VANCOUVER - On a chilly fall evening in Richmond, B.C., a jogger runs laps on the same track where Canadian speedskater Christine Nesbitt claimed Olympic gold a few months earlier.
A short distance away, the arena where curler Kevin Martin was crowned Olympic champion is being converted into a skating rink and the walls are going up on a new curling club.
At Rogers Arena, the Canucks are in the midst of their NHL season, playing on the same ice where Sidney Crosby sent a nation into delirium with his overtime goal to win Olympic hockey gold.
In the 10 months since the flame was extinguished at the Vancouver Olympics, the Games venues are still a going concern. While a few will likely host elite competitions in the future, others have been turned into community facilities and may never see another international event.
"In almost every case it's working exactly as we hoped for," John Furlong, the man who headed the Vancouver organizing committee, said in a recent interview.
"As an organizing committee we took the sustainability for Olympic venues to a completely different place than we've seen in the past," said Furlong. "In Turin (host of the 2006 Winter Games), some of those venues simply were dismantled immediately. In some cases, the venue is no longer used for sport. In our case, they are all used for sport."
VANOC spent $580 million building new venues or upgrading existing facilities for the 2010 Olympics. Furlong believes taxpayers are receiving a fair return on their investment with facilities that offer public recreation while developing future elite athletes.
"We have given the public who paid for these venues good and fair access to them so they can enjoy them as well," he said.
Others don't share Furlong's enthusiasm.
Chris Shaw, a UBC neuroscientist, was a vocal opponent of the Games. He questions how much the public will really use the venues.
"Can they be a thing the people will use? Yes," said Shaw. "Are they the thing people would have chosen, based on priorities? Probably not.
"Are they things most of us are going to use? Probably not."
Among the venues built specifically for the Games, the Whistler Sliding Centre ($104.9 million), Whistler Olympic Park ($119.7 million), and the Richmond Olympic Oval (VANOC contributed $63.3 million toward the building's $178-million cost) carried the biggest price tags.
A $110-million fund was created to help finance operation of these venues after the Games.
The rugged sliding centre, built on Blackcomb Mountain, was home to bobsled, luge and skeleton. The Olympic Park, located in the pristine Callaghan Valley about 20 kilometres southwest of Whistler, hosted cross-country skiing, ski jumping and biathlon.
The Richmond Oval, with its eye-catching wooden ceiling and breathtaking view of the North Shore Mountains, has been transformed from the Olympic long-track speedskating site to a multi-sport recreational centre.
More than 1,500 people have bought memberships and around 3,000 people visit the oval each month. Canada's national basketball teams played exhibition games in the building this fall.
It has hosted the world wheelchair rugby championships and is a centre of excellence for Hockey Canada, Volleyball Canada and the Canadian-Chinese table tennis foundation.
The three ice sheets at UBC's Thunderbird Arena, which hosted women's hockey, are now busy with university games and community leagues.
For those who want to play outside, the 90 kilometres of trails at Whistler Olympic Park make it one of the largest cross-country ski facilities in North America. It attracts local skiers and has began a marketing campaign in Europe.
After Christmas, adrenaline junkies will be able to get their fix at the Whistler Sliding Centre. For $130, you can take two rides down a shortened skeleton course while $149 will send you rumbling down the bobsled track.
In the years after the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, the city and surrounding area saw the return of World Cup events in many Olympic sports.
In the post-Olympic year, a bobsled and skeleton event is the only World Cup competition to return to a Vancouver Olympic venue.
The death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili on the opening day of the Games raised questions about the safety of the Whistler track. A report by coroner Tom Pawlowski, released in October, recommended an independent safety audit be done on the track.
"That's something we are doing," said Keith Bennett, chief executive officer of Whistler Sport Legacies, which oversees operation of the sliding centre. "An independent strategy audit will take place over the next year or so."
A luge World Cup is planned for Whistler next year and the luge world championships are coming in 2013.
Tom Holland, director of high-performance development for Cross Country Canada, said Canada is slated for two World Cup weekends in December 2012. To host one of the events, local organizers will need a budget of between $600,000 and $1 million.
"Hopefully the Callaghan can pick up one of those weekends," Holland said. "That requires coming up with a good business model, a culture there that can handle putting the event on."
The long-track speedskating ice has been removed from the Richmond Oval, put can be replaced if needed.
John Mills, the oval's general manger, said the only way a long-track speedskating event could return to Richmond would be "if there is a business case to support it."
Officials have talked to the Canadian Curling Association about bringing the 2013 men's world curling championships to the oval.
"Whether that is feasible, or doable or not, is a question mark," said Warren Hansen, the CCA's director of event operations and media. "We're looking at it.
"It could be a possibility. But a whole bunch of questions have to be answered."
The CCA always questioned VANOC's decision to hold curling at Vancouver Olympic Centre. The building is being converted into a community centre which will house the Vancouver Curling Club, a library, skating rink and swimming pool.
With just eight sheets of ice, the Vancouver Curling Club is too small to host major competitions.
"They didn't build a curling facility," said Hansen. "They built a community centre and converted it into a curling facility for two weeks of the Olympics. If that makes any sense to anybody."
For the Games, about $19 million was spent upgrading the Pacific Coliseum for figure skating and short-track speedskating. The building hosted the Canadian figure skating championship in 2008 and the Four Continents competition in 2009, plus a short-track World Cup event.
Jackie Stell-Buckingham, director of events for Skate Canada, said it will be a few years before figure skating returns to Vancouver.
"Pre-Olympics we had a lot of events there," she said. "Now, because we are a national organization . . . we need to let the pendulum swing back a little bit."
The coliseum is home to the Vancouver Giants of the Western Hockey League. It also hosts concerts during the year.
Jean Dupre, chief executive officer with the Canadian Olympic Committee, doesn't think hosting World Cup events is the only yardstick to measure the worth of Olympic venues.
"To have a purpose doesn't mean they have to host World Cups all the time," said Dupre. "Having an impact on sport and the sport community and developing athletes in the long run is the best type of legacy we have.
"I think we have that with the legacies in Vancouver."
Holland said the national cross-country team and development teams train at the Callaghan Valley.
Bennett said several countries use the Whistler track for bobsled, skeleton and luge training and development.
The ski jumps built for the Games are sitting idle.
The two state-of-the-art jumps have been criticized because they are too advanced to be used by beginners. But there's hope adding women's ski jumping to the Winter Olympics will create more use for the facility in the future.
Furlong said it's up to individual sports organizations to decide how much use they will make of the Olympic facilities.
"Every venue that we built for the Games has left behind an opportunity for that sport," he said. "We have given all the sports a fighting chance to build on what happened in Vancouver.
"Ultimately, these sports are in charge of their own destiny."
