Hot Seats

Biathlon

The athlete Jean-Philippe Le Guellec, 24  Home base Quebec City  Personal best Two Top 10 finishes at World Cup events in 2008  The venue At Whistler Olympic Park, biathletes vie for supremacy on a four-kilometre loop and a shooting range with 30 lanes, whose golf-ball- and grapefruit-size targets (for prone and standing positions, respectively) are placed 50 metres from the firing line.  

“Sitting in the grandstand at the shooting range is fun because of the emotion; the spectators go ‘Yeah!’ when you hit and ‘Oh!’ when you miss. There’s a big screen so you can follow the whole race. The ranking always changes because of the shooting; for each miss, you have to ski a 150-metre penalty loop or, in the 20-kilometre individual race, one minute per miss is added to the total ski time (that hurts!). Entertainment? Guaranteed!

“The course is rolling, with no significant ups or downs, so there aren’t many rest areas. You’re always pushing, which means a higher heart rate and more lactic acid in your muscles, making it harder to focus on the target in the shooting range. To lower our heart rates, we take deeper breaths as we approach the range; when we race, we’re at about 185 beats per minute, but once we’ve settled down on the mat to shoot our first target, we’re at about 170 – enough of a difference to shoot clean in 20 seconds. Here we have a slight downhill into the range, giving us a bit of a rest before taking the shots. Hopefully, that makes for better scores!”

Skeleton

The athlete Mellisa Hollingsworth, 29  Home base Airdrie, Alberta  Personal best Bronze at the Torino 2006 Winter Games  The venue The refrigerated track at the Whistler Sliding Centre is shared between skeleton racers and their bobsleigh and luge counterparts; the skeleton (and the bobsleigh) course clocks in at 1,450 metres long.  

“This is the fastest track in the world. By corner two, we’re already doing 80 kilometres an hour, with top speeds of over 140 kilometres an hour. The design suits aerodynamics, so your driving style requires finesse. That’s different from Altenberg in Germany or Lake Placid in New York, where you have to muscle your sled in the corners. Here you don’t really do that.

“When you’re up against the best in the world, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got 50 runs down the track or five; anything is possible. Things happen within hundredths of seconds. With big screens around, you see the entire run and the sleds as they pass you. But the best seats are in the lower bowl at corners 14, 15 and 16. This is the track’s fastest point, with a lot of crashes in case you’re a nosebleed seeker.”

Wheelchair Curling

The athlete Jim Armstrong (team skip), 59  Home base Vancouver  Personal best Gold at the 2009 World Wheelchair Curling Championship  The venue The 5,600-seat Vancouver Olympic/Paralympic Centre is kitted out with a state-of-the-art HVAC system and temperature and humidity sensors that ensure players duke it out on the ideal curling ice.  

“The wheelchair competition is the roller derby of curling. There’s no sweeping and we can’t throw the really hard or the really big stones, which means less control and a more unpredictable game. The able-bodied players and their stones and brooms are so good these days that there are few surprises. Their game has gone a bit sterile – and this comes from someone who’s played on both sides. In wheelchair curling, there are more rocks in play. Once the leads are in, you’ve got what you’ve got; no one is going to help you.

“To get close to the ice and the players, head for the sides. But if you’re a diehard strategist, like me, you go to the end behind the sheet to watch the rocks come toward you; in a way, you see what the skip sees.”

Ski Cross

The athlete Chris Del Bosco, 27  Home base Vail, Colorado  Personal best Gold at last year’s World Cup event at Cypress Mountain in Vancouver  The venue In ski cross, a first-time Olympic sport, four skiers at a time take off in a mass start and race down a 1,135-metre course on Cypress Mountain. The run is peppered with jumps, ridges and banked turns that test both skill and endurance.  

“This is a great venue to showcase our sport. On other courses, there’s not a lot going on. You get out of the gate, make your way to the front and go straight down. But here it’s a bit intimidating; it’s steeper on the top part and there are bigger jumps. There’s really nowhere you can take a break, but there are lots of places where you can make mistakes.

“The best spot to see the entire competition is at the finish. Ideally, there’s a Jumbotron or big screen, so you can see the start and then the whole race rather than just one section of the run. For us athletes, once you’re out there on the course, it’s just you. You plan for where stuff might happen, where you might pass, but someone might be in the way and you have to react. Nine times out of 10, the race is not going to go as planned.”

Figure Skating

The athlete Joannie Rochette, 24  Home base Montreal  Personal best Silver at the 2009 World Figure Skating Championships  The venue Figure skaters showcase their programs on the five-centimetre-thick ice of the Pacific Coliseum at Hastings Park in front of nine judges and 14,200 fans, not to mention the broadcasters whose cameras peek through cut-outs in the specially made freestanding padded boards.  

“What’s most important is that people get a good feel for the program. For the best overall view, I’d make sure not to sit too close to the ice, but not too high up either because then the skaters seem too far away. The ideal seats are midway up the bleachers, right behind the judges, because we tend to present more where the judges are. The programs are made to be seen that way.

“The ice here is first rate because it’s softer. In Montreal, I train in hockey rinks, where the ice is a lot harder than the ideal figure skating surface. This is a wonderful rink; it’s in an older building, which makes it feel warm.”

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