Canada Olympic Park
Having successfully diversified since the Games, Canada Olympic Park (COP) continues to serve Canada’s elite athletes and the local community, despite the recent closure of some of its facilities.
The COP was the venue for the ski jumping, bobsleigh and luge competitions at Calgary 1988 and the freestyle skiing demonstration event. Run by non-profit organisation WinSport, it is a sports and recreation hub enjoyed all year round by Calgarians and visitors alike.
Welcoming more than 1.2 million visitors annually, it offers a host of recreational activities, from skiing and mountain biking to mini golf, ziplining and skating. The park opened an indoor sliding facility in 2001, a tube park in 2016 and a mountain bike skills centre in 2019. In 2019 alone, 120,392 rides were taken in the tube park and 96,603 down the mountain bike hill.
A training facility for the nation’s winter sports teams, the COP is the home of Canada’s Olympic Hall of Fame, the National Sport School, the Canadian Sport Institute Calgary, the Performance Training Centre, and no fewer than 15 national and provincial sports organisations, including Hockey Canada.
The COP’s bobsleigh and luge track hosted the IBSF World Championships on four occasions after the Games and the FIL World Luge Championships three times. As Canada’s national sliding team base, it underwent renovation work to meet current safety, performance and sustainability standards, though operations and improvements were paused in 2019 due to a lack of funding. WinSport may have to reconsider the facility’s future, in line with available financial resources.
The park’s ski jumps were used by a local ski club and were the main training hub for Canada’s ski jumpers before three of the jumps had to be closed down in early 2019 due to high operational and maintenance costs. The one exception is the 90-metre ski jump tower, which stands as a reminder of the 1988 Games and is now the departure point for North America’s fastest zipline. In 2019 it was enjoyed by 2,566 people. WinSport is planning to dismantle the remaining jumps and repurpose the area for other sports.
The freestyle skiing aerials site remains operational and is used for recreational skiing and as a venue for major events. The most recent of these were the moguls, slopestyle and halfpipe competitions in the 2019/20 FIS Freestyle Ski World Cup.
A study conducted in 2016 indicated that the COP’s direct and indirect economic impact equates to 1,200 full-time jobs in Calgary (596 of them at the WinSport facility) and that the park boosts the local economy by CAD 120 million annually.