Last summer, John Fraser and his wife, Cate, were waiting with the crowd in the village square at Whistler when the International Olympic Committee announced the winner of the 2010 Games.
Fraser was one of the first people ever to ski at Whistler, taking a train in 1962 from Vancouver, B.C. — there was no road — to what was then a fishing lodge on the shore of Alta Lake. He and seven others chartered a helicopter to take them up to near the peak of Little Whistler and they skied all the way back to the base. That group trip formed the Garibaldi Olympic Development Corporation, determined to build a ski area at the site that could attract the Olympic Winter Games.
When the ski area opened in 1966, Fraser borrowed against his life insurance to build a cabin at the base because no bank would loan him the money. His bank manager told him, Fraser said, "Nothing is ever going to happen up there at Whistler."
After long-shot bids for the 1968 and 1972 games failed, Whistler got its act together to make a push for the 1976 games. Fraser was the chairman of the executive committee and the steering committee for Whistler’s 1976 Olympic bid.
"Our plan was to have really every event right here," he said, sitting in a coffee shop in the heart of Whistler village.
He still has the bid book — a big, impressive document filled with statistics and blueprints. It shows the event would have cost an estimated $46,845,936 Canadian. Consider that just the bid for the 2010 games cost Vancouver and Whistler more than $34 million Canadian. The games have grown.
"We were going to have a much smaller Olympics," Fraser said. "Similar to Lillehammer (site of the 1994 Winter Games in Norway)."
When the ‘76 games were awarded in 1970, Whistler still wasn’t much to look at — just a gondola and a chairlift stretching up the mountain from what is now the Creekside base. There was a garbage dump where the village is today. Nevertheless, Fraser was convinced his group could win.
Reality stepped in the way, however. Montreal was awarded the 1976 Summer Olympics, making it politically impossible for another Canadian city to host the Winter Games. The Winter Olympics were awarded to Denver, Colo., only to have Colorado voters reject a $5 million bond to pay for the Games, forcing the International Olympic Committee to turn to Innsbruck, Austria, as a fallback host.
Whistler tried again for the 1980 Winter Games in 1974, then hung up its Olympic hopes for 30 years. For the Frasers, the Olympic dream never went away. One of their three daughters, Anna Fraser-Sproule, competed in freestyle skiing at the 1988 Winter Games, finishing fourth in aerials, and won the World Cup in aerials in 1986.
Meanwhile, Whistler grew into a world-class resort. Blackcomb Mountain opened right next door in 1980 and competition between Whistler and Blackcomb forced both to expand and improve, until each offered about a vertical mile of skiing and together they covered more than 7,000 acres.
When Vancouver began to think about making a bid for the 2010 Winter Olympics, the stars were aligned in Whistler’s favor. Vancouver would host the opening and closing ceremonies, hockey, ice skating, speed skating, curling, snowboarding and freestyle skiing (at Cypress Mountain in North Vancouver), while Whistler would get the alpine skiing events, the bobsled and luge, and the Nordic skiing events.
On July 2, 2003, the IOC made its decision. The crowd in the square put up a cheer when Vancouver and Whistler won the bid, but Fraser was quiet.
"I was remembering what it was like in 1970 when we lost," he said. "I had a feeling of dismay in my role in talking so many people into it and having it fall apart. … I was remembering it vividly.
"All of the sudden, that was all in the past. Our hard work, our faith in the area was vindicated."
And so, six years and about three weeks from today, the biggest ski area in North America will become the biggest attraction on the planet. Whistler is already hard at work preparing for the eyes of the world.
A long-planned expansion of the Sea to Sky Highway that links Whistler to Vancouver has already begun. Signs on the mountain mark where the Olympic alpine ski races will be held. Banners on every light post herald different Olympic events and tourists sit for pictures in the bobsled outside the 2010 Olympic Bid Office in the village, where some wag has crossed out "bid" on the sign.
Locals talk about the games with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation. Mostly, they worry about the traffic and the crowds, but they also fret that their mountain may not measure up, that fog or snowstorms or rain will turn Whistler’s time in the spotlight into an unflattering exhibition.
The officials in charge of getting Whistler ready, though, are confident the games will go as smoothly as first tracks in morning corduroy.
"For 16 days, there will be a lot of temporary obstruction," said Hugh O’Reilly, the mayor of Whistler. "I think a lot of people are pretty excited about it — in exchange for that, you get the Olympics."
O’Reilly said losing the earlier bids gave Whistler time to grow into its role.
"We’ve bid two or three times (before) and the best thing that happened is that we were not selected," he said. "We’ve spent 25 years building the best mountain community in the world."
It’s not unreasonable to wonder why an already famous ski area needs the attention and fuss that go with an Olympic games. Pride and love of sport count, said Tourism Whistler spokeswoman Linda Flegel, but the Olympics are also a smart business decision.
"People say, ‘Why do you need more people at Whistler?’ " Flegel said. "Well, we are not maxed out in the winter. We have a great reputation in the skiing and snowboarding world, but there’s a bigger world out there.
"It’s the world’s most recognized brand, and it happens every two years. Salt Lake City will tell you, ‘Now we don’t need to tell anyone where we are.’ "
Whistler already has enough hotel space to accommodate the estimated 25,000 people a day who will come to the Games. It sounds like a lot, but, Flegel said, the crowds should be no worse than an average holiday season.
"We say to people that it’s going to be like having two Christmases," she said.
The Olympics will take up only 5 percent of the ski area’s terrain, she said, so tourists can combine a ski trip with their Olympic vacation.
"A lot of people go, ‘Oh, I’m not going to go there, it will be too crowded,’ " Flegel said. "Why? Why? It’s not getting any closer than this. I go, ‘My god, it’s the Olympics.’ "
Whistler Blackcomb — the side-by-side ski areas merged in 1997 — has hosted World Cup ski races before, and the only upgrade needed for the alpine events is to expand the ski area’s snowmaking capacity.
The biggest additions to the village will be a celebration and medal presentation stadium where the driving range now sits and a sliding center near Blackcomb Mountain’s Base II, which will host the bobsled, luge and skeleton events. Construction for those projects should begin next year.
A few miles west of the village, the Callaghan Valley will see much bigger changes. What is now a snow-covered road popular with snowmobilers will become a three-lane highway heading into the forest. At its end, a natural amphitheater will become the center for the Nordic events — cross-country skiing, biathlon and ski jumping. Three spectator areas for the competition will hold a total of 60,000 fans and 100 buses a day will shuttle them in and out of the area.
Like the sliding center on Blackcomb, the Nordic venues will become permanent additions to the Whistler area and continue to host top-level competitors and ordinary recreational users.
John Fraser said his only goal is to live long enough to see the Games arrive.
"This could sound like romantic nonsense," he said, "but it’s true: There was a bond between many of us who saw this thing would be a great benefit to the total community, and the Olympic Games were an ideal to reach for.
"We understood economics, but what impelled us was the idealism of the Olympics."
Reporter Andrew Wineke: 425-339-3465 or wineke@heraldnet.com.
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