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Artur Takac
Sixty Olympic
Years
This is from Arthur Takacs’ memiures about his involvement in
many Olympics, including 1936, Berlin, where he competed, 1972, Munich and
1976, Montreal, where he played a key organizational role. He is fondly
remembered by his colleagues in Montreal and sadly missed. - PCH
WINNING
THE MONTREAL
RACE
After the horrors of the Munich Games the Olympic Movement
was in need of rehabilitation, a celebration to engender confidence, to renew
the spirit; what it got was Montreal. In his book My Olympic Years, Lord Killanin entitled his chapter
about the Games of the 21st Olympiad Oh God, Oh
Montreal. My memories from that exciting, yet truly difficult period
fit more comfortably under the heading Fighting for the Games. We came from different directions to tackle the problem
- I to give the organisers the technical expertise, in which they were so
blatantly lacking, Killanin to bear the ultimate responsibility to the youth of
the world by ensuring that there was a place for them to celebrate the Games.
Both of us suffered a bruising and difficult experience, his Lordship, I would
say, bearing the far greater wounds. In his book Killanin wrote: 1 don't know whether Montreal or Moscow was more damaging
to the Olympic concept, but my wife believes that the coronary I suffered in
1977 was partly due to the increasing burden of problems I had during 1975 and
1976.
The drama of these years began in Amsterdam in May 1970 where
the IOC held its annual Session and the members had to select the city to stage
the Games in 1976. Critics of the Olympic Movement and the IOC are quick
OH GOD, OH MONTREAL
IOC President
Lord Killanin and Technical Director Artur Takac during their first visit to
Montreal in November 1972
to point the
accusing finger when a city or winter centre elected to stage the Games does
not come up to expectations, but so often they forget or choose to ignore the
options which were before the members. In Amsterdam there were three candidates
for the summer celebration, Los ,Angeles, Montreal and Moscow. Many
IOC members favoured Denver for the 1976 Winter Games which of course weakened
the Los Angeles bid against Montreal and Moscow. Montreal had been unsuccessful
four years previuosly for the celebration which went to Munich, and some IOC
members tend to look favourably upon candidates who try again. After that
defeat Montreal's position in Amsterdam was strengthened.
In the first round Moscow
polled 28 votes, Montreal 25 and Los Angeles 17. Wtithout an overall majority a
second vote was required, though apparently the reporter from Tass, the Soviet
News agency covering the Session, clearly did not understand the voting system for he flashed a message that went morld-wide to his agency's subscribers
that Moscow had won. Hardly had
the confusion unravelled than the
second vote was complete and Avery Brundage the IOC president walked on to the
stage of the RAI theatre in Amsterdam to announce that Montreal would be the
hosts; all the LA votes, it appeared, moved to Montreal who polled 41 to 28, which was a clear reflection of the
political thinking aamong the members at that time? Thus the dream of the city’s
dapper mayor, Jean Drapeau, had been realised.
Drapeau was the energetic leader of the Montreal
campaign and one of his key lieutenants was Pierre Charbonnenu, a sports
fanatic. I had met them during the negotiations to stage the America-Europe
athletics match in Montreal as part of the Expo celebrations, uhen I was the
secretary of the European Committee of the IAAF and manager of the European
team.
After the Amsterdam vote Drapeau and Charbonneau were keen to use my
experience in the technical fields. It was here that I found Drapeau persistent
to the point of aggressiveness; once he was locked into an idea or project you
needed a crow-bar to lever his mind from the goal. As the technical director of
the IOC at that time it was part of my role to advise a city hosting the Games,
and after the Amsterdam vote we established a situation of co-operation which
seemed to become ever more intensive; I felt at times that I was not so much
advising the Montreal Organising Committee as working for them. That spectre
began to loom large when Mayor Drapeau unexpectedly appeared at the Château on
March 20,1971. He seemed tense and impatient and invited me to dine with him at
the Lausanne Palace Hotel. I accepted, and after the usual pleasantries he came
briskly to the point of his visit. Tomorrow, evening
we are both flying to Paris, where you arc going to meet Roger Taillibert, an
architect who designed the Parc des Princes, in Paris, the home of French Rugby Union, and who will now start to design our main Olympic venues in
Montreal. I was taken aback - astonished that Drapeau should believe that he
could command me to drop everything at the snap of his fingers.
At around the time Drapeau and I were dining Lord
Killanin was in Lausanne- for all I knew he was in the hotel. I explained to
Drapeau about the IOC vice-president's visit and the meetings he would have the
following day, one of which was with me. In view of that I suggested the Paris
meeting should be postponed; Drapeau, a man of riveted determirnation, swept
aside such an alternative arrangement. He was fixed on a plan and that had to
stand. There was a certain amount of
secrecy about his motive, for I was to realise later that if Montreal and
Canada had heard that a Frenchman was to get this prestigious commission there
might have been objections; Drapeau wanted the announcement when the commission
was delivered, he wanted a fait accompli. But in this clandestine way of
working he wanted to be sure that Taillibert appreciated and understood all the
myriad technical details required for stadia used in the Olympic Games, which
may look like creating a larger version of the Parc des Princes but certainly
is not. To every alternative proposal for a Paris meeting I made Drapeau was
simply evasive. Here is your air ticket and I shall wait for you at Geneva
airport. I'm sure you can change your appointments
with Lord Killanin, he said, which is what happened. The following day I
completed my meetings in Lausanne and at ten in the evening was sitting in
Taililbert's study at his office in the Rue de Pompe, Paris.
We were there all
night and most of the following two days, Drapeau, Taillibert, myself and
Taillibert's assistants. Questions, questions, questions: every conceivable
detail was combed through with Taillibert's staff making notes, producing
papers and rough drawings; it was incredible, and as the hours ticked away I
realised that this Frenchman of whom I had little knowledge was an architect
with courageous vision. The manner in which he grasped the special needs of
Olympic infrastructure, where there was a requirement for vast media facilities
which would be largely unnecessary for competitions after the Games, blended
with Drapeau's understandable insistence on a main stadium which could be
closed in for events in Canada's hard winter.
