Right now the Aquatics Centre site at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus is being cleaned up because it was a former landfill site so construction can start.
Toronto Star's Randy Starkman's Olympics Blog:
"Best on Best" is Toronto Pan Am 2015 mantra
May 27, 2011
Pan Am 2015 head honcho Ian Troop acknowledges it's going to take a "paradigm shift" to deliver the kind of sporting competition they want in four years in Toronto.
Troop kept uttering the phrase "best on best" during a media conference call on Friday morning as if it were the 2015 Pan Am Games mantra. It probably is at this juncture. And it's a ambitious one, to be sure, considering that it's been generally regarded as a 'B' Games for a long time.
But Troop and his cohorts recently met with the poobahs of the United States Olympic Committee and the leaders of their sports federations and he says they came away feeling strongly about a possible buy-in from the Americans when it comes to supplying their best athletes.
Troops reasons for optimism included:
-- the attractiveness of a large market like Toronto
-- the ease involved because of time zones, similar culture and a safe environment (the 2011 Games are in Guadalajara, Mexico, where raging drug wars have prospective travellers worried)
-- the 2015 Games are a great opportunity for athletes headed to the 2016 Rio Olympics to get a multi-Games experience, not to mention the last one before Rio
-- it's virtually a home Games for the U.S., giving their fans a chance to come and cheer them on
None of that helped the last time the Pan Ams were held in Canada in Winnipeg in 1999. The organizers there tried to pump things up by paying Olympic sprint champion Donovan Bailey to show up, but he arrived disinterested and only ran the relay.
Toronto organizers definitely have their work cut out for them. Paradigm shifts aren't easily achieved.
Read More: http://thestar.blogs.com/olympics/