Helmet on. Goggles clipped. I stare down a 100-m (328-ft) plunge, precisely where Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards took flight in the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, AB–and try to stop the quiver in my legs.

I wonder just how badly did Eddie and Mattie Nykanen and Horst Bulau want a medal? What pain, disappointment and sacrifice did they endure? And then the Skyline guide releases the brake and I hurtle down the Ski Jump Tower at 140 km/hr (87 mph), on the fastest zipline (video) in North America.

At Calgary’s Canada Olympic Park (COP)–the site of four medal events in the ’88 Winter Games—anyone can now experience the thrill of the Games year-round with Skyline rides in summer, bobsleigh rides in winter and summer luge runs at the world’s only indoor refrigerated ice house for the three sliding sports: bobsleigh, luge and skeleton.

The place gives you an Olympic dose of the drive (visit the Olympic Hall of Fame and Museum) and desire (test your stick-handling skills in an interactive hockey shoot-out) necessary to become the best in the world.

In winter, you can find yourself skiing next to the planet’s top athletes (video); in summer, you can take in mountain-bike races or pedal the 25-km (16-mi) tumble of chairlift-served trails yourself. Even when temperatures get up to 30 degrees C (86 degrees F), COP can still feel a lot like a winter playground: wheeled bobsleighs clatter down bone-rattling runs and skeleton and luge stars still train at the Ice House, which will host an increasing number of Olympic athletes thanks to a recently confirmed $300-million expansion. The new Canadian Winter Sport Institute, scheduled for completion in 2011, will house four rinks in a 46,000-sq-m (500,000-sq-ft) Athletic and Ice Complex, in addition to becoming the headquarters for Hockey Canada and Skate Canada.

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