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| Plans for Bokwang Phoenix Park for Winter Olympics 2018 - courtesy of Ecosign |
Arguably
the most prestigious event in winter sports is the Winter Olympic Games. From
the initial bidding, building the competitive venues, constructing an Olympic
village, hosting the world’s top winter athletes and the media circus that goes
with them - and somehow creating a lasting legacy to justify all the tax
dollars spent on infrastructure - it is a mammoth task.
The
Sochi 2014 Games cost a reported $51 billion.
But was this huge investment worth it? Certainly many winter tourism
destinations think so and the ski resort area of PyeongChang, South Korea was more than willing to take the risk. It made
three attempts to bid successfully for the Winter Olympics, finally nabbing the
elite event for 2018. It was all part of its aim to put South Korea’s premier
winter sports area firmly on the international ski map and challenge Japan for
predominance in Asia.
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| Konjiam Ski Area Photo by Korea Tourism |
The
indoor ice events were planned for Gangneung, a northeastern coastal city with a population of around
230,000. But the international spotlight was directed to the less densely
populated county of PyeongChang chosen for the mountain venues as well as the
opening and closing ceremonies. The long-term legacy for PyeongChang is hoped to be a commercially viable,
international ski center with new venues for training and competitive freestyle
skiing and snowboarding events in the future.
Rather
than compete with Sochi’s extravagant facilities and expenditure, PyeongChang aimed
to use many existing venues and create a lower key but more authentic
atmosphere reminiscent of the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics. Lillehammer’s ski resorts are
spread over five alpine centers:, Skeikampen, Kvitfjell, Gålå and
Sjusjøen. Incidentally, although Lillehammer may not have indulged in the huge
financial outlay of Vancouver or Sochi, it is now the location for the
award-winning TV drama series, Lilyhammer,
starring Steven Van Zandt, which has given lasting
marketing and advertising ROI to the quaint Norwegian mountain town. The
Lillehammer Olympic ski jump was immortalized in one of the most iconic episodes.
Having
worked on the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and the 2014 Sochi
Winter Olympics),
Paul
Mathews’ company, Ecosign was chosen to plan the Freestyle Skiing and Snowboarding venues
for PyeongChang. Ecosign had already
designed various ski resorts in South Korea including Konjiam Resort, Hyundai Sungwoo Resort at Tunnae Village and Yeongpyong Resort. “The job we
are doing for POCOG, the Organizing
Committee for the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games has been to
prepare an overall Venue Master Plan for Bokwang
Phoenix Park Ski Area for Freestyle Skiing and Snowboarding,” says Mathews. The
master plan, formulated in 2013, also entailed detailed designs for
construction.
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| Traditional Skiing Photo by Korea Tourism |
The process of creating any Olympic
venue is typically fraught with unexpected problems. In the case of PyeongChang, the original bid
was based on fielding 12 Freestyle Ski and Snowboard sections. “In the
summer of 2011, the IOC added eight competitions to Freestyle Skiing and
Snowboarding so that the total for Sochi and PyeongChang was now 20
competitions; 10 for men and 10 for women,” says Mathews, adding that the
Korean budget had not allocated funds or terrain for these extra events.
Mathews says there have been other
contentious issues. “They also had the ‘impression’ that Bokwang Phoenix Park
was pretty well ready to host all Olympic competitions,” he explains. “The
truth is, Bokwang Phoenix Park had a moguls and aerial course and a halfpipe
but none of those venues met the FIS Technical Requirements for Olympic Winter
Games; there are different standards for Olympic Games, World Cup and then Europa
Cup, Continental Cup, the local races, etc. Obviously, the Olympic Winter Games
has the highest standards.”
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| Phoenix Park - Photo by Korea Tourism |
Putting the venues in suitable
places with lift access for athletes and workers as well as technical roads and
other infrastructure turned out to be a much more complex undertaking than the
Korean committee anticipated. “We then entered a competition to do the detailed
design for construction of the six venues: aerials, moguls, ski/boarder cross,
halfpipe, slopestyle and parallel giant slalom,” Mathews recalls. “This work involves
precise design and engineering of the competition fields of play within 20 cm
accuracy to be built in soil but we had to forecast the final elevations in
snow. This was becoming a very complex job but we have now finished this
work and handed it over to a Korean engineering company which is making the
final drawings for construction tendering for the summer of 2015.”
