Sport Performance Weekly

April 24th, 2006

Artistic conception of building exterior. (VANOC image)

Family has a gift for the 2010 Games: Segals sell office tower to give Vanoc an affordable home.
(The Vancouver Sun)

Lorne Segal and his father Joe knew they had made a great investment when they bought Glenayre Electronics' seven-storey unfinished office tower and accompanying two-storey industrial warehouse on Vancouver's east side in 2003 for $13 million.

With more than 230,000 square feet of space, the Segals, through their company, Kingswood Properties Ltd., were poised to reap significant profits. Theirs was the newest and largest block of office space in the city, coming at a time when occupancy rates were shrinking and lease rates rising. They had at least nine firm offers for long-term leases on the table last year and they had invested $4 million in improvements.

So when the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee went looking for new offices for their rapidly-expanding job of planning the 2010 Winter Olympics, they discovered there was only one site in the entire city -- the Segals' buildings at 3585 Graveley St. -- capable of meeting their needs.

It was a classic case of having someone over the barrel. The Segals knew it, and so did Vanoc. Most businesses would take advantage of the situation and some even might be inclined to gouge, knowing there was no other place to go. "There we were in a position where we really had the only asset quite likely in the city that would solve their problem. Whoever it was, you could hold that person up for ransom," Lorne Segal said Friday.

So what did the Segals do? The exact opposite. They cancelled the other offers and sold the building to the city of Vancouver for $24 million, $11 million less than the $35 million appraised value, on the understanding that Vanoc would be given a generous lease rate for the next four years.

The decision cost the Segals, well-known philanthropists, millions of dollars in forgone revenue and investments, and they did it on a simple hand shake with Michael Flanigan and Bruce Maitland, the city's chief property negotiators, whom Segal described as "two of the toughest guys" he's dealt with.

In making the deal, the Segals became Vanoc's newest benefactors, and city taxpayers unexpectedly acquired a property that is already worth more than they've paid, and will be in high demand when Vanoc leaves after 2010. Lorne Segal said his family made the decision to sell to the city as their contribution to the Olympics. "Yeah, we took a big hit on that one, I'll tell you," he said wistfully. "It wasn't even on the market. We didn't even want to sell it. It was a long-term investment. Things were coming together, leases were written and things were actually looking very positive for that investment."

So why sell? "In short, that was a conscious decision to try and help the cause," he said. "It was our contribution to the Olympic cause."

Flanigan said the city, as an Olympic partner, wanted to help Vanoc out of a sticky situation. But it would never have been able to pay the Segals the true market value. "If it were not for Vanoc needing the building, we would never have bought it," he said. "We could not have paid market value."

As a short-lived function of the Olympics, an organizing committee presents a risk to any landlord: it needs massive amounts of room for a brief period, after which all that space then floods back on to the market. Landlords count on long-term leases to amortize the cost of improvements, such as carpeting, interior walls, plumbing and electrical services. In the Segals' case, much of the two office buildings they bought still needed to be finished internally, and they would not have been able to amortize the cost, estimated at more than $8 million, over the short four-year period Vanoc would be a tenant.

When Vanoc vacates after 2010, the city will have a fully-paid building it can either lease out at full market rates, or use for civic government expansion without having to make major improvements. Vanoc is paying full market rate for the 500 underground parking spaces. Overall, the city is earning a six per cent return on investment.

John McLaughlin, Vanoc's vice-president and comptroller, said the deal saves the committee about $2 million because it had originally budgeted to move at least twice before the Olympics as its space requirements grew.

On paper, the Segals gave up $11 million in capital and millions more in future rents and leases. But Lorne Segal said the money was never the motivator, and he doesn't even know how Revenue Canada would treat the gift. "I can't answer that. The financial people will deal with that end of things. That wasn't the major thrust of it," he said. "We'll have to handle that in the right way and I am not actually sure what that is, other than grin and bear it."

Segal said the only ones who took a hit financially were his family, and they knowingly did so in the interests of helping the Olympic movement. "Usually these things come down to dollars and cents, but this clearly wasn't about that," he said. "We left a lot on the table, and again that was a conscious decision. We're not inexperienced that way.

"It's hard to do a great business deal and a great philanthropic deal. It depends upon how you value business. In the end does it pay dividends that you can't quantify? You hope so."

Mark Tewksbury's new book

'Straight talk from a gay jock': Stamping out homophobia in the sports universe is still a huge challenge.
(The Vancouver Sun)

Mark Tewksbury, Canadian Olympic swimming hero and unabashed gay man, resurrected his childhood Barbie-in-the-bathtub playtime in his early 30s, once got caught in a threesome with a male and female swimmer in a bathroom cubicle and occasionally smokes pot.

