'O Canada' - countdown starts for 2010 Games

"O Canada" reverberated around Italy's Olympic Stadium on Sunday and the North American country invited the world to "come play with us in 2010". It was Vancouver's first eight minutes in the Olympic limelight, and they really did enjoy it. Elizabeth Piper has more...

With pop rocker Avril Lavigne singing for all she was worth, the city's mayor Sam Sullivan took the Olympic flag, with relish, and slotted it into a special device that fitted on the side of the wheelchair so he could wave it.

The countdown to 2010 Winter Olympics began.

"I think it will be unbelievable, Vancouver will do it right. It will be a wonderful Olympics," Russ Howard, part of the Canadian men's curling team who won the world's biggest curling nation its first men's gold.

Vancouver hope the 2010 Games will see a team of young athletes come of age and bag a raft of medals.

Cindy Klassen, who took five gold medals, and Sullivan, a quadriplegic after a skiing accident he suffered as a teenager, will inspire a team that plan to hone their skills on the slopes and at the ice rinks to dominate the Games.

"I said to the officials that the movement of 'own the podium' has already produced incredible results," president of the IOC, Jacques Rogge, said of his chats with Canadian officials.

"More importantly you have a young generation... the Canadian team will be ready in four years."

The team will not be the only preoccupation for the Canadian Games organising committee.

They will also want to make sure that stadiums are full and that transport is efficient for their Olympic adventure - criticisms that were levelled at the Turin organisers in the early days of the competition.

Canadian officials have said they intend to look into ways of ensuring that companies and individuals not planning to use tickets are able to turn them over so someone else can.

Transport will also be a priority.

In Italy's mountains, spectators often had to travel for hours to get to the venues. And at the start, many bus drivers, drafted in from other cities, got lost.

"Torino 2006 faced many of the same transportation challenges that Vancouver 2010 will face with mountain and city venues organised in clusters," the committee said, adding it was crucial that transport was good to make sure stadiums were full.

With an overheated economy in British Columbia, Vancouver might also see its budget grow.

But if Vancouver's mayor gets his way, they will practise until they get it right - as he did with his flag.

"This is top secret stuff. There are several parking lots in Vancouver that I have been going to in the middle of the night," he told a news conference.

"People have made reports to the police about strange activities happening in the parking lots. But it's just me, the mayor of Vancouver, practising my flag waving."