A Day at Canada Olympic Park - Part II

Canada Olympic Park - Part II

While I was at Canada Olympic Park, I met Pierre Lueders and Lascelles Brown who won Silver in the 2 man Bobsled event in Torino, Italy earlier this year. (This is a picture of their medal. I didn't touch it nor ask for their pictures since I didn't want to be too much of a 'groupy!' I really wanted to touch the medal though! The volunteer was walking around and showed us their medals. Cool!)

Pictured to the right is another one of the lesser known Canadian Olympic Athletes who is proudly displaying both the Canadian and Chinese flags! :o) The torch she's holding is one of the official torches that carried the Olympic flame across Canada in 1988! What a fun experience.

After watching a video about the '88 Games I drove to a place called, The Ice House. It is the only indoor training facility in the world for bobsled, luge and skeleton athletes. It allows them to practice their starts which is as we all know, often where a race is won or lost.

Providing the tour to us was Ian Cockerline who competed for Canada in Torino and will be competing for Canada again in 2010 in Vancouver. He was quite funny and we learned a lot about the 3 sliding sports from him. Did you know that the little skeleton sleds actually weigh about 100lbs? Also, all the runners of the sleds in all 3 sliding sports are flat and about 3/4" wide, not sharp and thin like a skate. I'd always thought they'd be sharp. Had it been 2 weeks later I would have been able to try this little luge run but that doesn't start until July 1st so I'll have to do that another time. Until then, I decided to try my hand at the bobsled.

(Alas....unable to post a pic again so you'll have to wait for that one as my time is up again....)