International Athletes are Training Hard Throughout B.C.

From Dawson Creek to Penticton, from the Comox Valley to Kamloops, British Columbia communities have welcomed athletes from around the world.

Pretty much every region of the province hosted Olympic and Paralympic athletes as they acclimatized to B.C.’s time zone, winter conditions and the temptation of sugary carbs from Tim Horton’s.

 

 


If you were walking to your corner store and some massively muscled athletes stampeded past like a herd of spandex-clad bison, chances are your community sheltered some world-class sporting talent in the lead-up to the Winter Games.

The map shows where athletes trained and which countries the athletes are from. See below for more details. 

It’s a good gig, playing host. Every time the teams rented a training facility, sat down for a meal or headed to bed in their home-away-from-home, they supported local business and had a chance to connect with the people who live there.

Local sport teams definitely enjoyed the contact, as some international teams provided training opportunities. In Abbotsford, the Russian skating team offered a training clinic for the local skating club.

And in Kelowna, the midget girls’ hockey team got to play an exhibition game against the visiting Swedish Olympic women’s team. Not bad opportunities to fine-tune some skills!

While some countries’ Olympic and Paralympic teams make no bones about the specific location of their training camp whereabouts, others are a tad more secretive.  After all, there’s a lot on the line, and some teams cherish the time to train hard without distraction.

If you happened to see some of these athletes, drop us a line on our Facebook fan page or on Twitter.