Legacies of North American Winter Games - Calgary

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  The official poster of the 1988 Games in Calgary.

  The 1988 Olympic Winter Games in Calgary, February 13–28, was highly successful. The Calgary Olympic Games welcomed 1,423 athletes from 57 nations, included 176 events, and stretched the Winter Games program for the first time from 12 to 16 days.
• Since the Calgary Olympic Winter Games, the Calgary Olympic Development Association (CODA) has become the country’s leader in developing winter sport excellence.
• Three Olympic sports, curling, freestyle skiing and short track speed skating, started out as demonstration sports at the Calgary Games in 1988.
• Calgary did not put on a Paralympic Winter Games, but it did host three Paralympic events as demonstration events. After 1988, there was a stronger commitment to creating an independent Paralympic Games to follow the Olympic Games.

• Athletes like Christina Smith, who at the Salt Lake City 2002 Olympic Winter Games was one of the first two Canadian women in history to compete in the bobsleigh, have said watching the Calgary 1988 Olympic Winter Games inspired them. In reference to Canada Olympic Park, the Montreal-born Smith has said, “We’re so blessed to have this, because if this facility wasn’t here I would not be a bobsleigher, I would never have dreamed of being a bobsleigher.”
• Twenty members of the Canadian Olympic team at the Olympic Winter Games in Torino were current or former members of the National Sport School in Calgary. The school was the brainchild of CODA, and is operated jointly by CODA and the Calgary Board of Education; without the Calgary Olympic Games and the facilities it left behind, the school would not exist. Six Olympic medalists have been students at the National Sport School since it was established in 1994.
• Fourteen members of the Canadian cross-country ski team in Torino were born and raised in the town of Canmore, whose permanent population in 2006 was only 15,000. Almost 20 members of the team lived and trained in the town. Chandra Crawford, who took gold in the ladies’ cross-country sprint, was born in Canmore; Sara Renner, who took the silver with Beckie Scott for women’s team sprint, lives there. There is no question that the facilities built in Canmore for the Olympic Winter Games were a key factor in building such strong athletes.
• As of spring 2006, Calgary’s Olympic Oval was home to 25 of 26 National Team speed skaters, 17 of 19 speed skaters who competed at the Torino Winter Olympic Games and one short track National Team skater. Five of seven National Team long track coaches worked at the oval, along with one National Team short track coach.
• The Canadian medal count has grown every Olympic Winter Games since 1988, from five in Calgary to 24 in Torino. At the Torino Games, more than 25 percent of the 196-member Canadian team was from Calgary and the surrounding area. Almost three-quarters of the medal winners in 2006 were either Albertan or had been training in the province at facilities that are a legacy of the 1988 Olympic Winter Games.
• The Canadian Sport Centre – Calgary (CSCC) is one of CODA’s beneficiaries. One of the top Olympic sport training environments in the world, and a member of a network of eight centres Canada-wide, CSCC provides athletes with leading experts in the fields of exercise physiology, sport medicine, strength and conditioning, nutrition, mental training and coaching. It also develops athletes as individuals and as community leaders.

• Calgary’s strong history of volunteerism was crucial to the success of the city’s Games. As a result of its “pioneer spirit,” its tradition of using volunteers to stage the Stampede and the experience of hosting a successful Olympic Games, Calgary was Canada’s “Volunteer Capital” in 2006. Seventy-one percent of Calgarians volunteer, compared with a national average of 27 percent; 11 percent of Calgary volunteers are unpaid teachers and coaches; and 44 per cent of volunteers donate their time to sports and recreation.
• Calgarians were so impressed with the experience of volunteering for the XV Olympic Winter Games that a group of them, calling themselves After ’88, volunteered to help out at the next Winter Games in Albertville. Although the group even offered to pay their own expenses, After ’88 was turned down due to lack of accommodations.
• Some Calgary Olympic Winter Games volunteers still get together for parties, more than 18 years later. Many of them still own, and wear to these parties, their official volunteer jackets.

