Australians may benefit from "home court advantage" at the Vancouver Olympics

[depakid]

ONE OF Vancouver's distinctions, carefully overlooked by organisers in the prelude to the Winter Olympics, is that it is Canada's rainiest city. Nearly 1200millimetres falls here every year — 350 of it in February alone — more than half of Melbourne's annual rainfall in one month. For most of yesterday, it rained.

Usually, the rain presents no greater problem than can be solved by an umbrella. In the nearby mountains of British Columbia, it means plenty of snow — the region's lifeblood. For the past three winters, it has turned to slushy snow even in downtown Vancouver, and the locals complained.

But in this era of climate change consciousness, the butterfly effect teaches us about the possibility that when a seal belches in Antarctica, the snowline moves by several hundred metres in the northern hemisphere, down across most of blizzard-wracked north America now, but by a freak of swirling ocean currents, up on Canada's western seaboard.

It mean less snow than usual at Whistler — one of the world's premier ski resorts — and almost none at Cypress mountain, overlooking Vancouver, where Australia's likeliest medallists will compete. Rain, notionally so closely related to snow, is also its mortal enemy; call it the Balkans syndrome. More fell at Cypress yesterday, dissolving the previous day's dusting of snow. The ominous forecast for the next week is for more rain, more unseasonally warm weather, and more sweaty palms and brows.

It means that these Winter Games, which look and feel as meticulously prepared as any other recent staging, stand to be reduced to so much snowmelt by the very characteristic that defines the Winter Games and the one factor that was beyond the remit of human agency. Or almost beyond. Authorities took a calculated risk by opting to stage part of the Games on Cypress, figuring on the view it commands across Vancouver and the spectacle it would make on television. It can only be hoped that they took out insurance.

Meanwhile, a new humour has arisen, as black as a snowcloud. Canada's snowboarding high-performance director Christian Hrab said that in pursuit of glory, "no stone had been left unturned" and locals blanched. Another official dwelled on his country's prospects on "home soil", once an innocent figure of speech. Even IOC president Jacques Rogge was in on the act. "On the one hand, we were always urging for a green Games," he said. "Maybe we have to plead for something else."

Perhaps the only pair truly laughing are satirists Roy and HG, who while presenting The Ice Dream from the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002 ran a campaign to have the 2010 Games, then unallocated, staged in the NSW hamlet of Smiggins Holes, with its one tow rope. Now, it doesn't look so absurd. Games veterans still ask affectionately after Roy and HG.

Vancouver's organisers remain optimistic and obstinate; they have no choice. At Whistler, they have injected water into the downhill course, the better to freeze it. At Cypress, they have brought in 300 truckloads of snow, more by helicopter, plumbed pipes for dry ice into the moguls jumps to provide a kind of central cooling, laid tarps over the courses and built tents over the aerials jumps. "Absolutely there will not be cancellations," said Stuart Aldred, the Australian who is supervising the venue. "Success is the only option."

Nor will there be a switch of venues. "Plan B is the same as plan A," said Canadian Freestyle Association chief executive Peter Judge, "and so is plan C."

For the Australians, the grey and uncertainty comes as a perverse bonus. Low visibility, doubtful snow, jumps with crumbling edges, slushy landings, sudden cancellations: these are conditions they know and understand. If the worst comes to the worst, Vancouver will be just like Mount Buller's Chamois Run; it will be like home. "Anyone involved in winter sports knows that these things happen," said Australia's chef de mission, Ian Chesterman.

More: http://www.theage.com.au/sport/winter-olympics/the-snow-must-go-on-20100212-nxj2.html