Coliseum will do just fine; Competitors were pleased, and so was the crowd
The Vancouver Province
Mon 27 Oct 2008
Page: A43
Section: Sports
Byline: Terry Bell
Source: The Province

The old girl passed her first test just fine Sunday.

The Pacific Coliseum, now 40 years old and anticipating a face-lift prior to hosting short-track speedskating and figure skating at the 2010 Olympics, got some pretty good opening night reviews over the weekend.

The 2008 ISU short track World Cup came to town . . . and the ice was good. The crowd -- announced at 4,573, about 2,000 more than Saturday -- was noisy. The racing was as fast and exciting as billed.

"The building is amazing," said Canadian silver medallist Michael Gilday of Yellowknife, NWT.

"They put the new padding system in and there's only three of them in the world, so it's as safe as it can get. For the athletes that's a good thing.

"As a short-track venue, this is top notch. There's lots of room for warming up and there's lots of space for change rooms. The staff and the volunteers have been really great and helpful.

"Today the crowd was amazing. Obviously there's a very large Asian community in the Vancouver area so there are a lot of Korean and Chinese fans, but the roars were just as loud for Canada."

Chinese star Meng Wang, who won Sunday's 500 and then helped China's relay team take gold a few hours later, liked the place too.

"I like the city of Vancouver. I like the venue," she said through an interpreter. "There's a huge Chinese community here so it's like a homecoming.

"It isn't much different right now [than other World Cup venues] but when it comes to the Olympics it will be much better."

That's what the folks at Vanoc are hoping. This World Cup was a test event for 2010 and they were busy taking notes.

"We learned from the athletes that we have some more work to do to find the optimum balance between hard and softer ice which short track and figure skating require respectively," said Vanoc vice president of sport Tim Gayda.

"What you see here is as it will be [at the Olympics]. There are a lot of elements like the pageantry that will come so the building will look different [in 2010] but when you look at the ice with the padding system and the timing decks that's laid out there, that's pretty much how it will look."

Gayda was pleased with the turnout for a sport that flies well below the local radar.

"It's a new sport," he said. "A lot of people in Vancouver don't know what it is and this is the first time they were exposed to it. I think the people who took the chance to come down and buy a ticket were definitely impressed.

"It's a very exciting sport to watch and I hope that rubs off on the rest of the community in terms of Games attendance."

Gayda said athletes were concerned about ice quality prior to the event. At sea level, getting hard, safe ice can be quite a trick.

"They had some concerns coming here but with the upgrades we have here in terms of de-humidification and the plant we have to run the ice, it has been very successful," said Gayda. "They have to trust that ice coming into the corners and after they skated on it for a while they definitely had a positive feeling."

"There's not massive learning," continued Gayda. "It's just a matter of us working with all the other groups -- Speed Skating Canada, the PNE, the ISU -- we have to learn to work together."