Olympic Stadium management: making Quebec laugh 101

Welcome to your new course: How to make Quebec 101 laugh. Your teachers? Anyone who decided it was a good idea to spend $870 million on a new fixed roof for the Olympic Stadium.

Because you know the situation very well. Despite the money invested in the Stadium, it won’t be any more attractive for soccer, football or even baseball.

Do you really think that in four or five years, the NFL will set foot in the Olympic Stadium if nothing else changes? I don’t.

But even if you don’t fix one mistake by making another, far too much money will be invested in a poorly located and generally outdated Olympic Stadium.

And the $870 million doesn’t even include the expected cost overruns.

The news is so left-field that I’ve seen people outside Quebec wondering, with a look of astonishment, if this is happening because the Expos’ comeback could finally go through the Olympic Stadium.

I don’t blame them: when news like this comes out, people look for explanations. And if they come up with a good one, from their outside perspective, I’ll ask them to explain it to me.

And right now, many people in the province are wondering why the money generously donated by Quebec wasn’t invested in more… strategic locations.

As a result,many of us are reacting like Patrick Roy did this morning.

The problem with the Stadium, apart from the fact that it will always be in such a bad location, is that its only problems aren’t the roof. And Alexandre Pratt (La Presse) hit the nail on the head in his piece of the day.

After all, once the roof is in place, will everything be magically perfect? Of course it won’t.

The enclosure, the playing surface, the acoustics, the seats, the boxes, the corridors – all will remain unchanged. This was already an issue for the atmosphere in 1998. Imagine in 2028. – Alexandre Pratt

If we want to have a big music show in town, the sound will still be just as bad. The seats will still be just as badly placed. Unless we put some money back, the stakes will still be there.

How many more events will be set up at the Stadium to justify the bill? That’s the question.

How to make people laugh at us 101: here’s a good example. If sports people in the rest of Canada weren’t so busy grilling the London police on the Hockey Canada issue, the Big O would surely have been the talk of the town.

But still: those who did were not complimentary of the decision. And rightly so, of course.

In brief

– Demolishing the Olympic Stadium would be expensive. Would it have been a better option? Your guess is as good as mine.

– How’s Martin St-Louis’ aggressive patience?[JdeM]

– Justin Barron is working on his confidence.

– Jakob Pelletier is proud to be back in the NHL.

– Last night was the All-Star Game in the AHL. Logan Mailloux did well.