Since Vancouver is now 51 weeks away from the 2010 Olympics, the energy is ramping up. Major sponsors are decorating their corporate head offices with Olympic regalia and the new venues are coming to completion. All of the Whistler venues are finished and open to athletes. World Cup Bobsleigh and Skelton championships were held in Whistler last week and World Cup Snowboard events were held at Cypress Bowl in West Vancouver at the same time. Speed skating events have been held at the Richmond Oval.

The next venue to come on line will be the Thunderbird Arena on the campus of the University of British Columbia, home of woman's hockey at the games.

UBC is located at the extreme western end of the Vancouver peninsula, 90 metres above the Straight of Georgia. The new arena was built adjacent to the existing Thunderbird Winter Sports complex and the Father Bauer arena. If hockey is a religion in Canada, Bob Hindmarch and Father David Bauer are patron saints and UBC's new Thunderbird arena is on holy ground.

Don’t be surprised if you hear Hayley Wickenheiser or any of the other sure-fire Canadian Olympians say, “Home, sweet home,” when they arrive at UBC in 2010.

That is because the new UBC Thunderbird Arena, a 2010 Olympic and Paralympic competition venue, is located where Canada’s National Hockey Program was born.

Two legends of our national sport – UBC Hall of Famer Bob Hindmarch and the late Rev. Father David Bauer – established Canada’s first national hockey team at UBC in 1963 in preparation for the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria.

“Back then, there was no national team and the NHL didn’t share its players,” says Hindmarch, who will be inducted in the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame in March along with members of the 2002 gold medal men’s and women’s teams. “So our best junior team would usually represent the country at the Games – whoever won the Memorial Cup.

Built around a core of UBC students, the team was “hard skating and hard-working, with skill to burn,” says Hindmarch, who was general manager and assistant coach. The team residence was the 1963 Pacific National Exhibition showhome, which UBC purchased for $3,000 and had moved to campus.

The team helped Canada bounced back from the 1960 debacle, ultimately winning bronze in a controversial three-way tie. “I still remember the headlines,” says Hindmarch, a UBC professor emeritus in human kinetics and former athletics director: “The priest and his flock got fleeced.”

Hindmarch says his former players’ jaws would drop if they saw UBC’s new $47.8 million Thunderbird Arena, a new three-rink multipurpose complex built around the former Father Bauer Arena, where the UBC national team played. “We were playing in a Model T,” he says. “This is a Mercedes.”

For sledge hockey, the venue has a number of accessibility features, including iced player bench areas so competitors can easily enter and leave the playing service on their sledges. These and other arena functions will be tested when international sledge hockey teams compete for gold at the Hockey Canada Cup, which will occur Feb. 24 to Mar. 1, 2009 at UBC.

The new stadium arena has 5,000 permanent seats and can house up to 7,500 people for special events including concerts, conventions, speakers, and hockey-related programs. The newly constructed practice arena features a 6000-square-foot multi-purpose room, a 5000-square-foot physiotherapy or fitness centre, 13 public dressing rooms, six referee / coaches room, two varsity rooms and one alumni room. The updated Father David Bauer Arena, built in 1963, has 900 permanent seats and will be primarily used as a venue for hockey-related programs.

The Thunderbird Winter Sports Centre will be the permanent home for the UBC Sports Hall of Fame, a $650,000 investment fully funded by Alumni and Friends of UBC Athletics. It will feature UBC Hall of Fame members, photos and trophies.

There will be increased community access to the new Thunderbird Winter Sports Centre in comparison to the previous facility. There will be over 230 hours per week in which the venue will be dedicated to community use. This includes a mix of community programs, hockey leagues, youth instructional programs, high school rentals, community rentals and drop-in programs.

Two sport events are scheduled for the Centre in 2009: the Four Nations Ice Sledge Hockey Challenge (February 23–March 1), and a Four Nations Cup Women’s Ice Hockey Tournament (August 29–September 6). In addition, 13 - 20 concerts per year are expected to be held at the Thunderbird Winter Sports Centre.

The new facility is highly accessible for mobility-challenged participants and spectators. The venue is also designed with careful attention to energy conservation: in addition to energy-efficient lighting, the venue has an eco-chill system which uses waste energy from ice cleaning to heat the building.

Check the Thunderbird Winter Sports Centre web site for more information on rates and schedules.

Read the newsletter about the Richmond Olympic Oval.

Other Olympic Related

Newsletter #167
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is a Stamp Collector

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