Interview with Don Gardner – July 23, 2012
1. Describe the original plans for the Nordic events venue for the 1988 Games and how the Nordic Centre eventually was chosen. What was the potential for Bragg Creek?
1982: When bid was made in, OCO hired Underwood McLellan to do planning for all Olympic nordic venues, including jump, luge and bob. Don was aware of this, and talked to people there to tell them about his experience. He told them Bragg Creek is a good recreational area but not suitable for elite competition, sustainable every winter skiing. Don heard the announcement declaring that Canada had won the bid. He immediately contacted Ed Marshall, a key figure in Kananaskis development and a close friend of Peter Lougheed, to persuade him to use his influence to move nordic sports away from Bragg Creek. Also contacted Bjorger Pettersen (FIS delegate CAN) to tell him what he was trying to do. Don had done his research on chinooks, overnight temperatures, feasibility of snow-making.
Next day there was a meeting in a bar (!) with Ed, and Sherry Thorsen of COC to talk about this. Talked about snow retention, road access, utilities, etc. required for a xc site. Canmore is the right place, even though it’s challenging on some of the criteria. But it’s the right elevation and it’s accessible. There were a number of other competing areas, but the proponents were only thinking snow, which is one important criterion but it needs to be balanced with transportation access, utilities, closeness to Calgary etc. Ed approved a grant of $10K for Don to do a study. The OCO gang were having catfits!
Don invited Tony Daffern and others to drive down to the site to take a look and he pointed out that the main aspect of the site faces north-east, away from the sun, which is good for the snow maintenance. Elevation is good, but not too high for FIS. Don knew that when there’s no snow falling in downtown, there can be an inch at the stadium, and three inches higher up. Don hired Ron Perla to do the avalanche study, hired Clarence and Irvin Servold to look at the jumping aspects. Irvin felt jumps would have been perfect on the slopes of Rundle above the cross country. Someone else did the study for the bob and luge, and said that below Ha Ling would have been a good site for that. Don kept closely in touch with Ed Marshall who talked to OCO and political figures. As soon as Don had the study to the first draft, he made slides of the Bragg Creek area and pictures of the Mine Scar at Canmore on the same day so they could see the difference. This photo comparison blew their socks off!
He also pointed out the need to be close to power and water for the snow making and other things, which Bragg Creek location didn’t have. Also showed the close access to the Trans Canada Highway (TCH), which makes it almost as close to the big city as Bragg Creek is. He gave a slide show to the OCO and Lougheed people in downtown Calgary and showed them the differences then quickly referred to the other sites and dealt with them, including Wind Valley, which has wildlife problems due to the high number of alpine sheep, elk etc. there. Kananaskis and Spray were inaccessible and too high. They made the decision very quickly after that and selected Canmore. They told him not to mention jumps in the final report as likely Canmore would be finished as a site. Everyone knew early on that the jumpsite in Calgary would be fraught with wind, but it was recognized that the jumps plus the luge and bob sites had to be in Calgary, as this was the official site of the games.
Don had to prepare a response to the RFP within a week to get everything on paper. There were a number of teams involved, including SNC Lavalin. Bjorger, who was the FIS delegate and part of the review committee, was on 9 different bid teams. As a result, Don’s group lost (came second). Carson McCulloch and Associates were selected which included SNC and Bjorger. Next, Don got a call to acknowledge that although his team lost, they recognized that the winning team was weak on local knowledge, and would Don sign up to work for them to provide that knowledge. He agreed (lost a good friend as a result). Gary Carson, a key figure who had master-minded all the inputs from FIS delegates, said Don’s research and Bjorger’s input should be mentioned as extremely important to the early process. Bjorger wasn’t yet Chief of Competition – he spent a lot of time complaining that he wasn’t getting paid enough as it was his influence/name that got the team the winning bid. Steve Herrero was also involved with the Carson team, for bear input and trail location.
