Goodbye Turin, Hello Vancouver – Olympic Flag Raised Today

The Olympic flag was raised in Vancouver today, greeted by the cheers on thousands while four years of preparations await for the 2010 Winter Games.”Ten years of dreaming and the flag is finally ours,” said John Furlong, the Vancouver Organizing Committee chief executive.

The flag was presented to quadriplegic Mayor Sam Sullivan on Sunday during the closing ceremony of the Turin Games.

“Receiving that flag in front of the entire world was one of the most thrilling moments of my life,” Sullivan told the crowd at Vancouver City Hall.

On Tuesday, Sullivan, who broke his neck skiing when he was 19, and an honor guard raised the flag, which was caught by a gust of wind as it was unfurled.

Organizers have a plenty of work ahead in the four years before the Winter Games are held in the sprawling, multicultural seaport of Vancouver and Whistler, one of the top ski resorts in North America.

A short-list of headaches includes rising construction costs in an overheated real estate market, a flap over a new highway for the two-hour drive between Vancouver and Whistler, and how to deal with one of Canada’s seediest neighborhoods.

Earlier this month, in what Furlong pledged would be the last of such requests, organizers asked federal and provincial authorities for an additional $96 million to cover surging construction costs, raising their projected budget to $580 million. With a local shortage of skilled labor, contractors have dispatched recruiters as far as Europe.

We now wait and see what the future will hold for Vancouver.  As with all Olympic Games hosts, issues will arise – it is how Vancouver handles these issues that will make all the difference.