OK, now that we've got your attention -- and provided the Coles Notes version of the more, uh, salacious parts of his cathartic new book, Inside Out: Straight Talk From a Gay Jock -- we pose this question: Is the guy who outed himself in 1998 after years of whispered rumours, but who remains as much a paradox as ever, still a relevant figure?

The glowing book testimonials from such disparate individuals as Dick Pound, the Canadian IOC member and anti-doping czar, educator Barbara Coloroso, federal NDP leader Jack Layton and a handful of gay and lesbian activists answer in the affirmative.

But the real proof may be in how far his detailed story about overcoming his personal demons reaches -- and how it might resonate with gay athletes not yet out and with sports administrators.

Tewksbury says there are signs, particularly in some European countries, that the sexual orientation of athletes is a non-issue. But stamping out homophobia in the sports universe is still a huge challenges in North America, particularly in the U.S. "I hope the U.S. religious right demonizes [the book] and holds it out there and that makes people read it," he says, adding with a laugh, and a nod to his pocketbook, that such outrage would surely help sales.

Now 38 and co-chairman of this summer's inaugural Outgames in Montreal, Tewksbury concedes that his hopeful prediction in '98 -- that in 10 years time being a gay athlete in the sports world would no longer be an issue -- is far from reality. But he says "baby steps" are being taken and the landscape is starting to shift.

Last January, Chris Rudge, CEO of the Canadian Olympic Committee, and several other leaders in the sports system met in Ottawa to look at the broader issue of diversity. "I spoke, and so did a transgendered athlete, a person who used to be a guy but who now competes as a woman, and it was great. I'm really sensing an openness to at least look at these issues, if not totally talk about them."

He notes that for the Outgames -- launched after Montreal lost the VII Gay Games after a dispute with the Federation of Gay Games -- the provincial hockey and soccer federations in Quebec will be actively involved. Tewksbury said it would be "fantastic" if a gay Olympian in Canada was able to come out before competing in Vancouver-Whistler in 2010.

"We know there were Olympic athletes, Olympic medalists in Turin, who were gay and lesbian. I think it would be all right within the Olympic movement in Canada [if they came out now], all right with the Canadian public, although Stephen Harper might not agree," he said.

But ideally, says Tewksbury, he'd like that revelation to come in the normal course of competition and life. "It's boring to just stand up and say 'I'm gay.' Who cares. Even when I came out in '98, people asked why do I have to do that. We need to get to a place where it's just there ... where an Olympic medallist can be at his news conference and thank his partner or his companion and he mentions another guy's name. "That's what the coming out process means to me."

Tewksbury, who in 1998 lost a six-figure deal as a motivational speaker for a financial institution because he was "too openly gay", says an athlete would need a significant support system to come out. "It can't be one person. It takes the sport system, the administrators, the COC officials, all collectively to be on board, to be 'OK, when that day comes, we're going to be there for that person."

Tewksbury, who won three Olympic medals and set numerous world records during his swimming career, says the book was an effort to tie together his separate lives as an athlete/role model and a gay activist.

It's quite the contradiction. On the one hand, there's the earnest, clean-cut, power-of-positive- thinking motivational speaker and TV host of How's it Made on the Discovery Channel. On the other, there is the fun-loving, sometimes raunchy guy who one gay writer described as one "Great Big Girlfriend.""My life doesn't fit into any easy little category," Tewksbury said. "On one hand, the book was written trying to honour the really difficult experience I had of being alone and isolated, but it was also intended to give insight to my mother and people in the world of sports into that world."

He delves into his childhood growing up in a conservative household in Calgary -- his father beat him with a wooden spoon whenever he caught him playing with his sister's Barbie -- some of his relationships and brief flirtations with prostitutes and dressing in drag.

But he also offers some interesting insights into his work on the IOC site selection committee for the 2004 Games, his work with OATH (Olympic Athletes Together Honorably) in trying to affect change within the IOC, his relationship with mentor Carol Anne Letheren, the late head of the COC, and the behind-the-scenes wrangling that led to the FGG pulling the Gay Games from Montreal.

Tewksbury loves to talk to Canadian athletes -- alpine skier Thomas Grandi credits a session with Tewksbury and other successful former Olympians in Banff in 2004 for his late-career success. But despite his extensive background, Tewksbury is not so sure he sees a larger role for himself in Canadian or international sport.

"I have a lot of respect for the leaders at Vanoc. I like some of the stuff Chris Rudge is doing with the COC .... and I realized over the years you never say never, but I don't think things have changed enough at the absolute highest echelons of sport, meaning the IOC, to create a space where I would feel comfortable giving a lot of time."

Sport plan calls for action on political front.
JAMES CHRISTIE
Globe and Mail

The Toronto Sports Council expects to release its action plan today -- a plan for bringing a city starved for sports facilities into the 21st century.

