Try Your Hand at Skeleton Racing

Today, you are a skeleton racer.

The Whistler Sliding Centre won’t let you start from the top of the track, of course. Nor do you get to do that expert dash-and-leap takeoff. But, moments later, none of that matters: you are flying headfirst down a freshly iced track, your chin mere centimetres away from the slick surface whipping underneath you.

The wind roars in your ears and the G-forces press you against your sled as you careen around the same turns that led skeletoner Jon Montgomery to gold, and where our women’s bobsleighs rumbled to glory. Heart hammering, you soar around the final curve as an announcer declares your name and speed. Slowing at last in the outrun, you finally detach yourself from the sled you melded with for your 30-second journey, grinning and on an Olympic high.

And now the best part: It’s time for your second run.

Glide around the Olympic Oval

One final tug and your skates are secure. You stand and take a few stilted steps to the edge of the rink on supersized Olympic blades. The long track may be gone, but there is still ice at the Richmond Oval, and what better place to try out speed skates than where Canada secured five of its 26 medals?

Pushing off onto hard ice, your knees do a slapstick wobble in the zero-ankle-support footwear. But it only takes a few minutes to figure out the foot-long blades you’re perched on (push off the side, not the toe), and soon you are gliding around the pad with long, graceful strokes, the cool air singing in your ears, lap after lap.

Wander Vancouver's Olympic Village

Catch it in the sunlight, and Vancouver’s Olympic Village shines. It’s pristinely quiet as you wander down Athletes Way, the buildings forming a glassy blue corridor. The expensive, ultra-green units are not selling as briskly as predicted, so you might have the plaza to yourself—that is, except for the statues of gargantuan sparrows, which look as though they have just alighted from some B-movie monster flick.

But it’s the location that’s gold: one short block away, you’re looking at the tail end of False Creek, the serene inlet that wraps around Vancouver’s downtown, stretching past Granville Island all the way to Stanley Park. Science World’s geodesic dome glitters on your right, and BC Place’s white roof is unmistakable on the opposite bank. The bay is bobbing with ferries, dragon boats and a harbour seal or two. At the waterfront, you’ll find locals walking, jogging and cycling their way along the seawall—taking advantage, like you, of the rare bright winter’s day. 

Explore Whistler Olympic Park

It’s been a year since the Winter Olympics’ flame faded and Vancouver bade farewell to 2,600 athletes from 82 countries. With competitors back at home training for 2014, now is your turn to test your mettle against the newest Winter Olympic facilities in the world. Whether you’re in it for just an ooh-and-ahh tour and a few snapshots, or you want to don a skeleton helmet and shriek past the finish line yourself, Vancouver-Whistler 2010’s carefully planned legacies deliver.

Whistler & Blackcomb

Mountain-framed Whistler, just a 90-minute drive north of Vancouver on the refurbished Sea-to-Sky Highway, fit the Olympics hand-in-ski-glove. The aura of elite sports already seems routine for this 36-year-old resort town, and no wonder—Whistler was built with an eye for the Games, eager to host the event for all of its history. It first bid to host the 1968 Games, and tried several times again years later, before finally being successful as part of Vancouver’s bid in 2003 to host the 2010 Games.   

The show-stealers remain the Whistler and Blackcomb mountains, but the latest and greatest monuments are the Whistler Sliding Centre and Whistler Olympic Park, where
sliders zoomed and skiers flew not so long ago. Both facilities continue to host competitions but, more importantly, have opened their doors to the public.

Whistler Olympic Park: Tracks, Ski Jumps and Cross Country Trails

It’s foggy the day I find myself at the Sliding Centre. The track is eerily engulfed in mist, twining up the hillside like some mythological serpent. Peeking over the lip of the highest starting point presents me with a steep, hazy oblivion.

The Thunderbird curve—that final loop where speeds can break 150 km/h—is relatively uncrowded, with only a few of us here, compared to the 250-plus that packed this spectator space during the Games. If you’re not up for hurtling down the track, or if you come in summer, there’s still plenty to learn at its interpretive centre loaded with Olympic memorabilia, from a sleek pan-Canadian torch to spiky-fingered luge gloves.

Whistler Olympic Park is similarly impressive, with ski jumps embedded in the hillside. While it might be too risky to let tourists launch off the 100-m towers, there’s plenty of space to play up here: the biathlon course, snowshoe trails and a jaw-dropping 90 km of cross-country terrain—will now be used by future generations of snow-sport enthusiasts. Whether they’re skiers or not, sports dilettantes can test their aim at biathlon targets year-round.  