Mentally it was
challenging and exhausting; coffee after coffee as the queries, notes, rough
drawings, diagrams, calculations, came flooding from Taillibert and his
lively-minded youthful assistants; they coped with my input on the technical
demands which the International Federations would make, the electronic equipment
required by the TV broadcasters and the results and measurement systems; the
facilities for the written press as well as the TV and radio commentators, the
extended back up medical service to embrace for instance physiotherapy
facilities. They matched all my points with their insistance on the accurate
calculation of detail
in every aspect; at the end of our meetings a desk was piled high with
technical data to be incorporated in the plan - to make the Taillibert vision n
reality. I realised then the enormity of the, task which faced these
two exceptional men; each in his own way had the bblood of adventure coursing through his veins; originality
rather than ordinariness dominated their lives and the fusion of their
imaginations toward a single goal was exhilarating. Sadly, as will follow,
Drapeau's vision did not quite match his resources and influence and the Games
in Montreal, with the most costly sports complexes in the history of the
Movement, opened as scheduled, but in a stadium bearing the signs of skilful
improvisation.
Drapeau's Offer
Before I returned
to Lausanne from Paris, exhausted but exhilarated, there was the hint of what
was to come; Drapeau could see my enthusiasm for his ideas and the plans on
which Taillibert was working; while we worked he kept saying, We need you in
Montreal - think it over and come. You are not an administration man you are a
typical operations executive. With those thoughts the black mood of brooding,
which I had so often felt in Lausanne, increased the closer I came to the city.
I had worked at the Château de Vidy since 1969, and while my enthusiasm for the
Olympic Movement and what It could do world-wide had never wavered, I was
unhappy with the spirit and atmosphere I found at the Château and often I became dispirited
and depressed. My explanation for that is in the chapter on my work under Avery
Brundage.
At the end of May
1972, the IOC Executive Board met in Lausanne with progress reports from both
the Organising Committees of Munich, just about to stage the Games of the XX
Olympiad, and Montreal. This gave Drapeau the opportunity to revive his plea,
though in his usual brusque manner he was telling rather than asking me. There
is a pleasant bistro in the Avenue de la Grotte, a rendezvous for students in
Lausanne called San Marino, where
Drapeau, Charbonneau and I met for a drink. We stood away from the main throng
and it was Pierre Charbonneau who set out the offer: You are going to move for
four years to Montreal, and as personal advisor to the president of the Organising
Committee, Roger Rousseau, on all technical questions. You will have a free hand in the
development of this aspect of the Games planning. You will find ideal working
conditions and a friendly atmosphere - this last point I felt was pertinently stressed. When that outline was
put Drapeau added that he required an immediate answer. My questions and our
discussion delayed this for a while, as the thoughts tumbled through my mind:
Am I deserting the I0C at a time when
there could he big changes with Brundage's impending retirement from office? By
one o'clock in the morning I could filibuster no longer and from the cafe
telephoned my friend, Arpad Csanadi, the IOC member in Hungary who was chairman
of the Programme Commission. I had known Arpad for over ten years; he was one
of the leading soccer experts in Hungary whom I tried to entice to coach in
Yugoslavia but was thwarted by the Hungarian Minister of Sport Hegyi Gyula.
That was more than ten years before this meeting in the bistro. I called Arpad
in his room at the Palace Hotel and explained the offer which had just been
made to me and the predicament in which I was placed. You must accept the post, he said. Arpad convinced me: You will be more valuable to both the organisers of the Games and to the Olympic
Movement if at this time you are working in Montreal. Artur you
must go. With these words ringing
in my head I replaced the phone, went back to Drapeau and Charbonneau and
accepted the offer. It was nearly two in the morning; a momentous moment for me
and the beginning of a complex period in my Olympic life.
Lack of Olympic
Experience
I took up my post
in March 1973 and soon realised that Montreal would have many challenges. My
first impression confirmed the fact that Coubertin's re-invention of the
Olympic Games had not penetrated very deeply beyond the borders of Europe. Of
course the United States and Canada had been supporters of the Olympic Games
since their revival in 1896, but there was not the depth of awareness or
appreciation of the totality of the Games and their influence that there was in
Europe. All the Olympic sports, summer and winter, are widely practised in
European countries, but Canada's sporting diet in the 1970s was heavily reliant
upon professional ice hockey, baseball, American football, ice skating and in
some parts basketball. When I accompanied Lord Killanin on his first visit to
Montreal in November 1972, within three months of his election to the
presidency; I was surprised by curious enquiries, What actually is the Olympic Movement, what is the Olympic idea, where are
the roots of Olympism? It made me realise that in addition to preparing for
the Olympic Games, Montreal and Canada needed a very thorough education course
on the history and development of the modern Games.
My concern about
this lack of Olympic experience increased as the months went by. It was
difficult to find people in sports clubs with experience in organising
competitions and even scarcer where judges and referees of international
standing. An Organising Committee needs to draw on such people in the
preparation of the 21 sports. But that of course was detail, and by March 1973,
with three years of preparation time gone and just over three more before the
opening ceremony, there was not a proper strategic plan. My first task was to
form an operational nucleus to oversee the general planning of the operation of the Montreal
Games.
This lack of Olympic and sporting expertise worried me, but fortunately we
were able to call upon local people of European origin with an understanding of
sporting administration. With Drapeau as the political leader of the operation
and Roger Rousseau, a diplomat and once a leading figure in Canada's
international trade administration, as president of the Organising Committee, the
upper echelon of the structure appeared to have stability. The first task was
to assemble a small operational group to oversee the development of the
organisational and technical requirements. We selected three men: Simon
Saint-Pierre, who could grasp and control the breadth of operations and was
really a workaholic; Michel Guay, a technologist; Walter Sieber, a naturalised
Canadian of Swiss origin, who was Charbonneau's assistant; and our fourth musketeer was Paul Howell,
one of IBM's bright young men, who had spent seven months studying the
electronic operations of the Munich Games and was therefore crucially aware of
the part which data processing played in the planning and control of the Games.
From time to time I added to this group Larry Eldridge, a track and field fan,
a man with rare perseverance and drive who organised the athletics competition
programme at the America - Europe match in 1967. We drew upon my organisational
experience of the European Championships in Belgrade in 1962 as well as that of
the Games in Mexico and Munich to establish a prototype in athletics from which
we developed parallel systems for the organisation of all other sports on the
programme of the Games.
