devashish_paul wrote:
Halvard wrote:
devashish_paul wrote:
....just wondering where exactly the snow sport events will be at 2022. I realize there is snow in the mountains north of Beijing, but did not realize they are big enough for the downhill events. Will be interesting to see the Nordic venues too. Well, at least now they have one more good reason for the bird's nest white elephant stadium to exist. Thoughts?
I am so happy that Oslo turned down the 2022 Olympics. IOC is a joke and the Olympics is starting to be.
The organizers in Oslo had to publicize all IOC documents with their demands, and the demands were a dictatorship worthy.
I was waiting to hear your take on it. The fact that both Oslo and Munich pulled out is pretty telling.
Do you have any visibility on the snow sport proposed venues?
I was just over at Callahan Valley at Whistler. As I rode up there, I was thinking, "awesome road, no one on it". then I entered the Nordic Center and there was one car in the parking lot. Really sad, because such an amazing facility should be packed with athletes every day training, but it will turn into a white elephant. They should have put the Nordic venue in Cypress for Vancouver so that it was accessible by population after the games.
600 kilometers from Beijing, who the heck will use that facility after the games? In my view that is one of the biggest problems. Olympic facilities should be built in a way to leave a legacy that enables sport development, but the IOC just wants venues that are used once and no one ends up using later which become an economic black hole.
It depends, Dev. I've ridden that road a few times over a few summers. Sometimes I see no one, sometimes I see XC skiers on those long skate/ski things with wheels (can't describe them better than that!) practising up by going up the road to the Nordic Centre, sometimes I see XC skiers on the same things on the Tarmac trails in the Nordic Centre area itself. It's certainly not packed every day, but it does get some use in the summer. I would imagine one thing is that there aren't enough bodies in town who want to do that, and only that in the summer every day.
BTW, did you get to ride up to the top of the bobsleigh track? There's a service road which (annoyingly) is sometimes blocked with a barrier, but it's a great little steep hairpinned climb. The other "must do" climb over there is the Duffey Lake Road on the far side of Pemberton heading to Lilloet.