Alberta plans to upgrade Canada Olympic Park

[Wookie]

http://www.globesports.com/servlet/s...ortsOther/home

Well I'm excited!

It'll be nice to see that facility go up. As well the upgrades will be welcomed. The bob Niven training centre is kind of a joke (or it was). Money going into the Oval and the sledding tracks is nice too!

I'm especially excited about the 4 ice surfaces. I hope to get to play a few ice times on one of those Olympic ice sheets. They're so much fun if your a decent skater and in good shape

We rarely play at FTB, but it's nice when we do. Max Bell is nice to, unfortunately the ice sucks.

[RougeUnderoos]

There was some noise a while ago about the whole facility falling into the dumps because of all the new shiny stuff in Vancouver. This is good news.

A quarter of the Canadian team that competed at the 2006 Turin Olympics were Albertans and three-quarters of Canada's medalists trained at the Olympic facilities in Calgary.

Huh. Neato.

[browna]

Good to hear...and makes a lot of sense, considering the next Winter Olympics are 1200km away/an hour plane trip from here.

Plus, for some things, I am sure it will be much easier logsitically to train here rather then Vancouver, if you have all those components in one place at COP, as opposed to just having venues in a crowded Vancouver (or, over an hour a way from everything else, at Whistler).

And, with all the venues in Vancouver still a couple years away, with exsisting infrastructure in place, COP and the Oval and other facilities at the U of C should be upgraded and fully utilized in preperation for the Olympics. They only come this way once every 20+ years, if that...and COP is in dire need of more then a fresh paint job in order to be keeping up to the times if the Government and corporate sponsors are as serious as they say they are in improving Olympic results.

I think Calgary will still be the center for training high performance athletes after the Vancouver Olympics are done. This goes a long way in confirming that.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by browna

I think Calgary will still be the center for training high performance athletes after the Vancouver Olympics are done. This goes a long way in confirming that.

well i know it was mentioned during the Turin olympics that Canadian athletes (and even a lot of American ones) preferred to train in Calgary due to the elevation providing a much better ice surface. i doubt a sea level facility in Vancouver will be able to sway those people away

[Reggie Dunlop]

Calgary is the Headquarters of Hockey.™