PRAGUE, 2 July 2003 — Hockey legend Wayne Gretzky may have retired from the NHL years ago but Canada is hoping he still has the winning moves.
On the eve of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) decision on awarding the 2010 Winter Games, “the Great One”, part of the bid committee for Vancouver, is in the Czech capital to help win one of the fiercest competitions around.
Vancouver is in a three-way battle with the Austrian alpine city of Salzburg and South Korea’s Pyeongchang to host the Games seven years from now. With billions of dollars and a country’s pride at stake, it is enough to raise some butterflies even in a seasoned veteran such as Gretzky.
“It’s nerve-racking...We haven’t got our game faces on yet, but we’re getting to that point,” Gretzky told Reuters Television in an interview yesterday.
An Olympian in 1998 when the NHL first allowed its players to join the Games, he was then called upon by a hockey-crazed nation to help bring Olympic gold to Canada for the first time in 50 years at Salt Lake City last year.
As general manager of the Canadian team, he showed he had the golden touch, overseeing the creation of a squad that went unbeaten through the tournament to capture the Olympic title.
When he left the game as a player — he is currently the general manager of the Phoenix Coyotes — he held or shared 61 NHL records, had won four Stanley Cup rings and had left an indelible mark on the sport. The rest of Canada is watching to see if he has the same moves off the ice that he had on it.