It's a baby step into a massive gulch, considering the dearth of sports facilities in an urban centre of 2.5 million people. Badly-needed ice pads and a 50-metre swimming pool will be first items on the list.

But as Toronto's politicians look over the recommendations in the action plan presented by the TSC, a group working to make it easier for local people to engage in physical activity, they might also look past it.

Investing in sport can pay dividends, not just on the level of active lifestyles and health but in tourism and development dollars as well. The benefits soar into the billions of dollars. That's what Melbourne's city fathers found out.

Lois Appleby, an ex-pat Canadian who is retiring as chief executive of Tourism Victoria in Australia, says tourism brings $10.6-billion into that state's economy annually, and much of that is stimulated by sport-driven tourism.

In the state of Victoria, surrounding Melbourne, sport tourism is the fifth-largest driver of the economy. Victoria gets 16 million domestic visitors a year and more than a million of those arrive directly for sports events. Another 250,000 a year come to Victoria's sports events from overseas.

In the 1980s, Victoria's politicians made a conscious effort to hang the state hat on sport tourism, Appleby said. "Queensland had its beaches and reefs, Sydney had the romance of the harbour and the culture of the Opera House, and Melbourne had sport. It's become the No. 3 destination in all of Australia," she said.

"An events corporation was set up in the late 1980s to develop a portfolio of events and a brand," Appleby said. "There are six to eight major fixed events in Melbourne annually, including the Australian Open tennis, the Australian Formula One Grand Prix, horse racing's Melbourne Cup, major cricket events, and the all-entrancing footy [Australian rules football].

"Plus there are one-offs that broaden the concept and broaden the reach, like the 2006 Commonwealth Games and 2007 world championships of swimming, diving, synchronized swimming and water polo."

It's been a 30-year project, but the regular influx of people has driven other aspects of the city. One can't walk more than a few blocks in downtown Melbourne without seeing an impressive sport facility, be it the revamped Melbourne Cricket Ground, the Rod Laver tennis centre, the unnamed multipurpose venue or the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre.

To move people, the city has developed an efficient surface tram system. Hotels don't have such sharp, roller-coaster low seasons because another major event is always on the horizon. And the hook for it has been sport.

Toronto has languished on the sidelines when it comes to sport for the people and major sporting events. Politicians and budget makers branded sport and physical activity as frills in the past three decades.

On the elite front, only about a dozen Torontonians were among the combined 110 medal winners at the Winter Olympics in Turin and the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne -- a pathetic record for Canada's largest city.

On the community front, there aren't enough hockey rinks, gyms and sports fields to service the population, and many of those that do exist are in a poor state of repair. "Simple things become so complicated in this city," TSC chair Karen Pitre said.

Politicians need to find money to address health problems and social problems, but she believes some of those problem might have been headed off with wise investments elsewhere. This includes access to healthy physical activity for the public. "So many of our gyms are dark after school. The police say the worst time when kids find trouble is that 4 to 6 p.m. time when the schools close and there's no money to run after-school programs," Pitre said.

"The governments are starting to figure this out. The province's Active 2010 strategy and the Feds' Own the Podium 2010 are important initiatives. But if we are successful with the program side [convincing people we need sport programs for all the right reasons], the public playing fields are still in disrepair and if you talk to the school boards, their fields are mud bowls," she said.

"There's no joining of the dots that says if you want people to be active, you need facilities, you need them close by and you need them in good repair. . . . How can you have a growing city like Toronto and not have the amenities of a civilized society?" Toronto doesn't have a running track in good enough shape to stage a national-calibre track meet. It has only one Olympic-size pool that doesn't leak.

And while Toronto does have local ice rinks, there aren't enough. The explosion of girls taking up hockey has led to a shortage of ice time. "Girls want to play and be active in sport and they're being denied access," Pitre said. There's seldom ice time for parents who want to play recreationally, and it was their tax dollars that built the rinks."

The issue always comes back to money, she says, and political paralysis over spending on sport. "Somehow, we find money because we need hospitals or because we need jails. People find money when things are important. We have to establish that this is important," she said. "We've got to come up with a strategy for government. We can't do the typical Toronto thing, where nobody agrees and so we get nothing done."

Silken's new book

Silken Laumann says: Let your kids create games, play in parks...
The Ottawa Citizen

Silken Laumann wants your kids to be bored.

Canada's legendary rower -- she of the Amazonian physique and miraculous, true-grit comeback at the Barcelona Olympics -- wants young children to confront long stretches of unstructured, television-free time, and to be encouraged to use their imaginations to be active.

