They say the Olympic Winter Games, opening in just a few days in Vancouver and Whistler, is the planet’s largest sporting event. The world will be watching — a very good thing for Whistler-Blackcomb, one of Canada’s most captivating ski resorts.
It has been a long time coming.
Hosting the Olympics was a dream sparked 50 years ago — before Whistler, the ski resort, even existed — by the Garibaldi Olympic Development Association (GODA). A group of Vancouver guys intent on bringing the Olympics to British Columbia’s Coast Mountains, scouted the peaks north of Squamish, B.C., to establish a ski resort with enough vertical to stage an Olympic downhill. They settled on London Mountain — now Whistler Mountain — built a ski resort, and bid for the 1968 Games. They lost their bid to Grenoble in ’68, then lost four more in 1972, 1976, 1980 and 1988. But they didn’t lose their dream. It took 42 years, but the Games are finally on London Mountain.
At the 2010 Games, the Men’s Downhill event — the race most skiers consider the highlight of a Winter Olympics — will rocket down the Dave Murray Downhill. As you’ll see on television during the Games, it’s a course that snakes dangerously down Whistler Creekside on a run named after Dave Murray, an original member of alpine skiing’s Crazy Canucks. Murray, a longtime Whistlerite, lost his life to cancer in 1990; his daughter, Julia Murray, is a 2010 Canadian medal hope in the new women’s Ski Cross event.
The Dave Murray course is revered among elite racers; it has hosted more than 10 World Cup events since 1975, including the World Cup downhill Whistler-raised Rob Boyd won in 1989. Boyd returns to Whistler in 2010 as a coach for the women’s Canadian ski team. The women — along with all Paralympic alpine skiers — will be racing on a newly designed set of courses that track down Whistler runs: Wildcard, Jimmy’s Joker and Franz’s Trail.
Both the men’s and women’s alpine ski races finish at Creekside Village, a satellite base containing a few restaurants and loads of condos, which is located about four kilometres south of Whistler’s main village and gondola.
Whistler-Blackcomb’s total terrain tops out at a massive 8,717 acres. While officials are claiming 90 per cent of it will be open for public skiing for the Games, skiers won’t be able to access runs surrounding the Dave Murray Downhill or Franz’s. The terrain won’t reopen until March 28, following the close of the Paralympic alpine events.
Back in Whistler’s main village, an amphitheatre has been newly built to showcase the medal ceremonies for the events taking place at Whistler —alpine skiing’s downhill, giant slalom, slalom and super-G , plus bobsleigh, luge and skeleton events that take place at the Whistler Sliding Centre. The Whistler Medals Plaza has enough tiered seating for 5,000 spectators watching medal ceremonies and Whistler’s nightly concerts between February 13 and 27. The Whistler Live concerts include performances by Feist, Our Lady Peace, Usher, The Fray, and the All American Rejects.
Much of this will be easily spotted during the Games on TV. If you’re watching — or lucky enough to be there skiing — also check out Whistler’s new Peak 2 Peak, a gondola that spans the 4.4-kilometre distance between Whistler and Blackcomb mountains. It’s the gondola with the world’s longest unsupported span (3.024 kilometres between two towers), plus it’s the world’s highest lift of its kind at 436 metres above the Fitzsimmons Creek valley floor… a fitting spectacle for the world’s biggest snow sporting spectacle.
Lori Knowles will be covering the Olympics live from Vancouver and Whistler for the Toronto Sun’s travel section, and blogging at www.LoriExploring.Wordpress.com . This column originally appeared in the travel section of The Toronto Sun, Sunday January 31, 2010.
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