Eventually, you’ll exhaust yourself in Whistler, and that’s understandable. For a change of pace, zip back through Vancouver and head to Richmond, the multicultural hub of the Greater Vancouver Area. You’re here, of course, for the Richmond Olympic Oval. Its swooping silhouette is landmark-worthy (and if you’re lucky, you might be able to snag an aerial snapshot on your WestJet flight into Vancouver).

Check Out the Improved Oval Facilities

Once inside, you’re instantly gobsmacked by the Oval’s sculptural roof, an elegant wave of interlocking wood designed to be reminiscent of a heron’s wing. The golden, 2.6-hectare surface is constructed mostly of pine beetle wood—that’s more than a million board feet of otherwise-unusable lumber, one of the many environmentally sustainable moves in constructing this award-winning, 33,750-m2 Silver LEED-certified building.

Olympic Overhaul for Athletes of All Levels

The rest of the Oval, however, is nothing like you remember. Only six months after the Games, the interior had been completely overhauled, with never-ending improvements still in store.

Skaters may feel a pang at the missing long track, but there are two Olympic-sized hockey rinks, and, with enough notice, the Olympic loop could be conjured back into existence.

Besides, once you’ve done a few nostalgic laps on the rink, the multipurpose courts, rowing room, indoor track and fitness equipment galore will be enough to sate your inner athlete.

Lower-key sports enthusiasts will enjoy wandering in and around this artistic and functional building, and they can even partake in an Olympic tour. Or maybe you’ll find yourself here for one of the high-profile competitions the Oval hosts, cheering your heart out, once again. 

From Richmond, it’s a quick ride back to Vancouver on the Canada Line, probably the busiest of all the Olympic legacies. The new light rapid transit route connects both Richmond and the international airport with downtown Vancouver, with cars offering extra room for luggage. Considering downtown Vancouver’s road traffic—all too apt to solidify into corridors of crawling vehicles—this speedy line is one of the easiest, and definitely the cheapest, ways to get from your plane to the city core.

Discover What's Left of the Olympic Spirit

And so you’re back in Vancouver, home of the cauldron and hub of the celebrations. I had visited just a few months before the Games, but now the transformation is striking.

There’s more public art, from timeless sculptures to Olympic murals, not to mention the monumental cauldron, a Lego-like orca and the grassy-roofed Convention Centre. Cypress Mountain, site of the ski and snowboard cross, looms in the distance.

This is where you want to take a few hours and simply wander, breathing in the vestiges of Olympic euphoria. Some vestiges are not so sweet, however.

LEED-certification Housing

A year later, the Olympic Village has become a ghost town with a huge price tag. The ambitious, Platinum LEED-certified project was slammed so hard by an inflated housing market that Millennium Development’s subsidiary company that was managing the village, went into receivership last November.

While taxpayers rightfully chafe at the monetary burden (hundreds of millions of dollars), the real legacy is subtler, based on emotions and pride, rather than bricks and mortar. And that’s priceless.

Collaborative Efforts

What began with handshakes persists as newfound partnerships. The very existence of 2010 Legacies Now, a first-of-its-kind organization whose goal is to nurture a whole spectrum of community-minded movements, from sports and arts to accessibility, proves this commitment to sustained partnerships.

“We’re seeing more collaboration than ever before,” says Breton Murphy, Senior Communications Manager of Tourism Whistler. “If it weren’t for the knowledge from the Games, we wouldn’t know the importance of being so inclusive. Now, we can deliver at a much higher level.”

Ultimately, it’s the emotional, not physical, infrastructure that strikes you the most. It’s the optimism that dissolves the dankest of rainy-day doldrums, the “D’you remember when…” conversations. This is what people will look back on when they think of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Inspiring Future Olympians

It’s about creating a new chapter in this area’s shared history, one that’s bound to be thumbed through frequently in the years to come. The Oval teems with locals, and Whistler is now built for future Olympians, with astounding interest in their youth programs for both sliding and Nordic sports. That tween carrying skis en route to the Peak 2 Peak Gondola? Maybe that kid is destined to bring Canada another gold in 2018.

Precisely the story of Olympic cross-country skier Chandra Crawford who was a four-year-old living in Canmore when the ’88 Calgary Olympics came to her Rocky Mountain town. Watching the world’s best in biathlon and cross-country ski events fired up her heart and ultimately set her on a course that shaped her life.

She credits the ’88 venues with Canadians’ success, saying “the centres for development are the most critical factor in giving top athletes everything they need to win the most gold medals of any country at the Olympics, like they did in Vancouver. A huge percentage of these performers were developed in Calgary.

“I know how inspired I was as a kid when I got to meet Olympians,” she adds, “and I can only imagine the explosion of future athletes that will come from the dreams ignited in this generation of Canadian kids.”

Photos couresty of Vanoc-Covan & Julien Locke