earth" that could stop Canada from winning this game." A victory for the home nation in their beloved sport would mean the world for Vancouver’s legacy.

"There was this wonderful energy that was going on – God was going to see that were going to win today," Furlong said.

"This is almost like a matter of national security for Canada," Furlong kidded.

With Canada leading 2-1 in the third period, he said Fasel said to him that "it would be great for the sport of hockey and TV ratings worldwide" if only the U.S. could tie the contest and send it into overtime for an even more dramatic conclusion.

Furlong says he told the hockey boss to "shut up and that if the U.S. scored he would stab him with his pen," triggering a burst of laughter.

Sure enough, the Americans dramatically knotted the contest with 24 seconds remaining, but Canadian star Sidney Crosby scored the game-winning goal early in overtime, saving the day for the team, the entire nation and arguably Vancouver’s legacy.

Furlong spoke of the joyous and patriotic celebrations on the city’s Granville Street, perhaps 400,000 people, following the gold medal triumph.

Asked by Around the Rings how might Vancouver’s legacy might differ had the Americans instead won this critical contest in his hockey-mad country, Furlong said Canadians would have been good sports if need be.

"I would like to think that we would have risen to the occasion, and be gracious and celebrated as well, although we obviously would have been disappointed."

Furlong said that Canada delivered on all of its promises to the IOC and did so operating with a modest venue budget of $580 million dollars.

"We found solutions for things that would have been too expensive for us," Furlong told the audience in Lausanne.

He advised that all Olympics venues are still in use today, something that he says draws pride.

Furlong also talked about Vancouver’s darkest moment when Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili died following a fateful training run at Whistler Sliding Center on Feb. 12, 2010, the opening day of the Games.

"It was just about the worst possible start for us and it was one of the worst days of my life," Furlong said. "It caused a whole organization to tremble, it caused everybody to tremble.

"It was a horrible day and it was a day I was not sure we would be able to overcome," he said.

"Overcome it we did, we got up off the ground, we fought back, we tried to show that we were still worthy to put on the project, that we could still rally together and out of that catastrophic adversity we could still achieve a great outcome," Furlong said.

"It was a very dark beginning and very difficult and extremely painful for the country."

Furlong has faced his own challenges after the Games. A 2012 newspaper report raised allegations that Furlong abused students at a rural school where he was a physical education teacher. He has denied the claims and has never been criminally charged. Last month a defamation suit against him filed by the newspaper reporter was dismissed. During the trial Furlong said that his career as a motivational speaker collapsed because of the allegations.

In 2013 his wife died in a car crash in Ireland, where the couple lived at the time. Furlong was born in Ireland.

He still has significant positions in Vancouver as chairman of Rocky Mountaineer Railtours, Own the Podium and the Vancouver Whitecaps. He also serves on the board of Canadian Tire and Whistler Blackcomb. He led Vancouver’s successful bid for a stop on the HSBC World Rugby Sevens World Series tour.

Written by Brian Pinelli.

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