These people carried the burden of responsability for
the technical organisation of the Games; sadly the quality of their work and the diligence they showed was never properly recognised or
rewarded in a Games which was blighted by construction delays, financial
overruns and political interference. That was the story the world read in the
run-up to the Montreal Games, but beneath these clouds the participants had
good competition arrangements: which were largely due to the efforts, often in
harrowing circumstances, of this group.
The problems which I saw facing the Canadian Olympic
hosts could be encapsulated in the following way: Montreal, Quebec and Canada
had to fuse their authority and summon the strength to face the unyielding
pressure of the labour unions, the blackmail of construction companies and the
harsh winter climactic conditions in order to achieve the deadlines. There was
a need to inject the ambience appropriate to the Olympic Games. Most cities
staging the Games enrich the treasure chest of Olympism with something from
their own heritage, but in Montreal's case they needed to wake up to the
traditions of the Olympic Movement.
Yet there was another crucial dimension to these Games.
After the riots in Mexico in 1968, together with the political demonstrations
in the main arena and the murders in the Munich Olyrnpic Village four years
later, there was a disquiet about the Movement; critics were not slow to revive
the gloomy memories of those unhappy events
and this would eventually damage the integrity of the Olympic ideal. It was
essential that the Montreal Games were completed smoothly.
Our planning and operational group
began to examine the existing plans and soon became alarmed, for it was clear
to us that the departmental heads were working in isolation; there seemed to be
no co-ordination so that projects which were logically inter-linked were
developed separately. The department heads did not seem to know with whom they
should be working or presenting their projects to, and there seemed n continual
bottleneck within the General Secretary's office or with some of the vice
presidents.
My
"musketeers " had numerous meetings to unravel this tangled knitting
and came up with the idea of creating n Management Committee and n system we
called Project Approval Procedure [PAP]. The management committee was to consist
principally of the directors general and should be the co-ordinating body
monitoring the elaboration and implementation of the Games projects.
But these
surprisingly were rejected; President Rousseau considered that this would in
some way duplicate the responsibilities and reduce the authority of the Executive Board, a
decision which I suspected was politically motivated rather than pragmatic. So
the work continued under the old clogged up system for the next three months,
during which time Paul Howell put his electronics expertise to work and the
computer gave its verdict on the Organising Committee's existing plan of
preparation; they would have everything ready for the official opening ceremony
24 weeks after the date into which they
had been locked since 1970. The computer screen shining out this piece of information set off the alarm bells,
and within a few days the plan to haut, a management committee and
the Project Approval Procedure was, as my American friends might put it,
retrieved from the trash can. If the change of direction brought relief there was
much anxiety about the time scale. We were on the threshold of
1974 and more than three years of preparation time had not been properly used.
We needed a planning schedule that could be tightly monitored as the count-down
to the opening ceremony dripped away day by day.
Simon Saint-Pierre, Paul Howell and I slipped away for three days to the
Handfield Hotel on the left bank of the St Lawrence river and there, without
interruptions and telephone calls, we worked virtually non stop to set out the
elaborate detail of the entire Games system. We drew up a list of 280 projects
and worked out the programme to be adopted by sixteen general directors. All
this was built round the blueprint from the Main Co-ordination Centre of the
Games and Operation Units system for each site which was to be adopted by the
middle of October 1975; it worked well enough for future Games planners to use
it. The crucial part of our work in that hotel retreat was to ensure the Management
Committee met weekly so that planning glitches, duplications and waste could be
spotted quickly. In the remaining 900 days before the Games began, all the
operational deadlines were met and the official report of the Organising
Committee published at the end of 1976 said The Project Approval Procedure (known under the acronym PAP) became an
important element in the success of the Games and deserves special mention.
The construction
side of the Montreal, Games did not have such good fortune. Serious planning
and construction of the new sites did not begin until 1973 because of a lack of
co-ordination between the government of Quebec and the authorities in Montreal
and when the work finally got underway it was bedevilled by problems of all
kinds from the geological and meteorological to human greed.
The Ancient and
Modern Ice Age
In the harsh Canadian winter the temperature dropped to
-25 degrees and winds reached 100 kilometres per hour, buffeting equipment on
the
THE FIGHT OVER VENUE~CONSTRUCTION
as adviser to the
Montreal organizing committee, the author was especially concerned with -
building of the main stadium and other venues. The photograph shows him with
Mayor Drapeau and architect Roger Taillibert during the crucial
construction period.
Construction
sites. At times outside work was impossible and it made me realise, coming from
n country which has hard winters, that Montreal was a city in which to stay
indoors during the deep winter months. On top of this -factor the
strikes of one group of workers and then another bringing construction to a
halt caused alarm. From December 1974 to April 1976 out of n total of 530
working days the workers were on strike on 155. That amounts to almost 30 per
cent of the working time available in this relatively short but crucial period.
It is obvious that the trade union organisations and individual groups of
workers frequently used the Games as a means to increase their wage rates and
get better conditions. They had Montreal and the Organising Committee over a
barrel. We were thus exposed daily to pressure and criticism by the IOC, the
sports federations and the attacks by the local national and international
press.
The focus of the crisis was the main stadium, the swimming
pool and the Velodrome, designed by Taillibert. There were also problems with the construction and
financing of the Olympic village. This complex was based on a pyramid design
from the Côte d'Azur in the area of Antibes. Each was imaginative and avant
garde in style but there were basic misconceptions compounded.by geological
discoveries and blackmail by the labour force which developed into a nightmare,
and plunged the Olympic Movement into a loss of confidence about anything that
was going on in Montreal.
For the Parc des
Princes Taillibert used pillars weighing twenty tons to support the fabric.
With Montreal's stadium carrying a movable roof, so that the arena could be
used in the depth of the worst of winters, the weight of similar pillars was
120 tons, to hold the roof, which weighed 41,000 tons. The rocky subsoil proved
incapable of holding that weight and some geological detective work showed why.
Around 10,000 years ago the site of the Olympic Park which was to house the
stadium village and velodrome ran along n terrace bordering the Champlain Sea
and later, around 4,000 BC, formed a bank of the St Lawrence River. The base
rock proved fragile and fissured in many places threatening to collapse under
pressure. It was too late to turn back from this site and engineers offered a solution
but a very costly one. New foundations were dug, supporting casing put in place
and stems of concrete forced in at high pressure to a depth of 48 metres below
the surface. This constituted an entirely new form of foundation, which
therefore required a complete recalculation in the seismic building protection
elements. All this added $12 million dollars to the cost of the velodrome -
equal to the total initial estimate of the entire project.