Don spent a lot of time giving input to the team on where things should be, and Gary Carson knit it all together and also dealt with the SNC people who kept referring to the Trail Guidelines book! He developed several master plans, and finally one was picked which had the stadium where it is today plus many other advantages. This probably took at least a year to complete. It didn’t go to tender for the actual trail design but used the same team, so had about three years to get it all organized. A plan was then developed for the implementation, including when, how, where for the snowmaking (how far out on the trails etc.), trail widths, trail character and so on.
The plan was implemented with input from Dietrich Martin (88 Olympics TD). He would visit once in a while to see progress. Don laid out survey lines and figured out how to mix the trails and blend them (women’s, men’s and various distances). Don laid out all the long trails. Bjorger laid out part of the women’s 5 km which was quite beautiful. Don got accolades for his long trails from Odd Martinsen (Chairman of FIS Cross Country) as one of the best he’d seen.
Don’s background came from hauling brush at the age of 15, helping Clarence Servold, Franz Portmann and others with trail design work, so he knew intuitively about climbs, corners and so on. But he had no experience of laying out FIS standard trails. Don went to Norway several times, on his own bat, to see how they do things. Al Merrill (USA xc guru) was insistent on getting people down hills as quickly as possible – he had laid out Lake Placid and Squaw Valley – so Don learned a lot from him about FIS requirements. He’d also laid out trails at Silver Star including the World Cup course there.
Bjorger became Chief of Competition, and was also Venue Manager till the day before the Olympics (paid position), when he switched to being the volunteer Chief of Competition.
Testing and refinement of the courses happened along the way, with course corrections happening in summer to correct things which had been noted the previous winter.
During the actual games, Don volunteered as chief of trail marking. He would ski the whole course to make sure everything was pointing in the right direction! Scariest experience was when Gunde Svan (SWE) won the 50 km and it had been extremely windy and Don feared there would be a tree down over the trails.
For 2005, Al Maddox (FIS CAN) and John Aalberg (FIS) vetoed Don’s first proposal as it utilized the existing trails further out, but they said all the new trails had to be above the stadium to accommodate TV. He found it very difficult to accomplish this with many people giving their opinions along the way. The scale of everything had changed so much that it became more like road building than trail design. Aalberg pushed the straight sections, which in the end has been proven correct by today’s standards.
Don was asked to work on the 2004/5 upgrade, along with Gary Carson about 2 years ahead. He spent five winter weeks in Europe following the FIS races around, checking out the new designs of European trails. He found that extremely helpful – Aalberg had suggested this trip and it definitely paid off. As a result, the upgrade went a lot quicker than 20 years earlier. Gary, Bill Brooks and Don were well known as a trail planning team.
There was a lot of opposition from local runners during the building of the new race courses because of the number of fires needed to burn the bush.
Tools used for 88: no GPS in the 80s. Used topoline (string measure) or hip chain – it’s on a spool and reads off a metres as the line spools out to give the measurements. Not entirely accurate as the line stretches a bit. Altimeter (barometric) which measured elevations quite closely when you went up hill. Very detailed barometer. Air photos were very important, along with topo maps. One has to get a feel for the terrain to decide where to put rollers etc. It’s a bit like composing music – need synchopation. Topo maps are produced from aircraft flying over, with one metre contour intervals, etc.
Additional Questions: essentially answered above
2. What was your own prior knowledge of the eventual site of the CNC?
3. What was your involvement in the overall bid process?
4. How did you lay out the trails?
5. Where there originally plans to include a jump at the CNC?
6. Tell us about the “aids” you used for trail design (air photos, measuring tools and equipment etc)
7. What year did the project begin and when was it completed?
8. Tell us about your European fact-finding trip (locations and year? ).
9. What were the major challenges you faced? Can you describe the glitches, impediments and obstacles as you proceeded with the project?
10. What was your involvement in the actual Games, and in the pre-Games site inspections by FIS (TDs etc).
11. Do you have photos of the early days, or site plans or maps of the trails as you were designing them?
Reference: Dave Rees and Jean Bristow