The powers-that-be sure seem to be marking the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games as a case study in short-sighted thinking, nickel and diming, and the wrong-headed belief that corners cut won't show up on the big day. The most obvious example of Olympic stupidity from the Vancouver organizers (and there's been a few) is the decision to make the Olympic ski-jump facility a temporary structure.

Yes, that's right, they're going to spend a whole wack of cash designing this thing, smoothing the mountain around it, doing the engineering, trucking up the iron and wood and fiberglass and electronics, they'll build the entire thing so it's beautiful and world standard, then they'll use it for a few weeks before junking it all and selling it as scrap.

The stupidity is mind-boggling. Here is an opportunity for a major world event to serve as the introduction of our city to the entire world, and instead of pulling out all the stops and making sure that we not only present Vancouver's best side to the world, but also get some long term advantages out of the money spent, we're instead going to spend money and get NOTHING out of it.

The brainstrust behind this simle-minded approach say that the Calgary ski-jump facility is all the ski-jump Canada needs, and that there aren't enough ski-jumpers to make a second facility viable.

Of course, what they neglect to realize is that, after an Olympic Games, the number of people getting involved in alpine sports RISES. Imagine if people had told the Wright Brothers, "No way, I'm not investing in an airport - you're the only two people who actually fly planes!" Imagine if people had told Henry Ford, "Why would we build cars on a production line? The factories we have keep up with demand."

But here's the bottom line - we're going to have to spend the money on this facility either way, so why not actually have something to show for it afterwards? Why scrap it, just because the government is too cheap to throw a few million into a trust to keep the thing maintained from now until the end of time?

Not enough ski-jumpers? Heck, make it affordable and closer than Calgary and I'LL go ski jumping on a weekend!

But no. Not in Vancouver's Olympics. Instead, we'll spend that few million on something that won't exist three weeks after its opening. Just brilliant.