The following
table gives some indication of the escalation in costs:
These problems, strikes and building contractors who in some instances
seemed incapable of the work they were undertaking, were taking the Montreal
Games towards disaster. The highly competitive Montreal news media, with
English and French outlets, had plenty on which to employ their investigative
journalists and the stories were not just published locally, The world's media
revealed the events often with embellishment compounding Montreal's reputation
for scandal and corruption. At a meeting with the IOC Executive Board in Vienna in October 1974, the Organising Committee
admitted that they had not found a construction company to undertake building
the Olympic Village, so in one of their hotel rooms, in between meetings, they
formed their own company.
By the end of the year the IOC President and his Executive were
becoming alarmed by reports they were not only reading in the media but also
receiving from their member in Canada, Jim Worral. On Thursday January 9, 1975,
I was called for an emrgency meeting with Rousseau, president of the organising
Committee, who was panic stricken. He had just had a call from Lord Killanin in
Dublin demanding that the Games be held on a more modest scale. Rousseau was
convinced, and I suspect that he was swayed by information from Killanin, that
the main stadium would not be completed in time. Under normal working
arrangements that was correct but by May, a little more than a year before the
Games were held, there were 3,000 construction workers employed day and night
on the Olympic complexes.
I felt Rousseau was deeply depressed by his
conversation with Killanin and had reached the conclusion that the main stadium
could not be completed to meet the needs of opening and closing ceremonies as
well as the track and field programme Rousseau kept repeating I cannot think of
a solution to this problem - please, with all your experience, think of a way
out of the impasse, let us get the opinions of all the Organising Committee members but try to
find a solution. I have rarely seen n man carry the marks of worry so deeply.
I set aside my work schedule for the day, carried out
Rousseau's request and by that evening confirmed my belief that the key problem
was the main stadium. The man with the best on the ground insight into the
Olympic construction plans was Raymond Cyr, one of the architects. He knew that
the situation was very complex, even critical. He believed that whatever the
technical requirements it needed the authority of the Quebec government to
intervene to halt the obstruction of the labour force who were by now running
wild.
Not -surprisingly, the view of Taillibert and his
architects who were partly operating from Paris was that the stadium could and
should be completed in time - with the caveat that the trade unions be brought
into line; their guerrilla action had to be stopped.
These consultations and discussions among members of
the Organising Committee went on for five days. It was then that I was called
by Drapeau to a before-breakfast meeting. Rousseau is trying to find an
alternative for the Olympic stadium. He wants to adapt the
"Autostade" stadium instead, he said. If that news was startling it
was not surprising when I recalled the panic in Rousseau's face when we had met
five days previously. He was looking for a safety net and he thought the
Autostade was the best place for his jump - but Drapeau was not going to leap
with him. He was adamantly opposed to such a plan and not just to save his ego. Deep down the Mayor of Montreal had a
feel for Olympism -he was inspired by the Movement on a trip to Lausanne in
1964 many years before he formulated a bid, so I was not surprised when he told
me: Without n modern Olympic stadium, an adornment and a necessity for an
Olympic city, there are no Olympic Games. Drapeau was a hard man; he did not
vacillate and I knew that with this philosophy he was ready to fight all the
way.
I returned to my office with one battle line in place
and there on my desk was a note from Rousseau calling me into a meeting in a
couple of hours' time, where I confronted the opposing force. Rousseau was in a
calmer mood than at our previous meeting, because he felt confident about his
plan. He expressed his doubts about the main stadium being completed and then
told me what I had heard in Drapeau's suite - to use "Autostade"
instead. This is a grand idea - and will save money. Please go to see the
architects working on my project, but just you - keep this matter confidential - and give me your
opinion as soon as you can.
Within an hour I was at door of the
architect's studio. The civil engineers Maurice Desnoyer and Emil Leziy were
surprised that I was familiar with the stadium and easily understood their
plans. It was ironic and a fortunate coincidence that I could bring expertise
to both sides of this problem. I knew the Autostade in great detail because I
had been the manager of the European team in the match against America held
there in 1967. I well remember the difficulties we faced then adapting the
arena for the needs of what was a straightforward international competition,
involving a very small number of athletes compared to that of the Olympic
programme. There had to be many improvisations on that occasion and here I was
being asked to examine the same place as a potential Olympic stadium. The two
architects preparing the plans for Rousseau frankly had no idea of Olympic
requirements.
The
following day I met Rousseau and gave him my conclusions. In a brief analysis I
explained that the Autostade was unacceptable. The group of architects dealing
with the matter had not addressed the problems seriously nor had they included
the fundamental technical necessities required for a main Olympic stadium. I
presented a proposal to establish closer co-operation between the Organising
Committee of the Games, the city of Montreal and the Quebec Government. It
required such unity if we were to construct the stadium in time. Simon
Saint-Pierre and Pierre Charbonneau who also saw the civil engineers, came to
the same conclusion.
Nightmare Drive
to Beat the Autostade
We had thus established a strategy to go ahead with the main stadium but
the battle was by no means won; and on another front there were more mountainous
worries. In the evening I met the general director of the Olympic
AGAINST COLD AND WIND
The harsh Canadian winter drastically hindered construction work
on the Olympic stadium The assistant to the Sports Director Robert Dubeau and
the author are seen here on the frozen building plot at the beginning of 1976.
Village, Yvan Dubois; he was also under stress and I soon
understood the cause. The cost of building the complex had risen from 32 million
dollars to over 60 million. Montreal's Olympic problems in the first month of
1975 were piling up.
During January, the Quebec government's Permanent
Commission for Municipal Affairs was investigating alternative methods of
financing the Games and the problems relating to the main stadium and the
village. Drapeau and Rousseau were at the meetings in Quebec City prepared to
defend their differing positions on the main stadium argument - it was a duel
between the city of Montreal and the President of the Organising
Committee. I did not expect to take any part; this after all was the political
arena and I had tried throughout my working life in sport to keep the technical
problems away from the politicians.
