Richmond Speed Skating Oval

Ron Niebrugge Canada, Photos, Travel 4 Comments

olympic-ice-skater

An Olympic hopeful training at the brand new Richmond Speed Skating Oval near Vancouver.  This venue will be used for long track speed skating in next year’s winter games.

I thought this scene epitomizes the typical Olympic athlete’s life.  Long hours of training by themselves in relative anonymity.  It is kind of ironic, if he does make the Olympic team as expected, millions of people from around the world will one day watch him skate on this same ice surface.   On this day, it was only Janine and I, along with his friendly girlfriend.

I also found it interesting that only Canadian athletes are allowed to use this facility up until two weeks before the Winter Olympics to help provide a home country advantage.  I thought the home country advantage was limited to the supportive crowd and familiar surroundings, but I guess there is even more.

Richmond Skating Oval

This is a beautiful building.  The inside is finished, and they were wrapping up some cosmetic stuff on the outside, but clearly it will be ready for the Olympics.  Here I used a fish-eye lens.  It was the only way to get the entire ice surface and roof in a single frame – plus it helped emphasis the wonderful curves in the roof, and on the ice surface.

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Comments 4

  1. Post
    Author

    Hi Richard,

    I got really lucky on this one since it had pretty much just opened and they wanted to show it off to the local residents. They said access would get more difficult in the months to come.

  2. I quess there something to be said about being the right place at the right time. Good capture, maybe they will want to buy a picture or two for promotion of there event.

  3. Post
    Author

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