• The 1988 Olympic Winter Games were a financial success. They turned a profit that fuelled an endowment fund of $70.5 million that is now worth $185 million and continues to fund sport in a variety of ways.
• After the Games, the Calgary Olympic Committee (OCO) gave the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) $40 million, which it invested so that it is now worth $110 million. That money helps fund the COC’s $8 million annual contribution to national teams, coaches and athletes; allows it to be a self-sustaining organization that does not rely on government funding; and helps it send athletes to compete at the Olympic Games every two years.
• The Calgary Olympic Winter Games contributed about $1.4 billion to Canada during the 1980s through capital projects and improvements ($506 million), operations and planning ($310 million) and visitor expenditures ($150 million), and induced economic benefits ($424 million).
• The host province, Alberta, benefited from 70 percent of the economic effects of the 1988 Olympic Winter Games, including 27,400 person-years of employment.
• Using information provided in economic impact assessment completed in 2006 for CODA (Econometric Research, Ltd., A Business Case for Olympic Legacy Renewal) CODA estimates that the total value-added gross domestic product impact of the Calgary Legacy facilities since 1989 had been $925 million (adjusted for inflation).
• Almost $6 million has been awarded to more than 1,800 Canadian athletes and coaches since 1988 through the 1988 Olympic Torch Scholarship Fund; in 2004 alone, almost 100 athletes and 25 coaches received scholarships. They have included speedskater Susan Auch, skier Ed Podovinski, hockey player Cassie Campbell and biathlon athlete Glenn Rupertus. The fund ranks among Canada’s largest private sources of post-secondary education funding. Petro-Canada established it through sales of souvenir glasses to “assist high-performance elite provincial to Olympic-calibre athletes and coaches prepare for future competition and pursue their post-secondary studies.”
• The Olympic Oval Fund provides $100,000 a year for sport science and sport medicine. This money comes off the top of any proceeds the Oval realizes, set aside in a fund held by the University of Calgary. The intention of the fund is to support high-performance sport research and sport medicine research, while supporting graduate students in their work and some educational development initiatives.
• Calgary set a precedent as the place where the International Olympic Committee (IOC) sponsorship program called The Olympic Program (TOP) began. TOP allowed 10 international corporate sponsors to provide financing to the IOC, the Calgary Organizing Committee and to the National Olympic Committees around the world. This program has grown and developed into a major source of revenue for Olympic sport.

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  An iconic moment of the Calgary Games: Elizabeth Manley's come-from-behind victory to win the silver medal in figure skating for Canada.

  The 1988 Olympic Winter Games left behind five world-class sports facilities and improvements to many more. As a result of those facilities — Nakiska at Mt. Allan, the Olympic Saddledome, the Olympic Oval, Canada Olympic Park and the Canmore Nordic Centre — eight national teams now call Calgary and Canmore home.
• Because of its Olympic facilities, Calgary has been able to host over 200 national and international competitions since 1987.
• Some 1.5-million people a year attend events of every kind at the Pengrowth Saddledome, formerly the Olympic Saddledome. The building is also home to the Calgary Flames, the Western Hockey League Calgary Hitmen and the National Lacrosse League Roughnecks.
• The Olympic Oval is still considered the fastest ice in the world. It has been the site of 17 of 30 world records.
• The Games also made Calgary a sport research centre through the provincial government’s funding of the University of Calgary’s Human Performance Laboratory and Sport Medicine Centre. It is considered one of the best sport research facilities in the world in the areas of biomechanics and sport physiology and sport medicine, according to Dr. Roger Jackson of Own the Podium 2010.

• With Dick Pound playing the role of negotiator, Calgary won an unprecedented USD$309 million from ABC for US television rights.
• As Professor Harry Hiller pointed out in The Planning and Evaluation of Hallmark Events, the money provided to the Calgary Olympic Committee (OCO) by this broadcasting contract helped it in numerous ways to put Calgary’s best face forward during the Olympic Games.
• Broadcasting the Olympic Winter Games worldwide allowed Calgary, then a small city with a population of 650,000, to see itself reflected in the world’s eyes.
• Two billion people worldwide watched the opening ceremony of the Calgary 1988 Olympic Winter Games.
• Some 21 million people worldwide watched the World Cup events in Canmore in 2005, held at the Canmore Nordic Centre. The centre was built for the 1988 Olympic Winter Games and was recently refurbished to return it to world standards.

• through increased opportunity for participation in sport;
• through motivation from inspiring athletes (Canadian Olympians Sara Renner, Beckie Scott and Hayley Wickenheiser have said they were inspired by the 1988 Games);
• through access to state-of-the-art facilities;
• through improved instruction because of the presence of world-class coaches in their community.

