WHISTLER, British Columbia - "Keep coming alive, Whistler," rapper Black Thought told the audience more than once as his band, The Roots, rocked the Medals Plaza here Thursday night.
It was superb (and free) show; I hope it was broadcast into every living room in North America so more people can realize what all-time-great music these legends from Philadelphia are making. But aside from that, the message, "Keep coming alive," stuck with me.
Whistler has been coming alive these Winter Olympics, as has Vancouver a two-hour drive south, with enthusiasm and internationalism on the streets but also with national pride. Now, with the games ending this weekend, it's appropriate to ask one of the big questions: What next with these venues?
Will they do like Lake Placid and build on the international sports reputation these games leave them until it becomes their biggest thing going? Perhaps no Olympic town has made more of that designation than ours, although Park City, Utah is working on it.
Or will these Canadian locales be like Albertville, France, which was a non-destination before the 1992 Winter Olympics and still is, especially compared to its famous neighbors like Chamonix and Grenoble?
This destiny crux is critically important given the ridiculous public expense of the Olympics. The taxpayers are on the hook for so much money that they expect more than just a two-week sports party. They want those two infamous words: economic development. If your town can start drawing events and tourists it never got before, create jobs and keep that up consistently the way Placid has, the history books will be written in your favor. If not, you're left with nothing more than you had before. If you're Squaw Valley, Calif. and your Lake Tahoe tourism is up there with the busiest resorts in the U.S., that's not bad. If you're Sarajevo, it's not so good.
Whistler is packed with people these days, but people who live and work here tell me it's always like this in ski season, when a lift ticket already cost almost $100. But these games add prestige and international fame as well as continued international sports like the World Cup events Lake Placid hosts every winter.
The regular reuse of these new, state-of-the-art venues is the key to that latter aspect. Squaw Valley's venues went to seed and are no longer around now that the area wants to bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Calgary and Salt Lake City, on the other hand, took their lessons from Lake Placid in that regard.
But one key Whistler venue, at least, may be a hard sell. The death of Nodar Kumaritashvili of Georgia should make international luge officials wary about ever having a World Cup event here. While it's true that every new sliding track evokes crashes and complaints at first, a death is another story, especially this early into this track's life. It is so much faster than any other track in the world that it stands out from the rest anyway. Now with this, it may sit idle so long that maintenance lags and it falls into disrepair. What a gigantic, expensive lesson that would be to all who would build a sliding track in the future.
Bobsled saw many crashes on this track as well, but bobsledders don't go as fast as lugers and are protected by their sleds. Skeleton, also, is not as fast as luge. People seem to think that both these sports, which share administration, will probably return to whistle down this track for future competitions.
But luge? If not, will the sliding track lose too much money?
One of the main uses of sliding tracks is training. If this one is so difficult, so atypical, will sliders choose to train elsewhere? Will Canadians keep their training in Calgary, for example?
The more limited a venue like this becomes, the more of a money pit it is.
The same concern goes for the Whistler Olympic Park's nordic ski venues up in Callaghan Valley. They are excellent, but they are nearly a three-hour drive from Vancouver, where there are three million people to draw from as paying customers. They're even a 45-minute drive from Whistler. Callaghan Valley will probably be used for international training as well as competition, but I wonder how often that will be and what the cost of maintaining the site will be. It will probably run in the red; how much will be too much for those paying the bill?
Some venues are in better shape. Whistler's alpine ski runs will be bustling, of course, and in suburban Richmond, the long-track speed-skating center is looking forward to an absolutely certain future - but not for speed skating. The oval and the stands inside this building will be removed and replaced with hockey rinks, basketball courts and a running track for the public to use. The city of Richmond paid for half of this facility in a competitive bid, and therefore the city will inherit it. There just aren't enough competitions in speed skating to reserve a venue exclusively for it, so community use was deemed the better use.
In Lake Placid, a state authority pays the bills, but it has the benefit of owning and profiting from the 1980 Olympics' alpine ski center, Whiteface Mountain. With that, the state Olympic Regional Development Authority generally comes out about even: some years a little in the red, some years a little in the black.
Again, pretty much no Winter Olympic host city or village has made as much of that status as Lake Placid, but the towering public investment the Winter Olympics require is so big that it would be a shame to see poor planning result in snuffing the Olympic flame that some winter venues keep burning all the time.