I thought it might help if you knew a little about the venues before you got here. I talked about Cypress Mountain here. Over the next few days I'll give you a little info about the Whistler venues. Of course you could Google them for yourself. But I thought I'd save you some time.
The Whistler Sliding Centre (WSC) is located on Blackcomb Mountain. It's really close to Whistler Village. If you are coming up from Vancouver on the Olympic Bus Network the bus will drop you at the Whistler transportation mall. From there it's a 25 minute walk to the Sliding Centre or you can take the shuttle or ride the gondola.
The WSC will host multiple events:
Men's skeleton
Women's skeleton
Men's single luge
Men's double luge
Women's single luge
Men's two man bobsleigh
Men's four man bobsleigh
Women's bobsleigh
The Whistler Sliding Centre is one of only two sliding centres in Canada. (The other is in Calgary)
Venue capacity - 12,000
1450 metres of track
152 metre vertical drop
16 corners
It takes about 40 minutes to walk from the spectator plaza to the upper start house.
Post Games, the sliding centre will operate as a high performance development centre, it will also have youth and recreational club programing and public admissions for tours and rides. Yep, starting some time in 2010 you can hand over some cash and in some form or other you can hurtle your way down the track.
Mum, Dad, Morag and Dave have tickets to runs 3 and 4 of the men's and women's skeleton on the 19th.
Tate (a friend from summer camp many years ago) is going to the women's bobsleigh on the 24th.
Mum, Dad, Dave, Chris and Andrea have ticket to runs 3 and 4 of the men's four man bobsleigh on the 27th.
Australia doesn't have any athletes in the skeleton or the bobsleigh, so we'll be cheering for Canada or maybe the UK. Just remember to dress warm, it will be really cold and you'll be standing outside for a few hours.