Monday, April 27, 2009

Canada Olympic Park - the Icehouse

Any guesses?
Bet you've never seen anything quite like this!
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This is the indoor luge, skeleton and bobsled track at Canada Olympic Park. It's not actually a full track but is a short section for practising one of the most critical parts of the sport - the start.
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The ice house was built to allow athletes to make many more attempts at their start without having to hurtle down the full length of the outdoor track. It's the only fully enclosed refrigerated building in the world...and it's big! At 143 m long is is almost the length of a soccer field and is four stories high. Nine kilometers of steel piping is used to cool the three tracks and a unique monorail system automatically returns the sleds to the start area allowing for continuous training.
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You can watch athletes from all over the world training there in winter - it would cost too much to cool it to approrpriate temperatures in the summer I think.

7 comments:

  1. I'm pretty speechless right now! What an amazing building. Have you seen many athletes train here?

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  2. Bobsleigh: my dream! Thanks for this!

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  3. That is one of my favorite things to watch in the Winter Olympics. I would love to watch them train!

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  4. wau! i didn't know about this...that's so coool! :)

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  5. You are right. I have never seen or even heard of anything like this... its amazing.

    Thanks for your visits to Delhi Photo Diary. One of my best friends ever moved to Calgary last year after getting married to a Sikh Canadian boy. So I will be a regular at your blog for sure. :-)

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  6. I never knew there was an indoor training center for luge. Quite exciting.

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  7. You are right, I have never seen anything of the kind! Amazing!

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