Patriot Hearts (30 page)

The track was immediately closed so police and others could do whatever forensic work was needed. There were even discussions about whether the luge events should be cancelled entirely.

In the meantime, we were learning more about Nodar and his family. We were informed that according to their customs, the body needed to be buried soon. Given the requirements of Canadian law and the autopsy and coroner’s investigation that would need to be completed, it was unlikely we could repatriate his body back to Georgia before Thursday—a week away.

I also had to start thinking about the opening ceremonies and what we were going to do to acknowledge Nodar’s death. The
IOC
had its ideas and I had mine. I would also have to change my opening night speech, as would Jacques. I phoned David Atkins and we talked about possible scenarios. David was the only person who would know exactly how we could achieve a level of balance between showing the appropriate respect and compassion for this young man while at the same time giving the world the opening ceremonies for which it had been waiting.

At first, the
IOC
wanted to open the ceremonies with a moment of silence. David was against that. He said that would start the ceremonies in the worst possible way. I felt for David at this moment and I trusted his judgment. Here he was preparing for an incredibly complex undertaking, getting the artists and the stadium ready and at the last minute we say to him: “Oh, by the way, David you need to incorporate a major change to your plans.”

I repeated to him that if the event wasn’t managed properly the public would be furious that we didn’t demonstrate the proper respect while the world watched. We would never be forgiven for a bad blunder with something like this. The stakes were enormous. I told him that when the Georgia team walked into the stadium we could expect the loudest ovation of the night, next to that for the Canadians. But David knew all this intuitively anyway. The Nodar tragedy would remind me once again why our tiny friend from Australia was the perfect choice for the job. In my mind, he was a Canadian with an Aussie accent.

In the meantime, I was really worried about the capacity of the International Luge Federation (
FIL
) to handle this crisis. At the meeting with the
IOC
that morning, representatives from
FIL
seemed overwhelmed—shell-shocked and scared. They didn’t have the communication skills and expertise to manage a problem of this enormity. They were going to be under relentless scrutiny and pressure from the media. Their organization was going to come under attack about the conditions of the track. There would be questions about what happened now. Would events go ahead? Would the track be changed? I remember telling Josef Fendt, the federation’s president, that his organization needed to lean on us for help and support. I asked Renee Smith-Valade, our vice-president of communications, to assign someone to them right away. She was already on it. Managing this crisis was her biggest test too. It was important that we did everything possible to ensure that the athletes who would be competing had the best experience possible.

The day was evaporating on me. The relay was moving throughout the city to non-stop applause from the tens of thousands of people lining the route and would conclude sometime after noon. Given the events of the day, it was a bright spot and allowed me to feel a little joy amid the gloom. Even a protest flare-up on the east side of the city could not quell the spirit of the crowd.

In the afternoon, I went up to my hotel room to start getting ready for the opening ceremonies. I remember standing in front of the bathroom mirror putting on a black tie and thinking about how odd it all felt. I thought about my speech and was anxious that I strike the right chord when it came to acknowledging Nodar. I also wanted to ensure that people in the stadium still had a great experience. I practised my speech several times, still sweating over the few sentences in French. I had written the speech word for word myself, like every one I had ever given. Before the morning tragedy, I had been feeling good about the messages I was going to be communicating. Now I was distracted and my confidence was shaky.

At the stadium, I needed to visit with the folks at
CTV
, who had been there all day fine-tuning their evening coverage plans. I was going to be interviewed by Brian Williams, who was anchoring their coverage. I know Brian well and he’s a terrific guy with loads of Olympic experience. But the interview felt awkward and uncomfortable almost from the start. The network was our Olympic partner, and yet at this moment I felt
CTV
standing back from us. It was almost as if Brian was trying to establish some professional distance. While I was talking to him, protests were going on outside. They made it difficult to concentrate, that’s for sure. It was not my favourite interview.

The weather, meanwhile, was dreadful. A torrential downpour was creating havoc on the roads. Protesters were also helping to gum up traffic. Unfortunately, the protest got closer to
BC
Place Stadium than we anticipated. Originally, buses carrying media,
IOC
dignitaries and others were supposed to pull up outside the stadium seven and eight at a time, discharging people going to the show. But the protest not only slowed progress of the buses to the stadium, it also forced the police to restrict the number of buses stopping to one at a time. Those getting off the buses were being pelted with objects by the protesters. It was brutal.

Unfortunately, a few key people didn’t get to the stadium on time to see the opening few minutes of the show. Some were clearly annoyed, including those
IOC
members who were late and not amused. The prime minister did make it on time but was not happy about the fact that some federal officials were late. Some
PMO
officials weren’t too pleased either and vented hard. While they didn’t come right out and suggest we had screwed up their transportation, that was the clear implication. But as I suspected at the time, and later confirmed, the late bus carrying federal officials and others was operated by Ottawa.

While the delay was just a few minutes, it seemed like a metaphor for the day. Everything was a little off.

The
IOC
members who were tardy had been a little too casual when it came time to leave their hotel for the stadium. I think they had assumed an effortless process. After that, we had to lay down the law with them and everyone else: the buses are going to leave at precisely the moment they are supposed to. You are either on that bus or not, but it’s not waiting. It would end up being the last time we had problems getting
IOC
members or dignitaries on buses on time.

By the time I took my seat in the president’s box at
BC
Place, an upscale section roped off for Jacques Rogge, the prime minister, the Governor General, the premier and others, the stadium was mostly packed. The late arrivals very quickly filled the place up. I was getting e-mails on my BlackBerry every five to 10 seconds at this point. There were notes of sympathy from friends who were wondering how I was holding up given the events of the day. But mostly there were e-mails from people telling me what a great day it had been in the city and how proud they were, Nodar’s death notwithstanding. People around the world were sending messages of congratulations and wishing us well. It was nice to get the feedback because my brain was still too frozen and overflowing with painful thoughts about Nodar to focus on anything else. Darlene Poole was sitting beside me, lost in her own thoughts about her beloved Jack, how much he would have loved to have been there in the front row.

