International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge says economic problems, then and now, have have an impact on the world of sports. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)

During days of formal events around the one-year countdown to the 2010 Winter Olympics, the president of the International Olympic Committee barely cracked a smile.

Even away from the spotlight and in the quiet of a Vancouver hotel room, Jacques Rogge's staid podium persona only dissolved when talk switched from spectacle to sport.

All he wants for today's athletes is the same feeling he had when he competed at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

"Speak to my generation, they will say Montreal was magical," he told The Canadian Press in an interview Friday.

There were economic problems then and there are economic problems now, Rogge said, and they have an impact on the world of sports.

But they can't touch the spirit of the Games.

"An athlete has only once or twice a chance to participate in the Olympic Games," he said. "There is no place for failed Olympic Games in the life an athlete, we owe that to them."

Which means that right now, there's no room for the Olympic movement to spread beyond developed countries that already have the sport infrastructure that doesn't exist in developing nations. And the cost of building that infrastructure seems to increase with every Olympic bid.

There's less than a year before the 2010 Winter Olympics begin in Vancouver and Whistler. (Vancouver Organizing Committee)

The four candidates for the 2016 Summer Games submitted their final bids this week and costs range from $4.4 billion US to $14.4 billion US.

Rogge said the Olympic movement should not be blamed for the rising costs.

"You have to separate the operating budget, which we have reduced to the strict minimum, and the state budget, the government budget, this depends from country to country," he said.

The IOC has no control over how much bid cities want to spend on items like highway upgrades or airports which at the end of the day have nothing to do with sport, Rogge said.

But he knows that those rising costs are one reason that a year before the 2010 Games, polls suggest more than half of B.C. residents don't think they'll benefit from the Olympics.

He's not frustrated by that or the fact that headlines around the world about the Olympics focus on budgets and not the benefits of the Games.

"The popularity of the Games and the enthusiasm of the local population for the Games is like a roller-coaster," he said.

Rogge says support in Canada will rise again once the torch relay begins in October but will also hinge on the success of Canada's athletes.

"We need a lot of Canadian medals and as soon as possible up front in the Games," he said.

Looking ahead at the next six years, especially the bid cities for the 2016 Games, leaves him feeling upbeat. Whether it's Tokyo, Chicago, Rio de Janeiro or Madrid that wins the bid, the Games will be good and the athletes taken care of, he said.