That philosophy had to be set aside suddenly on January
22, the day Montreal and Quebec suffered one of their worst snowstorms -
temperatures of -22 degrees and wind speeds up to 120 kilometres an hour. It
was a day for staying put firmly
indoors, which is where I was when the phone rang at five in the afternoon;
Jean Pierre Dugas, the head of Rousseau's cabinet, wanted me in Quebec to
appear before the commission. He said that the security chief would arrange a
plane or helicopter to get me there. What need is there for my presence,
Rousseau and Drapeau know exactly my view on this question? Dugas swept aside
my questions. We will wait for you in the foyer of the parliament building at
nine this evening. The security chief Guy Tupin would have nothing do to with
this scheme as far as the transportation was concerned. Flying in this vile
weather is tantamount to suicide, he said. I called Dugas on the phone but his
response was unchanged - we'll meet you in the foyer at nine.
Just after seven
I nosed out of the car park of my office in my powerful Organising Committee Pontiac
Parisienne and got on to the highway; there was little traffic, because of the
blizzard; visibility was poor, the car lurched in the strong winds, slid on the
icy patches across the lanes and there were moments when I was losing control.
Driving 120 kilometres an hour in these conditions was really risky but I
accepted the request to be in that foyer by 9 o'clock. I switched on the car
radio, for a calming influence - and there on Radio Quebec was a live broadcast
of the Parliamentary Commission's deliberations, so instead of relaxing to
music I was locked into a duel of words between Mayor Drapeau and President
Rousseau. To the uninformed listener this must have sounded baffling; here were
the two key men involved in staging the Montreal Games in a public disagreement
about where the main arena should be - less than two years before the opening
ceremony.
At precisely 9
p.m. I brought my car to a parking place in front of Parliament. My three
colleagues, Executive Vice-president Simon Saint-Pierre, Vice-president Sports
Pierre Charbonneau and Jean Pierre Dugas were waiting for me. Just present the fundamental concept and the
technical outline for it, main stadium. Don't get into details was their
advice. I took my seat before the 15-man commission; they had spent 12 sessions
lasting over 30 hours discussing the Montreal problems and when I went before
them the Prime Minister of the province Robert Bourassa, plus the Minister of
Finance Raymond Garneau and a man who was to play a key role, Victor Goldbloom,
Minister of Communal affairs, all members of the Commission, were in the
session.
Garneau cased the
tension and anxiety which had clearly built up before I arrived with a humourus
opening. I think that I am making an enemy by requesting at the last moment
that someone should be brought here in such harsh weather conditions. Then he
came bluntly to the point. Does the alternative to the main Olympic stadium, in
your opinion, meet the requirements of the International Olympic Committee and
the International Sports Federations? I
replied: A stadium for between 70-75,000 spectators is required containing an
eight lane track, runways and pits for the jumps on each side of the arena with
the throwing circles duplicated as well. There must be provisions for the press, radio and television with facilities for the
latest technical equipment, call up rooms for the competitors, medical
facilities including secure arrangements for drug testing and special
requirements, for opening and closing ceremonies. I was really saying no
underscored three times to the chairman's question.
No state authority has spent so much time on the problems of the Games,
and the long hours spent by the Parliamentary Commission probing into the
problems showed me that the magnitude of our difficulties was understood. That
was summed up when Victor Goldbloom said at a press conference: It often
happens that Quebec is viewed by all of Canada, but it is not often that the eyes of the
entire world are focused on us as is the case today. That understanding of the
international magnitude showed that he and at least some of his colleagues
realised the reputation of the country, state, and Montreal was being damaged
by the preparations for the olympic celebration. After my evidence Goldbloorn
sought confirmation of what I suspect he already believed when he, asked whether we could organise, the Games in a modified Autostade. We cannot, sir, I replied. To go with that
Drapeau conceded what for him must have been a very difficult
admission, when he told the Commission that it was not eessential to complete
the tower or the stadium roof. The practical use for it was in the construction
of the sections to be used for making
the facility an indoor one and that had no part in the
Olympic requirements. He wanted the stadium which he and Taillibert had created
to be the edifice of Montreal's contribution to Olympism. The tower and the
root were necessary for the winter season to hold baseball and football matches
which of course was not an Olympic requirement, however, the base of the
tower was absolutely essential not only in the construction of the arena
but also the adjoining Olympic swimming pool and velodrome. Thus the tower, as
such, finished or unfinished, was not required for the Olympic celebration.
Undermining
Schipol Schemes
There were further difficulties with
the construction through 1975 and into the Olympic year, and these were
compounded by the views and influence of people who were not directly involved.
In the middle of January suspicions seeping round Montreal were virtually
confirmed when a report in the Swiss newspaper Zurich Sport disclosed that
secret meetings had been held at Schipol airport Amsterdam to prepare
alternative sites for competition should Montreal fail to meet their deadline.
A group comprising Killanin, Herman van Karnebeek of Holland, a member of the
Executive Board and Willi Daume, a German member who was president of the Organising Committee of the
Munich Games, Jim Worrall of Canada, who was on our Organising Committee, and
Thomas Keller, the head of the International Rowing Federation and a man whose
influence went beyond his sport, were engaged in seeking alternative sites. To
say that we in Montreal were dismayed at this leakage would be putting it
mildly; we were indignant. This was a body blow and one which sounded
like a vote of no confidence. It was undermining our efforts which needed all
the support we could get. I can understand that Killanin was mindful of his
duty to the competitors of the world, but any hope of keeping such a scheme
secret was futile. In spite of the fact that the Ruhr area - Düsseldorf, Essen,
Duisburg and Dortmund - contained a convenient cluster of existing sports
facilities, the focus of the problem remained in Montreal and had to be solved
there.
It was around this time that I met the German consul in
the city, Wolfgnng Thoele. He was a pleasant, mature person who showed great
interest in the Games; he came to my office several times to see the progress
we were making, and I had been a guest at his house. Yet his inquiries suddenly
began to take a different line. Perhaps I was naive about the political nuances
of such visits but I began to understand that he wanted to hear not about
progress, but delay and failure. I hear you are experiencing great difficulties
on the construction sites, he said. I played the diplomat and placated him:
eeverything is going to be ready my dear Mr Thoele, I said.
Look, I know that things are going wrong and I want to
hear from the inside what is happening. I am not coming to you to hear the good
news Artur, he said.
I tried to be as polite as possible and he understood
from my answer that my loyalty was to the Organising Committee, and that he
would have to find some other partner for such conversations. We remained good
friends, but he never again came to my office.
