A lesser man might have stuck his head under the pillow and refused to look. Not John Furlong. As the minutes clicked away on his bedside clock New Year's Eve, Mr. Olympics couldn't resist staring at the numbers until they read: 12:00.
In an instant, a calendar year that once seemed so far away had arrived: 2010. The Winter Olympics were suddenly so close you could almost hear crowds cheering winning goals inside GM Place and gold-medal runs down Whistler Mountain.
"In some ways the closer you get, the more daunting it seems," the VANOC CEO said over the phone yesterday from frigid Winnipeg. "You can be as ready as possible and yet you're still in the hands of fate." The degree to which the good denizens of Vancouver decide to embrace these Games is one of those things over which VANOC has little control. And at this point the extent to which people here are prepared to play the role of good host is unclear.
The success of these Games will be judged on a couple of fronts.
For Canadians, it will largely be about medals. If we lead the medal count, or are at least near the top, and our men's and women's hockey teams win gold on top of that, these Olympics will be deemed one of the seminal moments in our nation's history.
If we bomb, it will be declared a colossal waste of money.
But there is another group that will be doing some evaluating: the thousands of foreign visitors, including media, who will be looking beyond what simply happens in a curling rink or ice-skating oval to render their verdict on these Games.
I've been fortunate to have covered three previous Olympics. Two of my favourites were the 2004 Summer Games in Athens and the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. Of course, both were historic cities, so there was a rich cultural past with which to be impressed. But the people in both cities seemed to want to leave their mark on visitors, too.
One day I was standing on a sidewalk in Turin, a street map laid out on top of a newspaper box. A car pulled over. The driver rolled down his window. In broken English, he said: "Where you go?" (I must have been wearing a daft expression typical of English-speaking people.) I was trying to find a particular museum. I showed him on the map. He popped open the door: "Hop in. It's not a too far." We talked along the way. He wasn't a huge fan of the Olympics, he told me, but wanted visitors to love his city.
From that small, singular gesture I would make a giant, sweeping assessment: Italians were great people. My car ride helped colour the way I felt about the entire trip. I had a couple of experiences in Athens that made me feel similarly.
We make these types of generalizations all the time, of course. Often, they are sparked by the type of random acts of kindness my friend in Turin showed me. And I guarantee you that the way many Olympic visitors end up feeling about Vancouver - and by extension Canada - after they leave will be influenced by the interactions they have with people everywhere from a hotel lobby to a city bus stop.
I'm not sure how people here will do, honestly. Not that there aren't lots of nice, decent folk. There are. But Vancouverites can also be a somewhat cool, phlegmatic lot. Aloof even. In the lead-up to these Games there has been less excitement than dread about the impact the Olympics are going to have on everything from traffic to the lineups at the local Starbucks.
Let's just say, Vancouver will never be a city in which it's easy to find volunteers for a pancake breakfast.
But the way these Games are ultimately appraised will depend on how welcoming the city is.
"That's really the endgame for Vancouver," Mr. Furlong said. "I think Vancouverites hold in their hands an opportunity to put these Games in a special category. It's them alone who have that power. It should not be a stretch for them to embrace the people of the world on their streets.
"That's the spirit that built this country, after all."