Richmond Oval’s lasting legacy 10 years after Olympics

Richmond was a venue city during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games and its Oval played a prominent role, hosting 12 medal events. Thor Diakow has more on the complex, and its legacy.

RICHMOND (CityNews) – Three-time Canadian Olympian Christine Nesbitt knows the building very well; the Richmond Oval is where she won gold in the 1,000-metre speed skating event at the Olympics a decade ago.

“This building holds a lot of really great memories,” she said. “To have a crowd that was, like, overwhelmingly Canadian was pretty incredible. I remember the first distance I raced was the 500 metres, and standing at the start line when they were kind of giving us the instructions to get into our start position, I almost couldn’t hear them because the crowd was just so loud. It just gave me chills.”

“You take a look around and the architecture of this building, just right off the bat, it’s jaw-dropping.”

Richmond was a venue city during the Winter Games in 2010 and its Olympic Oval played a prominent role, hosting 12 medal events.

The sprawling complex, which took two years to build and came in under a budget of $178 million, housed a 400-metre speed skating track with a capacity for 8,000 guests.

“In the Oval, it was an electric environment throughout the city to see these athletes who lived, moved to Richmond in 2008 and became part of the community,” General Manager of Oval Experiences and Venue Operations Gerry De Cicco said. “To have that attachment to those athletes and seeing them, not only Christine but so many other Olympic athletes, succeed was just awe-inspiring, and it’s something I’ll treasure for the rest of my life.”

After the Olympic Games, the Richmond Oval was converted into a multi-purpose sports facility as part of a long-term vision for the community.

Today, its amenities include a fitness centre, ice and court activities, a climbing wall, and Olympic museum.

“It’s hard to believe that 10 years has passed since the Games,” De Caccio said. “But I think one of the secrets to the Oval’s success was when we built our plan, our plan was always to host the Olympics, but we used that opportunity to really build a community legacy facility.”

Ten years on, in an increasingly isolating society, the venue’s ultimate legacy is, perhaps, simply preserving a sense of connection.

“There’s so many things going on in Canada and globally today that can really feel like we’re not connected, and it’s places like this that really can bring people together. Not just through sport, but through a sense of community, and I think that this facility does that. It’s not just about building sport and elite athletes — it’s about building healthy lives where people can rejoice in movement and a sense of community.”

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