Some in the foreign press, including London 2012 organizers, had criticized the lack of city decorations to acknowledge that Vancouver was the host of the Games. The original plans to decorate the city in Olympic colours, a tradition followed by other recent Games host cities, were canceled for several reasons. Anti-Games activists repeatedly vandalized the existing 2010 Olympics monuments such as the countdown clock, forcing the city to install CCTV cameras, and adding more Games decorations would have inevitably required more security presence to deter protesters, so VANOC opted to minimize these symbols to avoid making the city a police state. Besides local opposition, budget cutbacks also forced the organizers to scale back on the elaborate plans. VANOC initially benefited from an economic boom and was able to secure lucrative and record domestic sponsorships, but this boom also resulted in rapidly rising construction and labour costs. Due to these factors, as well as the
Great Recession, VANOC built minimalistic functional venues with little aesthetic appeal though they were well-designed for post-Games usage. This approach, as well as the fact that most of the infrastructure already existed, meant that the direct costs of the Vancouver Games were much lower than recent Olympic games. organizers to implement quick modifications. Immediately after the accident, officials attributed it to an athlete error rather than a track deficiency. The
International Luge Federation called an emergency meeting after the accident, and all other training runs were cancelled for the day. The President of Georgia,
Mikheil Saakashvili, thanked the hosts for the way that they handled Kumaritashvili's death which included a moment of silence, bringing his remains back to Georgia and a tribute to him at the opening ceremony. One critic questioned the choice of
Cypress Mountain as a venue because of its potential lack of snow due to the 2009-10
El Niño. Because of this possibility, organizers had a contingency plan to truck in snow from
Manning Park, about to the east of the city. This allowed events to proceed as planned. Political decisions involving cancellation of promised low-income housing and the creation of a community of mixed economic backgrounds for post-Games use of the
athletes' village was criticized. Opening ceremonies were stalled while organizers dealt with mechanical problems during the cauldron lighting ceremony. Speed skating events were delayed due to breakdowns of the
ice resurfacers supplied by Olympia, an official sponsor of the Games. Thousands of tickets were voided by organizers when weather conditions made standing-room-only areas unsafe. Visitors were also upset that, as in past Olympics, medal ceremonies required separate admission Other glitches and complaints have included confusion by officials at the start of the February 16
men's and
women's biathlon pursuit races, and restricted access to the Olympic flame cauldron on the Vancouver waterfront.
Opposition Opposition to the Olympic Games was expressed by activists and politicians, including
Lower Mainland mayors
Derek Corrigan and
Richard Walton. Many of the public pre-Olympic events held in Vancouver were attended by
protesters. On Saturday, February 13, as part of a week-long Anti-Olympic Convergence, protesters smashed windows of the
Downtown Vancouver location of
The Hudson's Bay department store. Protesters later argued that the
Hudson's Bay Company, "has been a symbol of
colonial oppression for centuries" as well as a major sponsor of the 2010 Olympics. Some of the issues reflected in the opposition continue the themes identified in opposition to all Olympic games, some of which are outlined in anti-Olympics activist and Professor of Sociology Helen Jefferson Lenskyj's books
Olympic Industry Resistance (2007) and
Inside the Olympic Industry (2000), which examined a number of different Olympic Games prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics. These issues of concern, underlying the opposition to any and all Olympic Games, include: • Displacement of
low-income residents. • Anticipated
human trafficking for the purpose of forced prostitution.
First Nations opposition Although the Aboriginal governments of the
Squamish,
Musqueam,
Lil'wat and
Tsleil-Waututh (the "Four Host First Nations"), on whose traditional territory the Games were held, signed a protocol in 2004 in support of the games, there was opposition to the Olympics from some
indigenous groups and supporters. Although the
Lil'wat branch of the
St'at'imc Nation is a co-host of the Games, a splinter group from the
Seton band known as the St'at'imc of Sutikalh, who have also opposed the Cayoosh Ski Resort, feared the Olympics would bring unwanted tourism and real estate sales to their territory. Local aboriginal people, as well as Canadian
Inuit, initially expressed concern over the choice of an
inukshuk as the symbol of the Games, with some Inuit leaders such as former
Nunavut Commissioner
Peter Irniq stating that the inukshuk is a culturally important symbol to them. He said that the "Inuit never build inuksuit with head, legs and arms. I have seen inuksuit [built] more recently, 100 years maybe by non-Inuit in Nunavut, with head, legs and arms. These are not called inuksuit. These are called
inunguat, imitation of man." Local aboriginal groups also expressed annoyance that the design did not reflect the
Coast Salish and
Interior Salish native culture from the region the Games are being held in, but rather that of the Inuit, who are indigenous to the Arctic far from Vancouver.
Doping On March 11, 2010, it was reported that the Polish cross country skier
Kornelia Marek was tested positive for
EPO by the
Polish Olympic Committee. If found guilty of doping by the International Olympic Committee, Marek and the relay teams would be disqualified and stripped of their Vancouver results. She would also be banned from the
next Winter Olympics in
Sochi,
Russia, in 2014. Marek denied taking any banned substances, but the backup "B" sample from the Vancouver doping lab confirmed the "A" sample. On October 9, 2017, the IOC announced that three positive doping cases had been found from their re-analysis programme from the 2010 games. All three cases belonged to the same athlete, whose identity was not released at the time. The IOC had re-tested 1,195 urine samples from the games out of the 1,710 taken, which equates to 70%, as part of their re-analysis programme. Weeks later, the athlete was confirmed to be Slovenian biathlete
Teja Gregorin. ==Mascots==