I spent four days last week at the Vancouver Olympics, enjoying the daffodils and spring warmth almost as much as my first live women's hockey game (China versus Switzerland at the Thunderbird Arena).

Full disclosure: as I left my three children at home, the best thing about the trip was the uninterrupted sleep.

But as I discovered, many parents brought their kids and babies along to cheer on their teams.

At the hockey game, 10-year-old Oliver from the resort town of Lake Tahoe, where California and Nevada meet, showed me the puck he'd been given by the Swiss team coach.

His grandmother, a retired Boston University professor, had come to support a couple of her former students who were playing on the Swiss team.

The game was the kind of event where people chatted to perfect strangers and, because of their new found alliances, cheered "Allons-y-Suisse" together.

The same carnival-like exuberance spilled out into the streets of downtown Vancouver where it seemed everyone was sporting a big grin and something red.

Family friendly?

For my part, I was here working on our Olympic-themed program for Cross Country Checkup, which aired in front of a studio audience at the downtown Vancouver CBC building, and never saw any other live events.

A family matter: Alexandre Bilodeau, the Olympic gold medal winner in the men's moguls, celebrates with his older brother and inspiration, Frederic (left), following a World Cup race in Ste.-Adele, Que. (Francois Roy/Canadian Press)

But just being in the same environment as all these impossibly skilled and mostly young athletes made me very aware of who really makes these Olympic dreams possible:

Those parents who had driven the aspiring skiers and skaters to the slopes and rinks all those years; tightened interminable hockey laces, sharpened blades, waxed skis and, most of all, footed the bill for all those lessons, all that gas.

I know I hadn't given much thought to the families of these athletes until these Canadian games.

It turns out neither had VANOC, the official organizing committee for the Vancouver Olympics.

Despite their years of sacrifice, mums and dads have no special privileges at the Olympics. Neither do the kids of the athletes themselves, nor any extended family member — a grandma or grandpa, perhaps — who came along to cheer and offer moral support.

Not only have family members not been allowed access to the privileged areas, no one, it seems, had even set aside a place for athletes and their families to hang out together away from the crowds.

No one that is except Jane Roos, mother of Ruby, age 5, and founder of the Canadian Athletes Now Fund.

A place to hang out

When Roos discovered that many Canadian Olympians' families would be watching the bulk of the games in a Vancouver bar or on a TV screen in an overpriced hotel room, sometimes while changing the diapers of an infant whose mum or dad was competing, she decided to do something about it.

First, she persuaded Shaw Communications, the cable company, to donate a whole floor of their snazzy glass tower, which is right in the centre of the Olympic action.

Meaghan Simister, a member of Canada's Olympic luge team, plays with her nephew at Jane Roos' informal atheletes' house in Vancouver. (Anna-Liza Kozma/CBC)

Then she secured the best daycare she could find for young kids, a hefty donation from Sprott Asset Management and the services of a local interior designer.

Voila. Roos created one of the hottest "athletes houses" anywhere at the games.

When I popped over to take a look at her strictly invite-only athletes house last week, I found a few dozen gorgeously healthy young people in red Spandex and Lycra seated around small tables, or lounging in leather armchairs, with their families, watching the games on a giant TV.

On the other side of the floor, the small set had their own lounging area. Canadian Olympic luger, Meaghan Simister, 23, was playing hide and seek with her four-year-old nephew.

"This place has been an oasis for us, " she said. "It means my whole family has a place to come while I'm with my team.

"It's one less thing for me to worry about while I'm getting ready to compete."

One less worry

Olivia, a kindergarten teacher whose services have been donated by the Kids and Company daycare provider, was keeping half a dozen kids entertained with magic markers and construction paper.

To one side was a bookcase full of picture books, all about winter sports, donated by Kids Can Press for the children to take home.

Clearly a master organizer, Roos is probably capable of running so many things. Why has she sunk her energy into this?

"At every sporting event I would see frazzled faces of parents worrying about how their kids were doing," she says. This was one worry she felt she could take off their plates.

The financial burden to prepare and train for the Olympics is a heavy one, with 90 per cent of Canadian athletes here having to pay for their own equipment.

In addition, almost half our athletes have had to pay for their own national team fees, which can add up to $30,000 a year.

"Most Canadians have no idea what it costs to be the best in the world at something," says Roos, whose fund gave financial suppport to half the members of the gold-winning women's hockey team.

"Athletes rack up their credit cards to get to the Olympics and borrow from the bank of mum and dad."

And then, when they get to the Olympics, sometimes with an infant or two of their own in tow, no one at the official organization helps with their extended family.

Real Olympic spirit

Roos's Canadian Athletes Now Fund also helps provide families with much appreciated tickets to the opening or closing ceremonies.

As she sees it, there is a lack of respect for our athletes' families and the sacrifices they make in the process.

The athletes themselves don't like to talk about the financial strain because it sounds like whining. And of course, their parents, like parents everywhere, try to do all they can to help their kids pursue their dreams.

In that same spirit, Canadian medal winners have often used their success to raise money for other athletes on the way up.

There is a story Roos likes to tell about how Olympic rower Tracy Cameron, a bronze medallist at Beijing, biked 880 kilometres to raise money for Mike Robertson, who just won silver in Vancouver in the snowboard cross.

It so happens that Tracy's dad and Mike's mum work in the same building in Exshaw, Alta.

One morning, before the Olympics, they met in the elevator. "I love your daughter," exclaimed Robertson mum. "She's made it possible for my son to compete."

By the time the elevator doors opened on the next floor both parents were hugging each other and crying. People around them didn't know what to make of it, laughed Jane.

But the parents of young athletes anywhere would probably understand. Families helping families helping their kids. That's the real Olympic spirit.