Vancouver chief hails 'beautiful' Games

Games chief John Furlong Friday put a positive spin on the Vancouver Olympics, saying after early glitches they had been a huge success that had caught the imagination of a euphoric public.

The Games got off to the worst possible start when Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed in a training run on the day of the opening ceremony, sparking accusations over track safety.

There were also weather woes that forced delays to key events and the cancellation of thousands of tickets for snowboard and freestyle skiing due to safety issues for spectators.

But Furlong, chief executive of organising committee VANOC, said the fierce early criticism in the international press, especially in Britain, was unfair and the event had "gone off quite beautifully."

"I would like to think that people will look at this and reflect very warmly on the human events that occurred. There will never be a time that we will not feel extraordinary regret at losing Nodar before the Games started," he said.

But he added: "My sense of it is that the criticisms we took at the beginning were unfair. They came pretty early for somebody to be making an assessment.

"It was quite irritating for the Canadian public to be getting criticised when it wasn't true. They were reporting things that weren't true and in some cases being reported by people who weren't here," he said.

"It was pretty hard to take but I think it's turned and all over the world we're hearing pretty good feedback. The television ratings have been fantastic around the world."

VANOC deputy chief executive Dave Cobb said the number of negative reports was small and claimed the reporters had "an agenda to deliver on regardless of what was happening."