Security concerns take centre stage at Sochi Olympics

Hayley Wickenheiser isn't the least bit concerned about security in Sochi next month.

The Canadian women's hockey icon and flag bearer is expecting 11 family members to stay in the Russian city during the Games, including her 13-year-old son Noah. ``If I was worried about security, I certainly wouldn't let my son come," she said last week after being named flag bearer for the opening ceremonies.

Roberto Luongo, on the other hand, doesn't want any members of his family venturing anywhere near Sochi. ``It's definitely on my mind, I'm not going to lie," the man expected to be the starting goaltender for Team Canada said. "I think we're all a little bit concerned."

Regardless of which hockey player is taking the right approach, the point is that security is rapidly become the big story of the Sochi Olympics. As a new survey shows, 83 per cent of Canadians say the success of the Games depends on security and that it's very or somewhat important to them that there be no security threats.

Add in all the noise being made of Russia's anti-gay policies, the focus on the Games' outrageous $51 billion price tag and the rumours of massive corruption and you've got an Olympics where the competition is shaping up as a secondary story. Most of the pre-Games coverage has focused on those topics instead of what will take place on the playing fields of Sochi.

Warnings this week from international security agencies that some sort of terrorist attack is almost inevitable at Sochi certainly are taking priority over the usual discussions of who will win gold, how many medals will be won by which country and which athlete will end up with his or her picture on a Wheaties box.

But you can be excused if you're thinking that we've seen this movie before -- several times.

Ever since the Munich Massacre in 1972, the threat of terrorism has cast a huge shadow over the Olympics. And even though that in all that time there has been but one such attack -- the work of a lone American nutcase who set off a bomb that killed two people at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta -- the terrorist threat has eaten up billions of dollars in security costs and consumed millions of litres of printers' ink.

In fact, a survey taken prior to the last winter Olympics in Vancouver showed that even more people -- 88 per cent -- were concerned about security. As it turned out, they should have been far more worried about the state of the luge run.

Granted, Sochi seems far more likely to be in the gunsights of terrorists than any other Olympics. It's in the midst of possibly the most volatile region on the planet and plausible threats have come from several quarters -- and against many targets, including the U.S. and Germany.

But the Olympics have managed to overcome a lot, starting with Hitler's Games in 1936, the 1972 Munich tragedy and right through to the death of a competitor on the luge run in Vancouver. The fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin has staked his reputation on these Games all but assures that if there is in attack, it will likely be outside Sochi. He has spent at least $3 billion on a security system that has turned the Black Sea resort into the world's biggest outdoor vault.

It is probably those living outside the city who have the most to fear.

The biggest threat to Sochi appears to be the high number of unsold tickets -- more than 300,000 at last count -- no doubt due to the terrorist fear factor.

An attendance bust might do more harm to Putin than any terrorist attack.