There continued to be delays -short strikes which led
to planning hitches. But while this was depressing at the time, the greater the
depths plumbed the more likely the recovery, for there came a point where the
Government of Quebec had to take over responsibility as control slipped from
the grasp of the Organising Committee. This occurred in November after a report
to the Organising Committee that the opening date of the Games still could not
be met. Drapeau and Robert Bourassa agreed to set aside their political
différences, the Quebec administration set up an Olympic Installations Division
- RIO - (Régie d'Installations Olympiques) under Claude Rouleau, an
administrator with vast experience in construction operations.
Minister
Goldbloom was assigned to monitor the work and report to Quebec and the IOC.
From these changes a new philosophy, a new work element developed which relied
much on Rouleau's dynamic approach and Goldbloom's understanding and
persistence. He changed the work patterns, cut out, over time because the
workers were so exhausted - gave them seven days break at Christmas, reduced
the amount of machinery on the sites and introduced an eleven-hour day,
six-day-a-week schedule which satisfied the unions. With a labour force of
2,500 working day shifts and 800 at night progress was soon evident and the
completion date of June 6 did not look over-optimistic. There were
architectural changes which annoyed Taillibert - who felt his work was being
damaged by the workers and their strikes, but the overall image was unchanged.
Death of Simon
Saint-Pierre
The criticism, particularly from
overseas, continued and many of the international officials did not share our
faith. One of them was Harold Henning, the President of the International
Swimming Federation, who visited the site accompanied by an architect, John
Smith of New York. Henning was absolutely convinced that there would not be
water in the pool on July 18, the opening day of the Games. Fortunately he was
wrong, but I could understand his misgivings, for he visited Montreal on
January 24 of Olympic year and all there was for him to see was an enormous
gaping hole in the ground hardly resembling even the shape of a swimming pool.
I had the facts and estimates of our experts and plied Henning with them, but I
was unable to convince him that it would be possible to have Olympic swimmers
on the starting blocks by the scheduled date; and he told me that his report to
the Executive Board of the IOC in a few days' time would be a negative one.
Matters were becoming incredibly
difficult and I felt we needed every strong man amongst us, to cope with the
demands and the pressure. Yet that was denied us for another and far worse blow
followed two days later; Simon Saint-Pierre our executive vice-president and my
closest colleague was riding in the Bromont equestrian centre indoor arena when
he had a fatal fall from his horse. I felt numbed at the news, more so from the
fact that there was not time for silent grief away from the work and the
problems; Rousseau called me in and I saw he shared my feelings. He accepted my
advice that Michel Guay would take Saint-Pierre's place and Maurice Louvet the
position of General Director of Technology. All this happened amidst frantic
meetings to get ready for the IOC Session in Innsbruck, where we had to
convince the members that our plans were realistic. We spent our final night
until three in the morning at the design studios. All the expert decision
makers in the field of construction and operation of the Games were present on
this crucial night. We tightened up the plans for the main stadium
construction, leaving out all but essential elements for the Games, and
building a water-tight case for completing the swimming pool and velodrome. The main press centre was
relocated to an existing downtown building, Complex de jardines and since the competitors' village
was next door to the main complex we left the changing rooms there bare, and
instead used portable trailers. The report was in best possible shape to put
before the IOC - first the Executive Board and then to the full IOC Session -
with plenty of probing journalists barking at us in between. Flight LH 445 took
off from Montreal for Munich at 7.20 in the evening, and I suspect that as soon
as the food trays were cleared and thoughts of Simon Saint-Pierre had drifted
across our minds, the entire Montreal delegation slumbered.
Innsbruck on the
eve of the XI Winter Games was icy, underfoot and in the atmosphere,
particularly when the IOC members, the International Federation delegates, the
press and the Montreal delegation came together. We were looked upon with great
mistrust and in the closed sessions we came under a cross fire of attack from
the athletic and swimming chiefs as well as the IOC. Yet one member of the IOC,
Pedro Ramirez Vâzquez, firmly supported us; that was most crucial to our cause,
for he was an architect of international reputation and had designed many of
the facilities for the Mexico Olympic Games in 1968 where he was chairman of
the Organising Committee - and I was one of his advisers at that event. He
among all those who faced us understood our difficulties and assessed that our
proposals were realistic; his reputation was such that his colleagues on the
IOC responded with a vote of confidence for Montreal.
At the end of an
intensive session, the press crowded round our delegation. I took care with my
words and to most of the questions: Acceptable solutions were adopted and we
will organise the Games correctly, I said. Yet I was surprised, unpleasantly
so, to read the following morning a German version of my words Takac: Fantastic
solutions. The Games will be fantastic. Daume, one of the IOC vice-presidents,
leapt upon this misinterpretation: A man of Takac's experience should be more
careful when using fantastic as an expression. A man of Daume's experience -
and position - should take the precaution of enquiring of the quoted person
before making such remarks. Perhaps his reaction could be linked to the visits I
had received in my Montreal office from Mr Thoele, the German Consul, and his
anxiety to hear about our construction problems.
On their return
to Montreal, the organising team were in much greater heart; the burden ahead
was still great but we felt there was now more support for our cause and
understanding of the problems, from the Olympic world at least.
Two months of
work had progressed smoothly after the Innsbruck meetings when another tragedy
blighted Montreal's cause. It was March 9, the deep snow still carpeted the
city and the Olympic sites. I was dealing with some details in
electronic measurements of results at the sports venues when my phone rang; it
was Michel Guay from whom I expected a call to arrange a meeting, but instead
of the lively energetic voice I knew, the words came from a man shattered by
shock as he wailed stuttering in his distress: There's been a terrible disaster
at the stadium site. He was incoherent on the details, so I told him I would
meet him on the site. When I arrived hundreds and hundreds of workers stood
mutely near their work, many suffering grief. Four of their colleagues had been
killed when a section of the roof broke away and crashed over 100 feet. The
inquiry held later established that a temporary rope to hold the section had
been cut accidentally before the permanent cable was locked into position.
As the bodies were removed and the bereaved families
informed we stood silently, many of us wondering what we had done to deserve
this disaster. A small piece of paper was handed to me; it bore the names: Benoit Breton, Bertrand Fortin, Xavier
Harvey, Paul-Emil Neveu. Olympic stadia resound to the names of the heroes,
gold medallists at the top of the podium, the world record breakers and those
losers who provide dramatic contributions to the history of the Games. But here
were four names of modest, almost unknown men, making their contribution to the
Olympic Movement. At the opening of the Games, when grief will have mellowed,
their family members will recall: ‘Our father, our son, my brother, took part
in building that Olyrnpic Stadium. He also has a place in the Olympic success.’
