PyeongChang headed towards right direction: Olympic expert

International Olympic Committee (IOC) official responsible for coordinating all efforts related to the Olympic Games, Christophe Dubi has likened delivering a successful Olympics to a precise Swiss clock.

"Imagine that you'll have about 100,000 people that will have to deliver the Games and each one of them has a very specific role and has to know exactly, down to the second, what it takes to deliver the job," Dubi, Olympic Games Executive Director, told Yohan News Agency at Alpensia Convention Centre in PyeongChang, some 180 kilometers east of Seoul.
PyeongChang, the South Korean host of the 2018 Winter Games, will be no exception, he added.
Dubi was in town along with the IOC's Coordination Commission on PyeongChang for its ninth and final visit before next February's Winter Olympics.
"We are in that time frame where everyone will be working together to deliver something that works like a Swiss clock, down to the second," he said. "The day of the opening ceremony, at the very precise second where you go live, you are exposed to the whole world. It's the challenge that you have in every organizing committee -- to assemble this amount of resources to do one thing for one second, where you go live on screen in front of the rest of the world."
Dubi is in charge of running, coordination and follow-up of all Olympic Games activities, from the candidature phase to the actual holding of the Olympic Games.
The post was created in 2003, and Dubi succeeded the inaugural Executive Director Gilbert Felli in September 2014.
Putting together an Olympics is both fascinating and daunting because everyone faces the same challenge, he said.
“It is a very precise and big operation that's exposed to the rest of the world, which is incredibly challenging and immensely rewarding," he said. "You realise what PyeongChang's organizers have to do from now until the Games. It is a lot of detailed work."
Unpredictable winter weather conditions can make the Winter Olympics more difficult to run than its summer cousin.
"You can't foresee (weather) and you have to be ready," he said. "That's the paradox of the Winter Games."
Dubi said he liked where PyeongChang was headed. The development of infrastructure in the region, such as new highways and high-speed railway, should help turn PyeongChang a new tourism destination down the road, which will be one of the legacies of the first Winter Olympics to take place in South Korea.
He added that PyeongChang has successfully reworked its venue master plans, reallocating and refurbishing some facilities, in cost-saving measures.
“The key has been finding different ways to be creative to save costs while not impacting the experience of participants."

Source:BNA