Fans cheer during the opening ceremony of the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. Frank King cites the games as a challenge, saying they had to build everything from scratch.JONATHAN UTZ/AFP / Getty Images
Mention Frank King and Albertans automatically associate him with the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics. As chairman of the local organizing committee, Mr. King helped run what International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch called "the best Winter Olympic Games ever organized."
You were on Vancouver's 2010 Winter Olympics bid committee. What was the biggest difference between the Vancouver bid and Calgary's?
Well, 1988 had a bigger challenge in that we had to build everything. There wasn't anything we could use that was already sitting on the ground. In their case, they had to upgrade things such as the skiing area to put in the right kind of jumps. They had a base. We basically had zero in terms of a finished place for people to go. One thing we did that was really good and saved people a lot of money was we got the University of Calgary to agree to shut down for three weeks so that we could have their [student] accommodations as well as using the [facilities] they had there. We were having dances there for those athletes that were in the village. In Vancouver, they built a whole bunch of things – new buildings – at the end of it, all it was for sale. They might have even made money on it. But for us, we didn't want to have to raise more money, then be in the real estate business.
What was it like doing business with Mr. Samaranch, the last of the IOC kingpins?
They were doing so many things that didn't make any sense at all. I'll give you two examples: I said to Samaranch, "Why do you have the Summer and Winter Olympics in the same year?" And his eyes rolled back and [he said], "What do you mean? It has always been in the same year." I said, "That's a bad thing." "Why is that bad, Frank?" "Because if you were to move the Summer Games over and leave the Winter Games where they are, you would have two sets of Games in separate years and you would sell twice as much Coca-Cola." "Oh, I never thought of that." So we phoned up Coca-Cola and asked them if it was true and they said, "Oh yes, we'd be glad to pay you for the second year." For our Games, we were to start on a Sunday, go for a week and then the following week they were to be over by Thursday. I said "we're going to introduce a bunch of new sports and we're going to need the Games to go from Sunday to Sunday to Sunday." It's the way it is now, but the Games we inherited, unless we changed them, were going to be fewer days.
What was the key to Calgary's success as a Winter Olympics that actually made money?
Calgary was early in the idea – and good at it even compared to today – that we got the community to get behind us and contribute free of charge their services or they would be a sponsor. The companies gave us their top people and some of them worked full-time for us … That's something you'll find is very different in today's theme. In fact, I was a volunteer until the final year and they insisted that I take some salary because I was working full-time. Volunteerism, Calgary is built that way and we got it from the Calgary Stampede. The Stampede thought of it. That's the way they built their facilities and their Games, so to speak.
How did the media treat Calgary's bid considering how the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics were so debt-ridden?
Some guys would come in from out of town and one of them ended up working for the [Calgary] Herald and he came to see me when we were still looking at our costs in detail and he said, "I don't know why you're wasting your time." I said why? "These Games will never go," he said. "I just came from Montreal and it's a disaster. The community is not behind you and you're going to lose your ass." I said, "Well, you can think that." People were all over us. A month later, these were the best Games ever held.
Any advice for Calgary's 2026 bid committee?
You have to have people who are both creative and good. They can see what could become a problem and stop it before it becomes a problem. We did that regularly. You have to be ready to take criticism from people and you don't need to pay attention to that because they simply don't know what we do know. That's the thing you have to live with up until the Games themselves.
This interview has been edited and condensed.