Fenced-in Olympic Cauldron Has Visitors Upset

Parke Brewer | Vancouver
17 February 2010

An unsightly chain-link fence makes it hard for visitors to Vancouver to get good photographs of the Winter Olympics cauldron. 

Most Olympic cauldrons are high in the air, but the giant steel and glass one in downtown Vancouver sits on a waterfront plaza.

And that's become a big issue.  Not necessarily because of the location, but because of the security measures that have been taken.  It's located right next to the International Broadcast Center, but organizers also believed they needed to protect it from vandals.

So a tall chain-link fence keeps everyone away from it by about 50 meters.  That makes it very difficult for anyone to take a decent photograph.

"You come all this way to see the Olympic flame and they don't let you within 100 feet of it," Olympics visitor Chris Miley said.  "And it's just kind of sad too, because all the pictures that you get have this chain-link fence behind it.  It looks something like you'd see when the iron curtain was up or something."



"It feel like I'm in a zoo.  It's sad because I think it's a beautiful sculpture, and it would be a lot better to see it without the fence in front," another cauldron visitor, Anne Lieke stated. "I'm sure that it has security reasons.  Nevertheless, I think they could have done a better job."

Vancouver organizers are well aware of the outcry and spokeswoman Renee Smith-Valade says a change is coming. "Our team is continuing to make progress and looking at a plan to make the legacy cauldron more accessible to those who would like to come down and take pictures or get a better vantage point to it," she said.

Smith-Valade added they underestimated the degree to which people would want to get close to the Olympic cauldron.