VANCOUVER — Two of Vancouverites’ biggest worries about their Olympics are the final bill that will land in their taxes, and snow. The first, we don’t have to worry about; the second, the freestylists have to worry about. Cypress Mountain, where all freestyle events will be held, had no recent snow until a light dusting on the top last week. It may look prettier without snow, but not to aerialists skiing 50 feet into the air. Cypress is only 18 miles north of downtown Vancouver, the warmest Winter Olympics city in history.
Vancouver doesn’t get a lot of snow, only a few inches a year. It gets lot of rain, however — 44 inches a year. Shaun White surely can’t wait to catch air in a downpour. VANOC has been stockpiling man-made snow and will dump it on the mountain shortly before the first event kicks off with women’s moguls Saturday. Just don’t expect NBC’s cameras to pan around to show huge strips of green.
Here’s a look at the Olympic venues:
1. BC Place
Opening, closing ceremonies
People in the Pacific Northwest thought Seattle’s Kingdome was ugly. BC Place is the Kingdome’s little brother. The 55,000-seat, white- domed stadium was built in 1983 for the Canadian Football League’s B.C. Lions and is an eyesore on Vancouver’s otherwise spectacular skyline.
It’s the largest air-supported dome in the world, and the city will install a retractable roof after the Games. Until then, the stadium will provide the first indoor opening and closing ceremonies in Winter Olympic history.
For those who sat in 20-degree temperatures in Salt Lake City and Turin, BC Place may look beautiful tonight.
2. Canada Hockey Place
Hockey
This is the Vancouver Canucks’ 19,300-seat GM Place, after the IOC removes the sponsor’s name, as per its inane branding rules.
Conveniently located across the Georgia Viaduct from BC Place, Canada Hockey Place is equally as drab, despite being only 15 years old. You’ll know the building. There’s a giant sign reading, “We are all Canucks.”
3. UBC Thunderbird Arena
Hockey
Built in 1963, this is the birthplace of the Canadian national hockey program. The team first trained here for the 1964 Innsbruck Olympics.
The arena seats 6,800 and is on the far western point of Vancouver, near the banks of English Bay.
4. Pacific Coliseum
Figure skating, short-track speedskating
The Vancouver Canucks’ first home when they entered the NHL in 1970 still has charm. It’s a beautiful, white-paneled building with a red tile roof in tree-lined Hastings Park on the east end of town.
Its lone drawback is it’s at the end of East Hastings Street, arguably Canada’s most notorious drug neighborhood. Pacific Coliseum has a Denver connection. When it was built in 1968, the first game pitted the Canucks, then in the Western Hockey League, against the Denver Spurs.
5. Vancouver Olympic Centre
Curling
Yeah, we know. Curling. Big deal. In Canada, it is a big deal. Ninety-four percent of all curlers in the world are Canadian so VANOC built a state-of-the-art 5,600-seat facility right next to Nat Bailey Stadium, home of the Vancouver Canadians’ Single-A baseball team, in Queen Elizabeth Park across the bridge south of downtown. It will have specially designed air handler units that will take evaporating rainwater from spectators’ jackets and redirect it outside the field of play.
6. Richmond Olympic Oval
Long-track speedskating
Spectators who walk into the brand new, 7,600-seat facility may have to duck low-flying planes landing at nearby Vancouver International Airport.
The roof is made of fallen pine-beetle timber from British Columbia forests. On the inside of the ice are basketball courts that will be covered with tarp before speedskating begins Saturday.
7. Whistler Sliding Centre
Bobsled, luge and skeleton
The new facility has received rave reviews, including the 2008 BC Ready-Mixed Concrete Association Award for Excellence. The BCRMCA called it “the technically staggering Whistler Sliding Centre, an engineering achievement that, according to the judges, only comes along every 100 years.”
8. Whistler Creekside
Alpine skiing
Construction on the new Sea-to-Sky Highway transformed the dangerous two-lane road connecting Vancouver to Whistler into four lanes. The 80-mile trip still takes two hours but the venue is worth it. Seating 7,700, this alpine site was a part of the World Cup circuit in the 1980s and ’90s. However, skiers are worried that the proximity to the Pacific Coast will make it vulnerable to storms and fog that could delay the downhill multiple times, as in Nagano.
9. Whistler Olympic Park
Biathlon, nordic combined, ski jumping, cross country skiing
For the first time, all four events are at the same site, with three separate stadiums less than 400 yards apart. Included in the $120 million price tag is a ski jump that has a revolutionary self-refrigeration system that will help offset any changes in weather. The cross country trails, which some European elite skiers say are too easy, are well tested. More than 40,000 recreational skiers used the course last year.
10. Cypress Mountain
Freestyle skiing, snowboarding
Leave your mittens; bring your umbrella. Rain is more likely than snow, which has been stockpiled thanks to a 5 million gallon snowmaking reservoir. It will be dumped onto the course before Saturday’s women’s moguls. The snowboardcross and skicross course, which will seat 12,000, will both have 18 jumps, the highest being 25 feet from lip to landing. It will be conveniently located next to the snowboard halfpipe, which seats 8,000. The aerials course is right next to the moguls, both of which also seat 12,000.
