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Barring the current social unrest and general economic crisis going on in this city, I’d like to put out an interesting scenario for you: What if we hosted another Olympics? And no, I’m not talking about another Winter Olympics (we tried and failed for 2030), I’m talking about the Summer Olympics. It’s more popular than winter, and in the event (pun intended) we get one (in 70 years time), the sports itself will remain the same more or less.
But, where would the sports be held?
During my anxiety-ridden flight to the Philippines this summer, I had this idea of a Vancouver Summer Olympics floating in my head, so I began to jot some venue ideas for various sports. I was also inspired by Kenneth Chan over at the Daily Hive, whose article I read a while back and loved.
Reading back, I was surprised with some of these choices. One of my favorite aspects when a city hosts an Olympic Games is where the heck some of these sports will be held. Sometimes, things can get pretty crazy when it comes to venue choices (I.e. hosting Beach Volleyball at the Horse Guard Parades in London 2012; not even a beach). And with Vancouver, we can go pretty crazy with some of our sports venues.
Going to that list, here are some of the venue ideas I had in mind:
TOFINO (SURFING)
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Surfing is a recent addition to the Olympics, and if Vancouver hosted them, only one place should even be considered to host surfing events: TOFINO. The little hamlet on Vancouver Island is literally Canada’s Surfer Paradise, so not hosting it there would be crazy to think about.
WHISTLER VILLAGE (BMX RACE)
Sonya Romanovska on Unsplash
This was inspired by me seeing videos of that Red Bull BMX event that happened in Whistler this past year, but if you know about that event, then you’d think that Whistler is the perfect place for a BMX race. Oh, and shoutouts to Whistler Mountain itself, who’d I want to host Mountain Biking events.
ROGERS ARENA (Basketball, Volleyball)
I was going to put gymnastics here, but I think basketball and volleyball make a lot more sense in the grand scheme of things (more on that later). Besides, seeing world class basketball at Rogers Arena for another time would be a nice sight too.
PNE (Gymnastics, Boxing)
No, I’m not talking about the park itself. The Agrodome and Pacific Coliseum would both host gymnastic events in my master plan, with the Agrodome handling Trampoline events and the Coliseum taking on Artistic and Rhythmic events respectively. Plus, having the Agrodome host the boxing finals would be a nice callback to Rocky IV.
BC Place (Ceremonies, Soccer/Football)
jaspion82 on Pixabay
Total no-brainer. No words here.
Vancouver will never host another Olympics any time soon, but sometimes, it’s fun to speculate what could happen if we grabbed ourselves another chance for the world to come back and play with us. I bet no matter what happens, their mascots won’t be as good as 2010’s mascots. Those were actual peak Olympic mascot designs…