Work stopped for four hours, cranes were stationary, the cutters and drills
remained silent as the chill March wind kissed the snow and the concrete
membranes which in those moments were the haunting, instant memorial which is
part of Olympic history.
Work resumed with
energy and application everywhere, and the stadium was ready for the Olympic
competitors. Through all these months of stress and tension - some of the most
demanding in my peacetime years - I needed refreshment and stimulation away
from daily problems; I found it in the dedication and commitment of a group of
people who were involved in the artistic and musical aspect of the opening and
closing ceremonies and the cultural programme of the Games.
While the
Montreal Organising Committee worked tirelessly to get the Olympic sites ready
for the competitors in time and saw in the final months that they were going to
achieve their goal, other clouds were looming over the celebration.
Taiwan Upsets -
Departure of Africans
In May reports
began to appear in the media about difficulties over the participation of
Taiwan and suggestions that the Canadian Government would not grant their team
entry. We had known that this might be a problem since the submission of the
bid to stage the Games in 1969, because Canada only recognised the People's
Republic of China with whom they had very large grain contracts, so links with
Taiwan in any form were politically sensitive in view of the Republic's
attitude to Taiwan. It was baffling to hear that Lord Killanin was surprised by
the reports. When the Canadian Government granted free entry to all competitors
as a condition of Montreal's bid the offer had the words pursuant to normal regulations in the condition.
I was puzzled by
Killanin's reaction since at a meeting in June 1975 with Edward Skerbec of the
Canadian Foreign Affairs department who was assigned to deal with political
matters relating to the Montreal Games, Skerbec quoted from his notes of a
meeting held in April of that year with Lord Killanin when the question of the
Republic of China's admission to the United Nations had been discussed. It was
stressed at that meeting that it would be almost impossible to allow Taiwan
athletes into the country under their Olympic title of the Republic of China.
Killanin, according to Skerbec's notes, said that the IOC would intensify its
contacts with Taiwan and endeavour to find a compromise solution. If the IOC
thought the matter might just evaporate then the alarm bells rang in November
of that year when a group of Chinese boxers from Taiwan were due to take part
in a pre-Olympic tournament in Montreal. The Canadian immigration authorities
indicated that the normal terms of entry to Canada would apply - visas would be
granted so long as the Taiwan team did not claim to represent the Republic of
China; the Taiwanese refused to accept the condition and so did not take part.
James Worrall, an IOC member in Canada, was informed of the event and passed on
the details to Killanin.
It was not until the IOC Executive Board met in Montreal a
few days before the Opening Ceremony of the Games that the problem was really
tackled. In fact I suspect that the IOC president was rather like a diplomat
walking the tightrope; he knew that had the matter come out into the open
earlier then there would have been a political campaign by the right wing in
the United States NOC supporting the Taiwanese which might well have led to a
boycott of Montreal. If that was his thinking prior to arriving for the Games
then he was right, for when the suggestion was made that the invitation to
Taiwan be withdrawn, Phil Krumm, president of the US NOC, said that if that
happened the Americans would withdraw from the Games. Killanin and the Canadian
president Pierre Trudeau agreed a on solution: that the Taiwan athletes be
allowed to participate in the Games under their flag, using their national
anthem but not tthe name of the Republic of China. The Taiwan delegation, in a
somewhat unpleasant manner before the IOC Executive Board, rejected the plan
and Taiwan did not take part. While this battle was being lost another far more
damaging problem was left neglected until it was too late to resolve.
The Olympic Village is without doubt the most vibrant
and exciting part of the Olympic scene. It bubbles with hopes and expectations
and the wonderment of each team as they arrive in their distinctive colours and
uniforms. It is the place to watch the youth of the world settling into an
unusual environment, ethnic lines blurred by the mingling and meeting and new
friendships, but all the time concentrating upon the competition and the
ultimate goal. Thus it was on the morning of July 14 that a complete contrast
to this atmosphere began to surface. Around noon in the office of the Village
Director Yvan Dubois the mood was gloomy as another shadow began to fall upon
Montreal's Games. Jean Claude Ganga, secretary of the Supreme Council for Sport
in Africa, was in the office asking for facilities to enable the leaders of the
African National Olympic Committees to hold a meeting. For several days there
had been media reports about a meeting of the Organisation of African Unity in
Port-Louis, Mauritius where there had been calls for the exclusion of New
Zealand from the Games with the threat that African countries would withdraw if
this were not to happen. The OAU - among other organisations - had been angered
by the New Zealand rugby tour of South Africa which had been completed just
before the Games began; it was seen as positive support for the apartheid
regime.
It was not a
matter which the IOC had considered, and strictly speaking it had no reason or
authority to do so since rugby football was not on the Olympic programme and
the sport was in no way attached to the National Olympic Committee in New
Zealand. The politicians of Africa saw this from a different perspective and
through their diplomats at the United Nations ensured that the representatives
of the supreme Council for Sport in Africa, many of whom were in Montreal, knew
of their discussions and the demands which followed. After their meeting in the
Village, Jean Claude Ganga went to the Organising Committee and saw the
president Roger Rousseau, appealing to him to go to Mauritius and influence the
African political leaders. He also met Lance Cross, the IOC member in New
Zealand, and sought a meeting with Lord Killanin, the IOC president. But that
strangely did not happen even though what was a threat of a boycott became a
reality when Tanzania withdrew before travelling to Montreal. Whatever the
political significance, missed or ignored, in sporting terms this was a huge
loss for it deprived the sporting world of a 1,500 metres contest on the track
between Filbert Bayi, the world record holder, and John Walker of New Zealand,
the world record holder for the mile.
The resolution of the OAU to express its contempt and anger
over the New Zealand rugby tour remained and became a sad succession of tearful
exits from the Village by African countries and their supporters.
Disappointment and bewilderment were laced with tears as teams departed. Across
eight days the scenes of departure were repeated, as 21 teams and Tanzania did
not take part. Those who left were Algeria, Cameroon, Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia,
Ghana, Guyana, Iraq, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, Swaziland,
Chad, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Upper Volta and Zambia.
