By Paul Radford
VANCOUVER (Reuters) - Three days away from the opening Ceremony of the Vancouver Winter Olympics, organisers were wrestling on Tuesday with three niggling headaches they hope will disappear once the Games are under way.
Unseasonably mild weather causing snow shortages is the biggest worry but the threat of protesters disrupting the opening ceremony and early events and the lingering jinx of Canada never winning a gold medal as Olympic hosts are also concerns.
Publicly, organisers are making brave noises on all three fronts and seem highly confident that by the first day of competition on Saturday they will no longer need to be taking their tablets.
The contrast of severe snow blizzards on North America's Atlantic coast and unusually warm weather on the Pacific side of the continent has left Vancouver itself bereft of snow, an unusual situation for a Winter Olympics host city.
While there is abundant snow at the Whistler mountain venue some 125 kms (80 miles) away and more forecast to fall on Friday, one day before the blue riband event of the Games, the men's Alpine skiing downhill, there is barely snow at all at Cypress Mountain on Vancouver's northern shore.
Organisers have had to truck snow in to the venue, where freestyle skiing and snowboarding will be staged, and early training sessions had to be switched to Whistler.
PRYING EYES
But Cypress Mountain was opened to a first training session on Monday, away from the prying eyes of the world's media who were banned from attending.
Further sessions were scheduled for Tuesday with the media finally allowed in to see for themselves whether conditions met expectations.
Organisers were suitably upbeat. "We are confident it will be ready," said Dave Cobb, deputy CEO of VANOC, the local organising committee.
Cobb was equally sure that protesters who plan to make their presence felt in Vancouver outside Friday's opening ceremony and during the first day of competition on Saturday would not cause disruption to the Games.
Local protesters say the money spent on the Games would have been better used on social issues such as homelessness and poverty.
Hundreds of anti-globalisation protesters are also expected to come in from outside Vancouver but Cobb has said the police are ready for them. "Security forces are ready to react in case they break the law," he said.
Canadians are, to a man and woman, hoping the team's athletes are ready to end the jinx which has seen Canada fail to win a gold medal in two previous Games as hosts -- the Montreal Summer Olympics in 1976 and the Winter Games in Calgary in 1988.
The projections this time suggest Canada will win a hatful of golds -- unless the jinx strikes again.
"We'd really like to get that monkey off our back," said Games chief John Furlong on Tuesday. "I would love to be in the brain of that athlete for 15 seconds to understand how it feels to be the first Canadian to win gold (on home soil)," he told reporters.
Canada have gold medal prospects in at least three events on Saturday so the expectation is that the jinx could end on just day one.
(Editing by Jon Bramley)
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