I remember being especially nervous about the opening scene of the ceremonies, which would end with snowboarder Johnny Lyall jumping through a set of Olympic rings in the stadium. I had witnessed him doing it successfully many times during practice. This was for real. There would be no second takes if it didn’t work or he fell and crashed horribly. But Johnny nailed his part perfectly and from the floor welcomed the world in English and French. My heart immediately slowed by a few thousand beats. We were on.

As I sat watching the show, my mind wandered. The spectacle was wondrous. A great Canadian story was manifesting itself and the world was watching. But I couldn’t stop worrying about my team. They had definitely been knocked off their game by Nodar’s death. Dave Cobb, Terry Wright, Cathy Priestner Allinger and the rest of the executive had had a hellish day and were doing their own soul-searching. More than once that day, I recall thinking that we were going to find out pretty quickly how good an organization we really were. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t worry about the situation deteriorating further. It’s like the plane that starts falling out of the sky at 35,000 feet. If the pilot doesn’t have control by 10,000 feet it’s crashing. We were in that plane right now and it was my job to somehow bring us out of that free fall. If we didn’t get the situation under control, all of the problems were going to be laid at my feet and everyone was going to say: “See, he was the wrong guy after all. He didn’t have nearly the right experience. What were we thinking?”

Everywhere I looked inside the stadium people were smiling. Behind me sat the chiefs of the four First Nations whose traditional territories the Games were being held on. They represented the Squamish Nation, Musqueam Indian Band, Lil’wat First Nation and Tsleil-Waututh First Nation. They were being recognized as heads of state and sat behind the prime minister and Governor General. One of the most impressive and heartwarming parts of the evening was the welcome of the athletes by the Aboriginal peoples of Canada. This is where the hundreds of hand-picked young Native leaders, sent to us by their elders, came on to the floor to dance and sing and greet the athletes as they walked into the stadium. No other country could have presented this, not this way.

The show seemed to rivet the audience. I could sense the crowd was waiting for the team from Georgia to enter the stadium and when it did, with each of the athletes and coaches wearing a black armband in honour of Nodar, they received a prolonged, genuine Canadian standing ovation, just as I knew they would. It was both beautiful and a little heartbreaking to watch. My eyes were wet, but I was so proud of our country. We were reaching out the only way we knew—embracing our wounded visitors.

About halfway through the show, Jacques and I were beckoned to the green room in the bowels of the stadium to get ready for our appearance onstage. Makeup. Earphones. Sound checks. Pretty soon I was walking out with the
IOC
president and standing before the lectern, more nervous than I had ever been in my life. After Jacques delivered a joint statement of condolence, I was alone at the lectern, shaking and self-conscious.

“With Jack Poole and Nodar Kumaritashvili in our hearts,” I began, “and standing on the shoulders of every Canadian, I commit that the men and women of Vancouver 2010 . . . are ready to deliver the performance of a lifetime.”

I had hoped to reach out to the athletes, to let them all know how much we admired and respected what they did, on so many levels. I wanted to express that we had the utmost confidence and belief in them. But I also wanted to acknowledge the heavy hearts with which they would be competing. “At these Games you now have the added burden to shine and be united around your fallen comrade Nodar. May you carry his Olympic dream on your shoulders and compete with his spirit in your hearts.”

I had given thousands of speeches in my life, but never with so many people watching, with so many people wanting to hear what I was going to say and how I was going to say it. Yet I had never felt more humbled in front of an audience.

I was also concerned about my French sentences. No matter how hard I tried, I was never going to sound like anything other than a person with little to no skills in Canada’s other official language. Some friends liked to joke that I hadn’t mastered English yet, let alone French. It was almost ridiculous how much I fretted about this, how much I obsessed on the amount of French content there was in the production. I knew we were going to be judged on how much French was spoken or sung: it couldn’t just be subtitles on a screen; people needed to hear and feel the language. Still, I felt we had achieved a good balance, challenges notwithstanding.

I don’t know what it is about me and French. When I read the pages of my speech that night, the French words seemed to be moving on the page. I wasn’t helped by the fact that the lighting cast an awkward shadow so I couldn’t see the page properly. I’m pretty sure I was awful. And if I had any doubt I certainly got enough e-mails reminding me. But I tried as hard as I could. Short of living in French for a year ahead of time, it was always going to be difficult for me.

“This journey has not been about the few but rather the many,” I continued. “All Canadians—Aboriginal Canadians, new Canadians, English-and French-speaking Canadians and the myriad of cultures, microcultures, languages and peoples that make Canada Canada.

“On this, the proudest night of my life, I thank my loyal, selfless teammates, our tireless Blue Jacket volunteers, our partners, our thoughtful leaders, the
IOC
and global Olympic family and our many friends and our families for their belief, their efforts, their sacrifice and their courage.”

After Jacques and I finished, we walked back to our seats. I missed k.d. lang’s haunting rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” a song that seemed more appropriate than ever. The audience radiated enthusiasm and didn’t want the evening to end. My daughter Molly was waiting for me. She greeted me with her beautiful smile and a warm hug, which always has a way of making me feel good.

Then it was almost time for the Olympic flag to be brought into the stadium by Donald Sutherland, Betty Fox, Bobby Orr and the others. Betty looked radiant with her snow-white hair. After that, Hayley Wickenheiser took the oath on behalf of all of the athletes at the Games.