Richmond Olympic Speed Skating Oval

[mr.x]

Richmond Oval
Location: Richmond
Distance from Vancouver Olympic Village: 15 km
Venue Capacity: 7,600
Elevation: Sea level
Events taking place at this venue: Speed Skating
- 10,000 m Men
- 1,000 m Men, Women
- 1,500 m Men, Women
- 3,000 m Women
- 5,000 m Men, Women
- 500 m Men, Women
- Team pursuit Men, Women
Venue Description
The Richmond Oval site is located on the banks of the Fraser River, 25 minutes southwest from downtown Vancouver’s Olympic Village. The site, in the northwest corner of Richmond, is across the river from Vancouver International Airport and near Richmond City Centre.

Construction Update
The Richmond Oval will be an outstanding theatre for sport with a new 400-metre track housed in a 33,750 square metre facility. Before and after the 2010 Winter Games, the multipurpose building will provide opportunities for summer and winter sports and other community uses. Key design elements include a state-of-the art ice plant with superior air quality and climate controls. Ancillary facilities and systems will include offices, timing and athlete monitoring equipment, as well as fitness and strength training areas. Construction began in September 2005 and the goal is to complete the new facility by August 2008 to allow for testing and operational setup well in advance of the 2010 Winter Games.

Post-Games Use
The new Richmond Oval provides the community with:
• International or NHL-size hockey and short track speed skating surfaces
• Major indoor sport field house
• High-performance training area
• Community wellness centre
• Fitness centre
• Meeting rooms and academic space
• Sports medicine and sciences
• Offices for sports associations
• Waterfront park
Lumber to cover speed skating oval


When construction of Richmond’s Olympic oval is finished in 2008, one million board feet of pine beetle lumber will cover the roof.

By Matthew Hoekstra
Staff Reporter
Jul 15 2006
Richmond will make the biggest statement of B.C.’s number one resource when the Winter Olympics come to town in 2010.

The provincial government will announce today it’s contributing $1.5 million toward the engineering and design of a wood roof for the Olympic oval.

Richmond’s $178-million oval budget included the cash needed for a steel roof. The province’s ante now gives the city what it really wanted for a community legacy facility.

“The wood design is not only unique, it is also preferable to steel in many ways, including superior acoustics and sustainability,” said Mayor Malcolm Brodie.

It will also be constructed of mostly pine beetle lumber, otherwise known as denim or blue jean wood for blue streaks left behind from the critters.

“There’s nothing structurally wrong with pine beetle kill wood. It’s just dead wood, which is what you use in any structure, it’s just that it’s been stained by the pine beetle infestation,” said city spokesperson Ted Townsend.

Approximately one million board feet of the lumber will cover the 6.5-acre oval roof. The roof surface will be covered by an additional 19,000 sheets of four-by-eight plywood.

The B.C. Canada House at the 2006 Torino Winter Games was also built with beetle-killed lodgepole pine, harvested from the interior of the province.

The roof will create a chance for Richmond to showcase B.C. wood and technology, as well as pine beetle wood—which the province has found some success in marketing.

“It will be seen worldwide during the Olympics and leading up to Olympics, and post-Games it will still be seen as an Olympic venue, so it’s going to be a very high profile facility,” said Townsend.

The oval’s roof will be a “one-of-a-kind wave design, featuring arched trusses and rafters and a curvature in the surface panels that will give the roof a rippled appearance,” according to the Ministry of Forests.

The Viking Ship in Norway, home of the long track speed skating events of the 1994 Lillehammer Games, also had a complete wood roof.

Norway engineers pioneered a new technology at the time to create the roof, and the country has had “huge success” in marketing that technology around the world, said Townsend.

Calgary’s oval is covered with a metal frame and pre-formed cement spans.

Richmond’s oval is scheduled to open in the summer of 2008 and will be home to long track speed skating competitions in 2010 and converted to a multi-sport and wellness facility post-Games.

The city continues to look for other grants and sponsorship opportunities to get additional materials or equipment that can be used for its oval facility while staying within its $178-million budget.

“Our budget is not based on getting more of those, but certainly where we can, if we can get them to either offset or even reduce the project costs, we are certainly pursing those sorts of options,” Townsend said.







Construction at the oval has now been underway for exactly one year. Layers of gravel (to absorb seismic shock and to prevent significant sinking of the facility) has been laid on the site and pilings are now being driven.



Main Lobby