By Spencer
Monday, March 8, 2010
Pan Pacific Hotel – Virtual Voices Village at 2010 Accessibility
I had a chance for a one on one chat with Christina about the Paralympics Games in Vancouver and her involvement with Project Blue Sky. For those who don’t know Project Blue Sky it is a carbon reduction initiative led by Olympic, Paralympic and high performance athletes. They challenge individuals and groups to fight climate change.
Q. Could you fill me in on what you think the Paralympic Sustainability Legacy will be and in particular the Carbon Footprint?
A. Well the first thing that comes to mind for me is that I have been working with a group called Project Bluesky that encourages you to track your own footprints of travelling to and from events for both the Olympics and Paralympics Games and that way if you take lots of public transit you can offset your carbon offset towards the footprint of the games. Inevitably it is bigger than what we want since athletes travel from all over the world on airplanes so even thou Vanoc itself has done a really good job of keeping the footprint as low as possible, in terms of building really sustainable venues, which all that information is on our website Vancouver 2010.com website, but also we are working with all these offsetter groups to try and help offset the carbon stuff that is happening due to all the travel. So I think that in the end this is definitely going to be the greenest games we’ve ever had, but I do think there is some potential for working on it and making it better and better in the future.
Q. How ready do you think Vancouver is for all these Paralympic Athletes?
A. Good question. . .. . Well, I think that of all the places in Canada, just from my own experience travelling around, Vancouver and BC has worked really hard on becoming more accessible . . . again I do think there is still a lot of work to be done in the future . .I think it will be a good showcase to see what is working and what isn’t and what steps need to be taken to make it better in the future.. .. so I think we are quite ready. . . but I think there will be things that we will learn along the way as well.
Q. what certain legacies will the Paralympics be remembered for?
A. Well I think you have hit on it. . . the accessibility. . .. I think that’s a big one. . . . I think how exciting the sports are and how the world is turning its attention to the paralympic games in a way that it never has before because of how much tv attention we are trying to get it to have and a lot more people are going to be in the seats at these events than in previous games so I think we that little by little we are getting bigger and bigger. . .
Q. Should we have the Paralympics before the Olympics as a kicksstart or warm up to the Olympics or stick to the way we normally have it now ?
A. Good question. . . . . . . I can see it working really well if they had it before the games, . . . . I also think there is a lot of political issues. . but I would like to see it integrated and spread it throughout the timeframe so we have one day Olympics and the other day Paralympics people in town for the one big event and if they have time to kill they can go to a Paralympic event. . . . .
Q. What do you think if we had one big games. . an Olympic and Paralympic event in the same timeframe –
A. Yes, I think that would be really really effective. .. I think the challenges with that is that they need to use the same venues so they would have to spread it out over a longer period of time . . . .so they would have to do it all in one time frame over 20 days in order to share the venues but I think it could be really exciting and interesting if there was a hockey game, then a sledge hockey game and a curling and a wheelchair curling game all in one day. . that would be really exciting. . . . .