VANCOUVER - The last three North American cities to host a Winter Olympics have seen lasting economic and social benefits, especially when it comes to producing top-notch athletes, says a report to be issued by the organizing committee for the 2010 Winter Games.
But critics of the Games call the report "propaganda" and "fluff" and even the report's author says she didn't seek out negative opinions.
A news release about the report's findings was released Thursday by the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the Games and the report will be released in full starting next week.
The Games committee commissioned the study from an independent researcher out of concern that criticism of Vancouver's Games was most often based on Games held in European cities or on Summer Games.
"We believe that there is a unique market and unique environment in North America," said VANOC spokeswoman Renee Smith-Valade, adding Summer Games and Winter Games are entirely different undertakings.
Researcher and journalist Kate Zimmerman studied the Winter Games in 1980 in Lake Placid, N.Y., 1988 in Calgary and 2002 in Salt Lake City, Utah.
She spent six months reviewing official Games reports, newspaper articles, books, studies and newspaper and magazine articles. She also talked to people involved in staging the Games in those cities.
"It's a very positive story, I think," Zimmerman said.
She said she didn't enter the project with a "positive bias," but added: "It wasn't my mandate to seek out opponents."
Zimmerman found the Games increased tourism in their regions, built sports participation especially among children and helped attract major sports companies to the area.
As well, the Games boosted the performance of Winter Games athletes from Canada and the United States.
But Chris Shaw, of 2010 Watch, said Zimmerman was unlikely to find anything but a rosy picture because the sources she went to always have good things to say.
"She looked at the official Games reports, which are hardly going to be negative, she talked to senior leaders of the Olympics who are hardly going to be negative. She cites studies, but she doesn't provide any references, she talks about newspaper reports, which of course are usually very laudatory."
Helen Lenskyi, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, has written two critical books about the impact of the Olympic Games and is about to release a third.
She said some of Zimmerman's conclusions appear to be impossible to reach.
For example, she said for her latest book, she tried to find evidence that excelling at sports helps children excel in other areas of life.
"There's no conclusive evidence," Lenskyi said.
Smith-Valade said Zimmerman was free to speak to whoever she wished, including people with negative things to say.
Smith-Valade said the organizing committee stayed at "arms length" from Zimmerman's report and they are confident her observations -- both positive and negative -- are accurately reflected.
Zimmerman noted her critics haven't yet read her full report.
"It's not propaganda. I'm an independent researcher. I went into this looking for interesting information about Olympic legacies and if I had found absolute piles of terrible stuff, I would have had to put it in the report."
"Almost everything that people told me or almost everything I read was really positive."
The report is to be released in three stages at www.vancouver2010.com with the first chapter on the Lake Placid Games to be released next Monday.
