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Posted: 5:48 PM- When the 2014 Winter Games take place in Sochi, Russia, the U.S. Olympic team likely will be packed with athletes developed at a training and education center the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA) plans to build in Park City.
The $22.5 million facility at Quinn's Junction is expected to open in 2009, roughly two years after its formal ground breaking on July 18. It will provide ski team members and athletes from other Utah-based Olympic sports (bobsled, luge, skeleton, speedskating) with advanced training regimens as well as sports science education and access to in-house testing and physiologists.
"Most of the athletes who will compete in 2014 are now in 400 local programs around the country, be it the Park City Ski Club or Rowmark Academy or the jumping program at Utah Olympic Park," said USSA President and CEO Bill Marolt.
"Our facility will affect the 2010 Games [in Vancouver, B.C.], but where it's really going to have an impact is in 2014," he added. "What we're going to do up here in Park City is going to up the ante. We've been working at this a long time, trying to find a site that worked and raising the money to do it. The dreams are really starting to manifest themselves. The possibilities continue to grow every day."
Marolt said no one in the USSA has extensive knowledge of the Caucasus Mountain region where Sochi's organizers plan to hold their Alpine and Nordic skiing events.
But he noted that the terrain has been praised by race course designer Bernhard Russi, the former Olympic downhill gold medalist who designed the men's and women's 2002 downhill courses at Snowbasin Resort above Ogden.
"These mountains compare favorably with anything in Europe, North or South America," said Marolt, adding that an Olympics-driven development of urban infrastructure around Sochi will help expand Alpine skiing into a heavily populated country that always has done well in Nordic skiing but has lagged behind on the Alpine front.
"From a business side, Sochi hosting the Olympics opens tremendous markets for the ski industry," Marolt said.
He does not expect the Chechens or any terrorist groups opposed to Russian authority to do anything to disrupt Sochi's preparations.
"The international community has an understanding and respect for the Olympic movement that really sets it apart," Marolt said. "Everyone understands and wants to be part of the Olympic movement."