Patriot Hearts: Inside the Olympics That Changed a Country

by John Furlong, Gary Mason (With)

Overview

A riveting behind-the-scenes account of the transformative 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games—an extraordinary story of visionary leadership, love of country and the ability to dream boldly.

When John Furlong emigrated from Ireland in 1974, the customs officer greeted him with “Welcome to Canada. Make us better”—an imperative that has defined Furlong’s life ever since. A passionate, accomplished athlete with a track record of community service, Furlong was a volunteer for Vancouver’s Olympic bid movement when it began in 1996 and then spent the next 14 years living and breathing the Olympics. Furlong and his organizing team, including 25,000 volunteers and many partners, orchestrated a remarkable Winter Games. Patriot Hearts is the story of how they did it.

Working with Globe&Mail columnist Gary Mason, Furlong recounts the lead­up to the Games and describes how he handled seemingly insurmountable setbacks—such as the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, a global recession and the washed­out snow at Cypress Bowl — to achieve a runaway success and, ultimately, a pivotal moment of nationhood.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781553657958
Publisher:	Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd.
Publication date:	02/08/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

John Furlong was the leader behind the team that organized and delivered the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games to positive reviews the world over. Prior to his appointment as CEO of the Vancouver Olympic Committee in 2004, he was the President and Chief Operating Officer for the Vancouver 2010 Bid, clocking more than 1.2 million miles in his effort to promote Vancouver's candidacy. Furlong has been involved with athletics all his life, having competed at the international level in basketball, European handball and squash. He became Canadian Squash Champion in 1986. Born in Tipperary, Ireland, Furlong has five children and ten grandchildren.

Gary Mason is a national affairs columnist for the Globe&Mail, based in Vancouver. Previously, Mason spent 19 years at the Vancouver Sun in various capacities, including a seven-year stint as a popular sports columnist. He has received the prestigious Jack Webster Award for journalism six times and has won two National Newspaper Awards.

Read an Excerpt

From the Introduction

I felt strangely relaxed from the moment I woke up that Sunday, the last day of the 2010 Winter Olympics. Call it an old athlete's intuition, but I liked Canada's chances in the gold medal men's hockey game. In fact, even though the United States had defeated us earlier in the tournament, I felt assured about the outcome of the rematch that would be played that afternoon. It was a game I had dreamed about even before we won the bid to host the Games in Prague, back in July 2003. That seemed so long ago now.

I walked out on the balcony of the suite I had been staying in at the Westin Bayshore during the Games. As I had every morning since they began 16 days earlier, I checked on two things: the cauldron at the waterfront and the weather. I was always relieved when I saw the flame still burning. A clear sky made me feel even better.

Sometimes the entire Olympic experience felt like a dream to me. Occasionally I would think I was going to wake up and discover it had all been fiction. That morning was no different. Had this all really happened? So many days it had felt surreal walking around and knowing you were part of something so massive in scope, so dramatic in its telling. Something that was so important to entire nations. The biggest event to ever be organized on Canadian soil.

You could tell by the number of Canadians who were watching the Olympics on television and devouring daily accounts of the Games in the newspapers that interest was off the charts. A day earlier, somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 per cent of the country had tuned in to watch the coverage. Those were never-before-seen-or-imagined numbers. Ecstatic Olympic broadcasters expected them to be even bigger for the gold medal hockey game. And they would be.

Face-off was set for noon.

Before the game started I had to attend a team meeting to review our plans for the many challenges the final day posed. There would be 80,000 people cramming into two arenas in the space of four or five hours. For everything to start on time it was going to take military-like precision and discipline. After that meeting finished, I had to attend a wind-up news conference at the Main Press Centre.

I would be struck by how different the questions were at the final session with reporters compared to the ones I had to handle a couple of weeks earlier when the common perception, certainly among the British press, was that the Games were in trouble. Now many of those same reporters were writing that we had staged perhaps the best Winter Olympics in history.

Shortly before 11 a.m., I hopped in a car and started heading to Canada Hockey Place, where the game was being played. On the way I passed several downtown restaurants and bars, outside of which stood hundreds of colourfully-clad people waiting to get in. I'm sure records were set that day across the country for most beer sold on a Sunday.

By the time the puck was dropped the crowd was on its feet, chanting, making more noise than I'd ever heard in a hockey rink. Imagine a 747 revving its engines inside a hangar - that's how loud it felt. All around me were adults and children screaming their hearts out. I could only shake my head in wonder at how sport could transform a cross-section of Canadians into a roiling mass of kinetic energy.

I knew nothing about hockey before arriving in Canada from Ireland. But I quickly learned just what the game meant to people here. It was to Canadians what Gaelic football was to those back home. And the more I came to understand the game, the more I realized Canadians had rallied around a sport that defined them and their spirit. Hockey players were among the toughest, most fearless athletes of any sport. Canadians were among the most resilient and courageous people. In so many ways, the sport and the people who loved it were a natural match.

Large parts of the gold medal game remain a blur to me. I had a million things on my mind that afternoon, as I did most days during the Games. The closing ceremonies would be taking place just a few hours later. Getting 60,000 people into BC Place Stadium was a massive undertaking. I worried about that. I had a speech to give as well. I was fretting about how my French was going to go over. There was still a cross-country skiing race to get off up at Whistler.

So my focus wasn't entirely there when Canada went up 1-0 in the first period and then 2-0 in the second. I couldn't haven't told you who scored the goals at the time, but now can, of course. So thank you Jonathan Toews and Corey Perry. I will never forget, however, the sound in the rink when the pucks went in, the blast of the horn, the spontaneous delirium of the crowd. Jacques Rogge, normally so reserved, stoic, expressionless, even cracked a smile.

He quietly wanted Canada to win, I thought, because he understood what it would do for the country and what it would mean, ultimately, to the Games and the place that would be reserved for them in our annals if the Olympic experience was capped off by hockey gold.

Before the second period was finished, however, the United States would make the score 2-1 on a goal by Ryan Kesler, whom I had often watched play in this building for the hometown Vancouver Canucks. Now he was the enemy, no doubt an odd feeling for him and the many Canucks fans in the rink that day. After his goal I felt the energy seep out of the building a little bit. I could sense the worry and dread and yet I remained, well, at least cautiously optimistic.

Beside me, meantime, Rene was absolutely delighted. "All we need now is another American goal," he said during the second intermission.

"Another goal," I screamed at him. "Are you out of your mind?"

"No, no, John," he said, smiling. "It would be unbelievable for the ratings. We need this game to go to a shoot-out. That would be perfect."

"No it would not," I screamed. "Now you stop that right now, do you understand? We do not want or need overtime. We do not want a shootout. We want this game over, finished, wrapped up, now."

I spent most of the third period tightly clutching the edges of my seat. I wasn't alone. I swear I could hear my heart beating, or maybe it was the collective sound of everyone else's. The last minute of the regulation was pure torture. When the U.S.'s Zach Parise tied the game with 24 seconds left I closed my eyes and covered my face in my hands.
Nearby, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was doing the same.

I looked over at Jacques. His face was ashen. I looked at Rene. He couldn't stop smiling.

"Rene," I said. "I'm just telling you that if the U.S. scores in overtime I'm going to stab you in the heart with my pen."