Utah Olympic Park gets gear from Canada Olympic Park

Calgary Olympic Park's Winsport Center. Photo: Carl Roepke

CALGARY, Canada — Today is the return drive from Calgary back to Park City by Utah Olympic Park (UOP) employees, with a piece of equipment for the bobsled, luge, skeleton track. It’s not equipment simply found at a local gear swap. Canada had two bobsled tracks, the same amount the US has. The track built for the Calgary 1988 Olympics, however, is being sold as parts to tracks like the one at the UOP.

The highly specialized mechanical ice scraper is not only made specifically for a sliding-sports track but it will even need to be re-customized to work on the Utah track as opposed to the Calgary track, as each global track is different.

Two Park City track employees, Jeff Price and Carl Roepke received national permission clearance to cross the Canadian border with their work truck and trailer to load the ice scraper during the pandemic’s travel restrictions. Negotiations landed on a purchase price for the equipment as Calgary is no longer in need of it.

The citizens of Calgary held a yes or no vote three years ago as to whether or not to continue attempting to re-win a bid to re-host a winter Olympics. The vote was a no, so the massive nordic ski jumps along with the track are making way for more general public-friendly sports enhancing the use of the indoor swimming pool, outdoor alpine ski area, and ice sheet at the Winsport Wayne Gretzky Sports Center.

Roepke said, “This piece of equipment will be an invaluable addition to our track tools. The most important thing is that the ice is smooth thus fast. When USA athletes slide down our track after we’ve buffed it out with this thing, they’ll gain and maintain even more confidence in this Olympic year. If the ice is too bumpy, it’s like trying to adjust your car radio while speeding down a washboard dirt road.”

Utah’s newly acquired ice scraper will scrape the track in one day, instead of the three days it would take a half-dozen track workers.

There has been a reciprocal industry working relationship between the two Olympic Parks as Roepke would otherwise be traveling there to either compete in luge or to announce World Cup bobsled, skeleton, and/or luge competitions and Calgary’s track workers would come down to Utah to help perfect the ice for counterpart events.