Utah's Olympic Winter Sport Park
Ski Jump, Bobsled, Luge, Skeleton and Aerial Events Tours All Year
Tour the facilities, feel the sensations and visit the Alf Engen Ski Museum and Eccles Olympic Museum. Relive the Olympic experience in Park City, winter and summer.
Utah's spectacular winter sports facilities live on today, years after the 2002 Olympic athletes went home. The most exciting of them, close to Park City and some of the best downhill skiing in the west, is Utah Olympic Park at the Joe Quincy Winter Sports Center, also home to the Ski Museum and the Olympic Museum.
Today all of the facilities are still in constant use and have become community sport training centers and hotbeds of training for future world-class athletes. Visitors can even experience the thrills of some of these extreme sports and choose a self-guided tour or a tour guided by knowledgeable guides, many of who worked here during the Olympic competitions.
The guided tour starts at the museums with an introduction to the winter sledding sports at the museum where the guide demonstrates the differences between skeleton, luge and bobsleds and shows racing positions and techniques using real equipment. Skeleton and luge are individual sleds and bobsled is a team effort.
A bus takes the tour group way up the mountain to the top of the Men's Luge and Bobsled and Skeleton track to see where they race. A specially-constructed ice-lined conduit, it snakes downhill through 15 curves sometimes held onto the track by centrifugal force and reaching speeds of 80 miles an hour. Visitors can arrange for their own bobsled ride with a professional driver to experience the thrill of speed and 4G force. Jim Shea won the gold here in 2002. The women's starting post is a few hundred feet lower.
A trip to the top of the ski jumps provides an eagle's eye view of the course. Carved into the hill to reduce the effect of mountain winds, these jumps are the highest altitude jumps in the world. From the top of the K120 jump you can see the other jumps as well. From there it is not unusual to see Jumpers flying down the K90 jump below. Three other jumps of less height make this a great training facility for athletes wanting to learn or improve their skills.
But the top of the K120 is also the starting place for the Xtreme Zip, the steepest zip line in the world. Thrill seeking visitors can take this zipline from the top all the way to the Olympic flags at the bottom for a sense of what it is like to jump the K120. Another, shorter, zipline, the Ultra Zip, provides a less gripping chance to sample the experience.
During the Olympics another of the sports performed here was freestyle, or aerial, skiing. In addition to the freestyle hill, the facilities include a freestyle training pool with three heights of platforms. Used for summer training, an underwater air jet system breaks surface water tension to soften performers landings. Check training session times.
Utah Olympic Park is a multi-dimensional experience. As spectators, visitors can see facilities that were, and are still, the places where the world's best athletes competed. But they can also experience the thrill on bobsled or zipline. At a different level are those who attend the camps and teaching programs of the Park and still more intense the athletes who come here to train for competitions. This is a park with something for everyone.
From Salt Lake City take I80 toward Park City and take exit 145 for Route 224. The Park will be on the right at the big blue Olympic flag. Open 9-6 daily, tours $7-$15, 435 658-4200, 3419 Olympic Parkway, Park City, UT