Indians Chiefs
Guard Queen Elizabeth
The opening and closing ceremonies of an Olympic Games are in
part a reflection of the cultural ambience of the country and region in which
they are held. More recently these events have been handed over to the
direction of a producer whose remit is very much to meet the needs of
television. But here in Montreal, the emphasis was on exploring the wealth of
cultural heritage in Quebec, and it evolved in the living rooms of a group of artists
and cultural enthusiasts. At first I was just an appendage, someone to be
referred to frequently, it turned out, when matters of Olympic protocol and
tradition came up. But hour upon hour through the aperitifs and coffee my wife
Darinka and I were enthralled listeners to music, prose, poetry and play. There
was Jean Dupire, a colleague of Mayor Drapeau, who was a leading personality in
Montreal's cultural life; André Morin, aesthete and musician, who was adviser
to Jacques Lorion, general director of Games' ceremonies; Victor Vogel, composer,
score writer, conductor and instrumentalist, who brought a high creative sense
to the musical aspect of the ceremonies; Louis Chantigny, music and literary
enthusiast, who was a journalist; there were others whose contributions sparked
our thoughts and directions. Among them were François Godbout, a young lawyer
who was a Davis Cup player for Canada and whom I partnered in the Montreal
Tennis Club, a man who ccould talk for hours about the lives of Liszt, Chopin, Mozart
and other giants of musical history. Also Père Sablon- Marcel de la Sablonière, a
Jesuit priest who was a vice president of the NOC. Upon reflection I felt that
these artistic interludes, away from planning, budgets, schedules, media
attacks and other burdens enabled me to keep my sanity through this difficult
period.
One evening early in our get togethers during March of 1974 in the house
of our hospitable host Jean Dupire, he and Morin talked about the young Quebec
composer André Mathieu and his rich musical creativity. He was 39 when he died
long before his musicality was understood: his legacy included 80 works,
concertos, sonatas, ballads, symphonic
INDIAN PROTECTION RING
the magnificent closing ceremonv, real Canadian Indians and
their wigwams created a special atmosphere.
poems and rhapsodies. It was the conversations of Dupire and
Morin and Morin's light touch on the piano keys in Dupir's drawing room, which
evoked the musical variants of Mathieu's compositions. From this beginning
through a range of excerpts Vogel based the musical elaboration of the opening and
closing ceremonies.
My most
significant contribution to the ceremonial came in an important aspect of the
closing ceremony. One of the ideas we worked upon was to have young women forming
the five Olympic Rings and dressed in the appropriate colour of each circle.
The athletes taking part in the closing ceremony would be handed a coloured
card and invited to go to that circle and express the joy they had felt in
their part at the Games. A good idea but might not some more exuberant
competitors, how shall I put it, interfere with the dignity of the young
women? It seemed we might fall into the trap of inviting horseplay, which would
go beyond the line of fun and offend. It was at this point that I felt we could
ask the North American Indians to play a positive role in the ceremony. There
was concern about the Indians' participation because historically and more
recently they had been treated unfairly and might therefore see such a ceremony broadcast to the
world as a place to demonstrate their dissatisfaction. Killanin and Drapeau
were clearly worried, but I put forward my idea which was that we should have
five outer circles of Indians protecting the women, and my device which locked
in the safety aspect - two Indian Chiefs taking their place in the VIP Box as
ceremonial guards to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. I knew that if the chiefs
were in that position they would ensure the best possible behaviour and dignity
of the young men of their tribes. I put my idea to Drapeau and we visited the
chiefs on the reservation. After a cordial reception we explained our plans,
inviting them to provide the protecting rings and for two Chiefs to sit
directly behind the Queen.
They agreed to the idea, and when
both Chiefs attended a reception just the details had been worked upon before
the Games given by Roger Rousseau, the Organising Committee president where I met one of them -
Max One Onti Gros-Louis, Grand Chief Huron Wendat Nation. He and all his
cooleagues listened to our presentation about their part in the
ceremony and they clearly understood the
dignity of their role. I met him in the box on the day of the ceremony and he
was very honoured and excited by the position he was taking. Moreover it was a
significant step in Quebec's history, for this was the first time in 200 years
that the eight tribes in the territory had come together. They played their
part admirably.
Nineteen years later there was an
unexpected sequel to this episode when at the IOC session in Budapest Quebec
were bidding to organise the Winter Games
HIS GREATEST MOMENT
Cuba's Alberto Juantorena enjoyed unique sporting
success in 1976. Already the world record holder in the 400 and800 metres,
Juantorena won the gold medal in bothdistances af the 1976 Games in Montreal.
and among the
delegation was my friend Max One Onti Gros-Louis. Of course as a member of the
delegation he was presented to the IOC President Samaranch. The Games were
awarded to Salt Lake City but never mind that, we celebrated to a gypsy
orchestra on the banks of the Danube, reviving the memories of the closing
ceremony in Montreal.
After so many
crisis in construction and organisation and, at the last, political problems,
Montreal presented to the athletes of the world ideal conditions for training
and competing and the participants responded to make these Games rich in the
creation of Olympic legends. In the main arena there were a host of
extraordinary performances.
THE GREAT LADY OF MONTREAL
The unforgettable Polish athlete Irena Szewinska, who
won the 400 metres in a world record-beating 49.29 seconds.
Irena Szewinska
of Poland, coming towards the close of a brilliant career, set a remarkable
world record for 400 metres of 49.29 sec; Alberto Juantorena of Cuba achieved
unique victories at 400 and 800 metres; and there was another double gold medal
winner, Tatyana Kazankina of the Soviet Union at 800 and 1,500 metres. Edwin
Moses began his legendary contribution to the sport with his first Olympic gold
medal and world record (47.64 sec) in the 400 metres hurdles. Perhaps the
greatest achievement in the arena came from the Finn Lasse Viren, who
successfully defended the 5,000 and 10,000 metres titles he had won in Munich.
In the gymnastics hall Nikolay Andrianov of the Soviet Union left his imprint
on the celebrations by taking four gold, a silver and a bronze medal, and Nadia
Comaneci of Romania almost matched his peaks with three golds and a bronze.
After the basketball drama of Munich the USA returned to their position of
supremacy, taking gold in the final against Yugoslavia.
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