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In 1988 Calgary, Alberta, welcomed the winter sport athletes of the world by hosting the XV Winter Olympic Games. For sixteen days in February, 2,300 athletes and team officials from fifty-seven countries participated in ten medal sports, one demonstration sport (curling), two demonstration events (freestyle skiing and short track speed skating), and one exhibition event (disabled skiing). Approximately 4,900 members of the media covered the events. Great Olympic champions like Katarina Witt and Raisa Smetanina shared the limelight with more eccentric competitors such as British ski jumper Michael Edwards ("Eddie the Eagle") and the Jamaican bobsled team.
The games cost $700 million (Canadian),
about half of which funded the building of
new sports facilities. Revenues totaled about
$850 million, about 50 percent from the federal,
provincial, and municipal governments,
35 percent from the ABC television contract,
and the remaining 15 percent from marketing,
licensing, and ticket sales. The financial legacies
from the games have never been equaled
by any other winter or summer games. The
approximately $150 million left in the bank in
1988 had grown to about $280 million by 1998
and along the way had also provided about
$30 million from earned interest to finance
the operation of the various sport facilities
and to support athletes.
The first indoor 400-meter speed-skating
oval, a new physical education complex, and
new residences (the Athletes' Village) were
built at the university. Bobsled, luge, skijumping
facilities, and a museum were built at
Canada Olympic Park on the western edge of
the city. A new alpine ski area was developed
in the Kananaskis Valley, and a new Nordic
Center was built at Canmore. A 19,000-seat
arena, the Saddledome, was built for hockey
and figure skating. Ten thousand volunteers
were utilized at the time of the games, and
20,000 had been involved since the games
were awarded in 1981 at the International
Olympic Committee (IOC) Congress in Baden
Baden, Germany.
To this day, these games are still considered
by the IOC as truly exceptional, perhaps the
finest games ever held, winter or summer. For
a Prairie cow town of 640,000 residents, nestled
close to the Rocky Mountains, such accolades
may at first be surprising. The reasons
for this success were the superb organization,
the extensive continuing benefits, and, most
significantly, the attitude of the people of Alberta.
It was their warm welcome, their enthusiasm
to host the visitors, their willingness to
make the extra effort to ensure that strangers
were well taken care of that made a positive
impression. Local residents explain that this is
the natural way Prairie communities have collaborated
for the past 150 years. There seems
to be an innate need to welcome strangers,
particularly those from the big cities. Alberta
is comprised of people from all parts of the
world who still maintain cultural traditions
from their countries of origin. Therefore, the
Belgian-born chocolate maker in Calgary became
the assistant to the Belgian team, and the
Austrian Club of Calgary hosted the Austrian
team and families every evening at its club.
Calgary always has been a sports-minded community, active for more than a century with curling, hockey, skating, baseball, and many other sports and having competitions from the earliest days with its Prairie neighbors. It is known internationally as the home of the Calgary Stampede rodeo. Today, the city is also known throughout the world as the host of the superb Calgary Winter Olympic Games.
See also CITIES AND TOWNS: Calgary, Alberta.