After months of meetings, the Whitehorse 2007 Canada Winter Games Host Society has been given the go ahead to extend the Games by one more day than previously scheduled.

At a press conference this morning, the host society announced that the 2007 Games will no longer open on Feb. 24, but rather Feb. 23.

There are several reasons for the decision to extend the Games. First, it will allow the athletes more time for travel, to prepare for the competition and to get acclimatized to the different elevation and time change.

'Travelling to Whitehorse will take many of our athletes the better part of a day, especially those coming from the East,' said Piers McDonald, president of the 2007 host society. 'By giving athletes one day to rest before their competitions start we will level the playing field for all our competitors.'

'We all recognize, especially when the Games are at one end of the country or the other, for some athletes, the travel is extensive,' added Karen Thomson, the vice-president of the host society's sport division. 'So having that extra day gives them more time to get here and settle into their accommodations, a little more practice time and time to acclimatize.'

The one-day extension will also change the sport schedule slightly, affecting hockey, ringette, squash and badminton. Those sports will extend or shift their competition schedule, taking advantage of the extra day to start preliminary round play.

Now, athletes in those sports may actually get the opportunity to get out of the competitive mode for a while and check out some of the other events, since their schedule will be less compact, explained Thomson.

'We want to provide athletes with the best competition environment we can give them,' she said. 'We took (the date change) to the Chefs (Chef de Missions, or team leaders, from the other provinces and territories), and largely, they're happy.'

Morrissey said the 2007 host society has been investigating the possibility of extending the Games over the past several months, but had to go through several approval processes with the Canada Games Council, as well as get the OK from Hockey Canada and various sporting groups, before they could make it official.

The new hockey schedule means the four existing Whitehorse ice rinks will be sufficient, and the Games will no longer build a temporary ice rink on the river front as they had originally planned. All hockey competitions and practices will use the Canada Games Centre, the Takhini Arena and the Stan McCowan Arena.

'That's a huge benefit for Whitehorse,' stated Morrissey. 'Then we're not investing in a temporary venue.'

Thomson said there were a couple of additional factors in the decision not to build an ice rink in the park. The ringette competition has gone from double round-robin to single round-robin, so that changed the number of games scheduled. And in men's hockey, Nunavut has decided they are not sending a team, so that changed the schedule by a good five or six games.

'So now we can get everything scheduled on the existing ice surfaces, which is great.'

Morrissey said while the extra day is certainly a benefit for the athletes, its also good for the economy and tourism sector, since a lot of the competitors and other visitors will be in the territory for an extra day. Plus, it means an extra day of national exposure through broadcasting.

'We're not asking anybody to shut down any extra days, the schools won't have to close for any longer,' he pointed out. 'We'll accommodate it all based on the closures we already have planned.

'We get the athletes village Nov. 1, so that should be OK. We'll have some logistics to work out in terms of arrivals and departures and we'll have time crunches with respect to getting the venues timed out for that extra day.'

However, in the bigger picture, he said, the extra day will make things easier for organizers once the Games are underway. The longer turnaround day (March 3) between the first and second week will allow organizers to get departing athletes out a little bit earlier than usual and the arriving athletes in a little earlier.

For example, most competitors in the first week of competition will finish by Friday morning now, so they can start leaving Friday night before the new athletes start arriving Saturday. Traditionally, the first group of athletes are leaving on the same day the second group gets in.

As for the changes that will need to be made to the various sports schedules, Thomson said that's to be expected when you're dealing with an event as large as the Canada Games. She insisted it wouldn't be too big of a deal.

'We're still in the draft stage for the schedule,' she said. 'We have given a draft to all the provinces and territories now and we'll allow them two months for feedback.

'Come August, we'll get their reaction and possibly make some changes.'

Plus, they haven't even shown a draft schedule to the broadcast crews or received any feedback in that area, she said, and that will likely change parts of the schedule.

'So we have to be adaptive all the time.

'(The additional day) is just another curve ball and you have to go with it.'

Many other host cities have talked about extending the Games by a day before, for travel purposes, and this is not the first time a host city has adjusted their dates to lighten the athletes' schedule.

Organizers of the 1999 Games in Corner Brook, Newfoundland changed the timeline of their Games, choosing to open on a Saturday. That was already one day earlier than in the past, when the events always opened on the Sunday.

'We have been part of the whole process and are in full support of the decision to start the 2007 Canada Games one day early,' said Sue Hylland, president and CEO of the Canada Games Council.

'It is an excellent decision from an athlete development perspective.'