• Canada Olympic Park (COP) offers school programs under the auspices of Campus Calgary. A total of 400 children a year get a week of education at COP, learning their curriculum in the contexts of competitive sport and striving to be their best.
• Together, CODA and the Calgary Board of Education introduce 40,000 Calgary schoolchildren a year to winter sports at Canada Olympic Park.
• Close to 30,000 children, youth and adults participate in organized recreational programs at Canada Olympic Parks every year.
• The program Sport For Life features a team of influential Olympic athletes and youth ambassadors delivering messages on the importance of having a healthy, active, tobacco-free lifestyle to 10,000 students in Grades 4 to 6 each year.

• The XV Olympic Arts Festival was the longest running and most comprehensive arts festival ever held in conjunction with an Olympic Winter Games, involving approximately 2,200 artists from 18 separate arts disciplines in more than 600 performances and exhibitions. More than 197,000 tickets to 258 events, were sold, worth $2.6 million.
• More than one-fifth of Calgarians attended at least one event at the 1988 Olympic Arts Festival, which not only showcased artists from around the world to citizens of Calgary but also introduced local artists to their own community. Since then, and in part due to the boost in funds and confidence the festival provided, Calgary has become one of Canada’s most thriving theatre communities and has experienced a boom in art collecting.
• The Spirit Sings, an exhibition of 650 Native Canadian artifacts drawn largely from foreign collectors by the Glenbow Museum, drew 126,506 visitors, 7,000 of whom filled in comment cards. Although objections had been made to The Spirit Sings by a variety of Native and non-Native critics, the comments suggested that the exhibition had a profound effect on many viewers and contributed to greater understanding of Native life and history by non-Natives and Natives alike.

• Civic pride is an important if intangible result of hallmark events. Many Calgarians still have framed posters from the 1988 Olympic Winter Games in their homes. They think of the XV Winter Games as “a time of the possible,” said the Olympic Arts Festival’s Karyn Allen.
• Calgary was physically enhanced by the Olympic Games. Professor Harry Hiller noted in The Planning and Evaluation of Hallmark Events that the Calgary Olympic Winter Games hastened decision making and funding for an extension of the light rail transit, gave the incentive to pursue other projects that might not have been undertaken, and provided “the legitimacy for the infusion of large sums of money not only for the Olympic functions themselves but as a way for the country, the province and above all the city to enhance its image. The overarching compelling rationale of preparation for the Olympics in general tended to minimize opposition and controversy thereby supporting large capital cost expenditures.”
• In its report on the economic impact of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, which uses tourist impact scenarios based on analyses of the Calgary 1988 Olympic Winter Games, the Sydney 2000 Olympic Summer Games and Expo ’86, among other events, the BC Ministry of Economic Development notes “every dollar spent in preparing for and hosting the Games will have an economic impact, regardless of who spends the dollar.”
• “The economic rewards are largely dependent on striking an appropriate balance between the all-in cost of hosting the Games, and the visitor volumes that can be generated before, during and following the Games,” said the BC Ministry of Economic Development report. “As Expo ’86, Calgary ’88 and other hallmark events have demonstrated, a long-term boost in visitor volumes can be achieved with a combination of well-executed Games delivery and a media campaign carefully designed to integrate with, and take full advantage of, the international broadcast coverage before and during the Games.”

• From a low of 400,000 visitors to Alberta in 1983, the number of tourists increased fairly steadily to over one million in 1999. (While, as is the norm, there was a drop in visitors from the year of the event to the next, the year after that it began to climb.) Alberta posted average annual gains in international tourists of 3.2 per cent for the first five years after the Olympic Games, compared with an average annual loss for the rest of Canada, excluding British Columbia.
• Calgary’s Canada Olympic Park is the second largest tourist attraction in Alberta, apart from the Rocky Mountains. It draws one million people each year, 300,000 of them skiers and snowboarders.
• Like Calgary, the town of Canmore gained exposure from the Games. “The platform of the Olympics was a springboard — the world saw Canmore,” said John Samms, executive director of Tourism Canmore. The town’s population growth bears this out: in 1988, Canmore’s permanent residents numbered 3,200; by 2006, 15,000.
• Tracey Grindal, manager of market research for Tourism Calgary, said the most obvious effect of a city hosting the Olympic Games is the increase in international importance. “It puts you on the world map,” she said. “It sets you apart. It broadens your image.”

• Dates: Feb. 13 to 28, 1988
• 57 NOCs (Nations)
• 1,423 athletes (301 women, 1,122 men)
• 46 events
• 9,498 volunteers  
  

• News Release:  British Columbians can take comfort from Calgary's real experience, former President and CEO of Calgary 88 says
• Download: Legacies of North American Winter Games - Volume 2: Calgary 1988