Ben Hilbom gets a look at the at the Crashed Ice course in Edmonton on Thursday. March 4, 2015. An Edmonton resident, he will be taking part in the event, which runs March 12-14.JASON FRANSON/The Globe and Mail
It starts on Jasper Avenue between 97 Street and 99 Street and moves through the downtown core like some monstrous snake. At 415 metres in length, it twists and turns and needs as many as 50 handlers working around the clock to keep it under control.
That's why organizers have dubbed Edmonton's race track one of the most daunting on this year's Crashed Ice tour: a beastly run for 64 competitors who will skate four at a time at speeds up to 60 kilometres an hour from downtown to the city's river valley, finishing near the banks of the North Saskatchewan River.
Think of it as snowboard cross meets speed skating on a luge run.
Since 2006, the Red Bull-sponsored Crashed Ice series has carved out its niche in Eastern Canada. Now, for the first time, the event has come west, where the racing begins Thursday and a large crowd expected for Saturday's world championship finale.
What makes Edmonton such an ideal place to race, and the reason the city was chosen as a host, has to do with its topography. The Alberta capital has a lot going for it – flat areas for skating and wooden stairs that lead to the river on top of which a downhill portion has been built. As soon as Christian Papillon saw it, he knew Edmonton's track could be the star of the show.
"Tracks are designed to create battles," said Mr. Papillon, a racer turned Crashed Ice sport director. "You fall down, you get bruises, you get up. Maybe another guy falls later. It's a never-give-up story. … This is what we have in Edmonton."
Building the perfect Crashed Ice course is no simple endeavour. It requires truckloads of ice-making machinery and track-related equipment, all of which is assembled by carpenters, electricians, refrigeration technicians, heavy equipment operators, some 140 workers, as needed.
Here's why: More than 80 per cent of the track is built on scaffolding that requires 5,000 metal pieces for assembly. The dasher boards, which keep the racers from flying off course, require 900 4 x 4s mounted to custom steel legs. Also, 1,981 metres of puck board plastic panels are needed to construct the dasher boards, 750 sheets of plywood to make the track's floor and more than 30,000 screws to hold everything in place.
On top of that, there is the ice-making equipment. Fifty workers place flexible tubes along the floor of the track to carry 36,000 litres of coolant. That helps build up layers of ice until the surface that the racers skate on is made by a dozen men spraying mist onto the track. This is done 24 hours a day for six days.
According to Crashed Ice, it has a hot-water pressure-washing system to flush the track "just as a Zamboni would for a hockey rink." Also, "an organic crystallizing agent" is sometimes added to the water to create ice that is five times denser than what Sidney Crosby skates on in the National Hockey League.
And let's not forget that showing night-time races on HD television requires 500-watt light fixtures, 900 of them, to be exact. Throw in 16 HD cameras and four jumbo screens for on-site fans to follow the action and you get a better picture of just how massive an undertaking this is.
"Edmonton has the perfect urban backdrop for this event," said Andrew Markey of Hangman Productions, a track designer and event co-ordinator. "That said, from a technical side, it was actually very challenging to build. Edmonton has a variable climate, elevation changes throughout the track site and a really unique structural surface that we built track on [the wooden steps that lead to the river].
"Sport directors, track designers, event producers and track engineers had to visit a bunch of times in advance to make sure everything would be perfect in March," Mr. Markey added.
The attention to detail has not gone unnoticed by the racers who skate and body check their way to the finish line. Adam Horst was watching a race on TV when some friends decided he would be good at it, given that he competed in motocross and played senior men's hockey. Mr. Horst found out later that his buddies had signed him up for a Crashed Ice recruitment camp in Calgary.
Mr. Horst did well enough at his tryout, skating around pylons and jumping over small obstacles to earn an invitation to Quebec City, where Crashed Ice was running a competition.
"The first time I stood at the start, I can remember thinking, 'What have I got myself into?'" said the 28-year-old firefighter who works in his hometown of Fort St. John, B.C. "I fell soon as I got out of the gate. It's so funny to be on skates going downhill. Your feet go out from underneath you. It's the weirdest experience you can have."
No longer does this weird experience belong only to male skaters. More women are joining the ranks, and some, such as 23-year-old Jacqueline Legere of Brantford, Ont., are making a name for themselves in quick order. In her first race, also at Quebec City, Ms. Legere cracked the top 10 and was immediately hooked.
"After my first year, I thought I had a pretty good chance at this," she said. "There are a lot more women competing and people are watching it. My first year, there was just me. My second year, I raced with some girls I went to high school with. I had two more friends try it this year. It's been exciting to be a part of this."
The long-term goal is to build excitement by taking Crashed Ice from Xtreme endeavour to mainstream sport. Every year, Mr. Horst said, skaters find ways to go faster.
"A lot of guys are using a Papillon special skate blade," he noted. "It is quite a bit taller [than a normal blade]. That gives you more room to get out of ruts in the ice. Guys are using heated blades, titanium blades. Every year, someone is trying something new to go faster. … It used to be point [your skates] and go. Now there's a lot of strategy to racing."
Strategy combined with speed, all played out on a frozen track. For Crashed Ice competitors, it doesn't get much better than that.