Appalled by rising rates of obesity and diabetes in young children, Ms. Laumann has written a book, Child's Play: Rediscovering the Joy of Play in Our Families and Communities, in which she places the blame in large part on the highly structured, highly programmed lives of many of today's kids. On the surface, their days may appear to buzz with activity, but Ms. Laumann argues their schedules leave little time for the pleasures of active play.

Ms. Laumann's book tour kicks off in Ottawa today with an appearance at the Dovercourt Recreation Centre, where she'll expand on her message of doing more by doing less.

"I grew up in an environment where I was physically active just living, walking to school and riding my bike and spending time, because I was bored, exploring my neighbourhood -- that's how we all got our physical conditioning," says Ms. Laumann, who didn't participate in organized sports until she was 13 years old.

"Our kids don't have that any more. The alternative is they have to play sports, but that's only hitting the certain percentage of kids who love sports, and generally they're only active for half an hour versus the hour and half that they would be active if they were on their bikes or playing in the park."

Ms. Laumann is passionate about getting parents to pause in the frenzy of shuttling young ones from school to soccer, piano, ballet and swimming to remember what it was like when they were kids, when "after-school activities" meant building a fort of cardboard boxes with the children next door or playing tag in the park until cries of "dinner!" rang out down the street.

"For a lot of people, that's their best memory of being a kid, and talking about it makes them think 'Yeah, but my kids don't have that. I would love my kids to have that,' " says Ms. Laumann.

In Child's Play, the three-time Olympic medallist lays out her argument for why it doesn't have to be that way, and how to change it. She urges families to press the pause button on their busy lives, and consider how often they let their kids go to the park alone or ride their bikes in the neighbourhood, or how often they kick a ball around with their children or go for a walk together. Not often, and Ms. Laumann believes she knows why.

Fears of abduction have led to children being supervised and organized more than ever before, and fears of lawsuits and physical harm have restricted the type of play children are exposed to.

"We have to find a balance between if our kids move, they might hurt themselves, and if our kids don't move, they may die of heart disease," says Ms. Laumann, who has two children, six and eight years old.

To make matters worse, the drive to "parent perfectly," as Ms. Laumann calls it, often translates into children with weekly schedules full of organized, competitive activities, leaving little time for the joy of play. Instead of setting children on course for good health and achievement, parents may in fact be sending them down a path to inactivity and obesity, and missing out on opportunities to build stronger families and communities.

"The alternative is not the opposite -- letting them be idle," Ms. Laumann writes. "It involves balancing their structured time with their playtime, their time with instructors with their time with the family."

To get the ball rolling, Child's Play includes more than 20 pages of information on children's games and resources for parents. Most of all, Ms. Laumann urges parents to organize "Play in the Park" evenings, with one or two parents supervising a whole neighbourhood of children in a nearby park.

"We're talking about unstructuring play in a structured way," Ms. Laumann admits with a laugh, "but it's important that we increase our comfort zone slowly."

Ms. Laumann has been preaching her message for two years through her organization Silken's Active Kids Movement, which promotes physical activity at the grassroots.

"It's about starting a dialogue, where people are asking, what are we doing with our kids? Could kids walk to school again? How can we get them playing in the parks and open spaces of our community again? We show people how."

Stephen Nason, director of recreation at Dovercourt Recreation Centre, heard Ms. Laumann speak last year and decided she has a point.

"There's a fear of the street and of letting kids out," Mr. Nason says. "Kids are stuck in their backyards, like in a zoo, and often they don't even know each other. There's not enough room to run and stretch and not always be guided in everything."

Starting in May, Dovercourt will have its own "Play in the Park" night. Staff will provide security by supervising the centre's park for two hours every Wednesday evening, and will pitch in if children want help getting games rolling. But mainly it will be up to the kids.

Ms. Laumann is thrilled the idea is catching on, but she hopes recreation professionals like Mr. Nason won't be the only ones making the effort.

"What I'd ultimately love to see is other people pick that up and say 'There's a park just down the street, I wouldn't have to drive there, and I could start something here.' It really takes just one individual to connect with a few neighbours."

Ms. Laumann did it in her own Victoria neighbourhood, and noticed a spin-off effect. Neighbours know each other better, more children are playing in the street and the neighbourhood feels safer. Some parents are experimenting with letting their children walk to school by themselves.

At home, Ms. Laumann has reduced the number of activities her children are enrolled in and makes sure they have several nights a week to play road hockey or head to the park.

"I am certainly not suggesting that we stop all organized sports and activities, but I am advocating that we pull back in order to create the time for families to be active together," Ms. Laumann writes in Child's Play. "Let's not make physical activity too complicated. Let's rejoice in the fact that our kids want to move and encourage them to jump a little more, wrestle a little more, run outside roaring."

For details, call the centre at 798-8950 or see www.silkensactivekids.ca

 

 

If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent.

 

~Isaac Newton