Olympic dreams

Recreate the achievements of the world's top athletes at Utah's Olympic venues

Park City, Utah – Two by two they arrive at the bottom of the bobsled run, whooping and laughing as they wriggle from the sleek metal torpedoes.

It’s impossible to be giddy on the adrenaline rush from rocketing down a serpentine trough of ice at speeds up to 75 miles per hour.

Sled after sled of adventurous amateurs line up with driver and brakeman for the triumphant photo to commemorate what will be remembered as their brush with greatness.

olympicbobsledThis isn’t just a bobsled course. It is the bobsled course, where the world’s top athletes strained and streaked for Olympic medals at the 2002 Winter Games outside this charming mountain town.

On one frosty evening, the mood is not tense or competitive but expectant and convivial. Olympic-level luge and skeleton riders in their sleek, space-age uniforms mill about among bundled-up tourists, waiting to launch their high-tech sleds.

The Italian bobsled’s metal-walled cockpit is barely wider than my shoulders, so the intense buffeting from the ride that lasts only a few minutes will leave bruises on my upper arms for weeks to come.

A stiff neck, too, resulting from unconditioned muscles struggling to keep my head from wrenching from side to side through 15 tight turns.

One might wonder why anyone would pay $175 for such a pummeling. But night after winter night the reservations are usually full. People from all walks of life queue up, eager for the experience.

Maybe it is because most of us only know the Winter Olympics from television. They usually happen in faraway places such as Nagano, Japan, or Torino, Italy.

Attending the Games is usually a complicated and expensive proposition. But Americans have a great opportunity to sample the Olympic experience in our backyard – in and around Salt Lake City, just a short flight or a scenic drive away.

At The Ice Sheet in nearby Ogden, curling is in full swing.

It is probably the antithesis of bobsledding, but it produces remarkably similar outbursts of laughter and cheering.

ogdenicesheetHere, in an atmosphere of contagious camaraderie, broom-wielding strangers spontaneously band together to sweep stones quarried in Scotland down an ice sheet toward a distant bulls-eye.

This is curling, which is shuffleboard on a grand scale and a modest price – $5 per evening.

Instructor Robert Richardson came from Wisconsin to help novices learn the sport’s elegant ballet.

With a steadying broom in one hand and the polished, 44-pound stone in the other, I push off with one foot and struggle to lower my upright torso by bending the other knee. As friction slows my forward progress, I slowly extend the hand lugging the stone and simultaneously twist its handle to send the payload spiraling lazily toward its remote target.

It is an awkward set of movements to master. Once it’s attempted, no one can look at top curlersin action without admiration.

All the while, Richardson quietly repositions wobbly limbs and praises small successes. The twinkle in his eye betrays his fanaticism for the sport.

Utah residents worked hard for more than a decade to get the Games, industriously prepared for the coming hordes, politely weathered a bribery scandal and rightfully reveled in the world attention that always accompanies the Winter Games.

park city lodgeThey spent $1.4 billion before it was all over. Most of the physical improvements were in place long before the games.

Long afterward, the Olympic venues remain an enticing diversion for those who come to ski and snowboard at Utah’s famous snow sports resorts.

Stand at the top of the men’s Olympic downhill course at Snow Basin and admire the view of Ogden spread out along the valley floor far below.

Then turn around for a gut-tightening glimpse down the insanely steep incline that begins this run.

It was designed by Olympic gold medallist Bernard Russi and is considered one of the top three courses in the world, with a 2,770-foot vertical drop and pitches calculated to generate speeds of 90 miles per hour. Racers can cover the distance in two minutes.

Negotiate it on skis or snowboard – anyone is invited to try – and one shouldn’t feel a need to prove their courage in any other way.

For the faint-of-heart, there is a gentle traverse bypassing the run’s terrifyingly steep launch, and the remainder of the run, while steep, is a fun challenge and instructive in its tougher passages.

Snow Basin is a great secret among Utah snows sports venues, a terrific hill overshadowed by such better-known neighbors as Deer Valley and Snowbird.

For much of Snow Basin’s more than 60 years, patrons have faced a winding, circuitous road from Salt Lake City and modest base facilities. But owner Earl Holding, who also owns Sinclair Oil and Little America hotels, spent a lot of money before the Olympics building rustic, comfortable base lodges and two on-mountain restaurants, and he expanded the parking lots. The year before the Games, Holding had new high-speed lifts and state-of-the-art snowmaking equipment installed.

Utah built the Trappers Loop Connector, a new road to accommodate the Olympic crowds, that shaved 15 minutes off the drive to the resort.

An Olympic booster, Holding also built the Little America Grand, a deluxe 800-room hotel in Salt Lake City that could claim to be the city’s first five-star resort, according to Nathan Rafferty, Ski Utah’s leader.

Lots of other such niceties were added throughout the region to show off Utah for the Olympics and remain for all visitors who follow.

Deer Valley , site of the slalom, mogul and aerial events, spent more than $11 million just before the Olympics putting in three chairlifts and vastly improving snowmaking capabilities. Park City Mountain Resort installed a new lodge and an ingenious Olympic snowboard halfpipe course the requires a half-million cubic feet of snow because two-thirds of it is above the resort’s existing terrain.

Down the road a piece and far from the hoopla of Park City is Soldier Hollow, site of the Olympic biathlon, cross-country skiing and Nordic combined events.

Located outside Heber City in the tranquil foothills southeast of Salt Lake City, it was the last-created of the Olympic facilities.

The 25-kilometer course, built under the supervision of Lyle Nelson, four-time Olympic biathlon competitor, uses largely open grazing land, affording sweeping views of Utah’s gentle tan-and-white mountains.

“You have to be a pretty good skier to do some of the loops,” said cross-country director Kevin Jardine, describing sections of the course as “very challenging.”

But visitor can get a taste of the course on a relatively tame 3-kilomete section that were used by disabled competitors in the Paralympics after the 2002 Games.

While in the neighborhood, stop by Sundance, actor Robert Redford’s rustic ski resort that is a throwback to the earlier, less-sophisticated days of skiing and home of his Sundance Institute, which operates the famed independent film festival every winter.

The resort’s location on the flanks of Mount Timpanogos is one of the prettiest ski locales anywhere.

Copyright Gary Olson 2010 First published in The Denver Post