VANCOUVER - The head of Vancouver's Olympic organizing committee peppers speeches about the 2010 Games with adjectives such as "wonderful" and "inspiring."
Luncheon crowds hang off every word at John Furlong's booster events, and always emerge pumped full of Olympic vim and vigour.
There's no question in British Columbia the 2010 Games will change the province forever.
In addition to the sports venues being upgraded or built for the Games, millions of dollars are being spent on road improvements and community centres and some of the province's First Nations are reaping historic financial gains in the form of land and funding arrangements.
But observers say the Vancouver Games' legacy to the Olympic movement as a whole is less of a certainty.
"The importance of winter sports in Canada means Vancouver's Olympics should be a great celebration for winter sports, that's a kind of boost the Olympics can always use," said Ed Hula, publisher of an international newsletter called Around the Rings and a longtime observer of the Olympic movement.
"But I'm not sure that 50 years from now we'll remember Vancouver too much differently than the parade of winter Olympics that have come before."
The Winter Games are always the forgotten sibling of the Olympic movement, with sports and architectural legacies more often coming from the massive spectacles that are Summer Games.
But Vancouver and Furlong's enthusiasm for its Games could be what the Olympic movement needs after an at-times challenging 2008.
The politics around the Beijing Summer Games, and the world economic situation, have forced the International Olympic Committee into corners it finds despicable, said Kevin Wamsley of the Institute for Olympic Studies at the University of Western Ontario.
"When these kinds of questions are raised in politics and economics, that's not what the IOC wants to see in the media," said Wamsley.
"They'd like their festival just to go off without a hitch and everybody's happy and they can just rake in money for corporate sponsors and for their own coffers, but this year has been a challenge."
While they were a spectacular athletic success, the Beijing Games were dogged by environmental concerns. Protests followed the torch relay. And the IOC was left with egg on its face when the Chinese government reneged on a promise of full press freedom, blocking access to many websites in the early days of the Games.
Part of the stated reason for awarding the Games to China was to help it open up, and for a while it appeared to be working -- until the beginning of December when the government resumed blocking foreign news websites.
The London 2012 Olympics are now facing a harsh financial climate, with the British government musing openly that had it known the economy was going to collapse, it never would have bid for the Games in the first place.
Global economy is changing the game
A collapsing worldwide economy has so spooked the IOC that it's holding off bids for broadcast rights for upcoming Games, and appealing to organizing committees to scale back.
The host of the 2014 Winter Games is Sochi, Russia -- a town 80 kilometres from Georgia, the country invaded by Russia this summer. Sochi has to build all of its venues from scratch, with little funding guaranteed.
But while London and Sochi struggle with the Olympic rings, the organizing committee for the 2010 Games, known as VANOC, has an aura of seeming invincibility.
It was perhaps best summed up by a New York City street vendor who recently remarked to a Canadian tourist: Canada should always host the Games. Nothing ever goes wrong there.
"Canada is a country, and Canadians are people, who take pride in what they do," said Bob Barney, also of the International Centre for Olympic Studies.
"I don't think that anything will come out of Vancouver that will shame or dishonour or embarrass the modern Olympic movement in any way."
The IOC itself appears far less concerned about the 2010 Games than about London and Sochi. Things are moving along so well that the IOC has cancelled some project review visits.
"The Winter Games are often quieter than the Summer Games because the world impact is probably a bit less, however we are confident that the Games in Vancouver will be done and we will not have too many issues," said Gilbert Felli, the IOC's executive director of Olympic Games, in an interview with The Canadian Press after a recent visit.
But that doesn't mean there aren't problems on the horizon, Felli said.
"When you look at a certain number of local discussions, it could also show that it is not as easy," he said. "When you are talking about the homeless or other social issues that people drag the Olympic Games into, it could go into one direction or another.
"But we are confident that with the dialogue and the work that VANOC is doing, this should not happen."
Concerns about infrastructure
Social unrest around the Games is one persistent thorn in VANOC's side that will likely tear a bigger hole in the year to come.
Activists, whether concerned over homelessness or aboriginal rights issues, are already mobilizing. A loose coalition of protesters have united under the "No Olympics on Stolen Native Land" banner.
The last year has also been unkind to Whistler, the host of Nordic and some alpine events in 2010.
A rock slide on the Vancouver-to-Whistler highway cut off access to the community for several days. Early in December, a ski gondola collapsed on the mountain adjacent to the Olympic venues, causing some injuries.
The security budget for the Games is also still a big question mark, with the province of B.C. and the federal government still bickering over who will pay for what.
The province itself recently came under fire from its auditor general, who said by not including items such as renovations to community centres that will be used for the Games, B.C. is fudging its $600-million Olympic budget.
Some 2010 sponsors are teetering on the brink of financial collapse, though organizers swear they won't back out even as VANOC is making cuts to its $1.6-billion budget to try to guard against economic malaise.
The new budget is expected Jan. 21, and there is likely some tough negotiation going on behind the scenes as the committee looks to cut costs in areas the IOC holds dear.
VANOC ruffled the IOC's feathers earlier this year when it declared it was cutting back on media seats at low-profile events so it could sell more tickets to the public.
But even with some economic uncertainty going forward, all the athletic venues for the 2010 Games are built, ticket sales set records and organizers say 98 per cent of the sponsorship money needed is accounted for.
Furlong has said many times Vancouver's Games won't compete with the scale of Beijing, and as he watches what's happening to future Olympics around the world, he also knows the year ahead will be a challenging one, not just for VANOC but for the movement as a whole.
But, he said recently, "Let me put it this way: I'd rather be us."
