2010

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Train like an Olympian

At the Pacific Institute for Sport Excellence, you can train to be a gold medalist—or just look like one

by Susan Musgrave 28 January 2009

…No matter your size or shape…
Your age or your sport.
Whether you pursue sport for yourself or your country,
You are an athlete, our athlete.
Welcome to our world.

That’s part of the website welcome to Victoria, BC’s new Pacific Institute for Sport Excellence (PISE), where anyone—even me!—can go to train like an Olympian.

“We don’t make judgments,” program director Andrea Carey assured me when I called to see if I’d be welcome. The public can access the same services and programs as national team athletes at this unique $28-million state-of-the-art facility, which opened Oct. 2, 2008.

Victoria is Canada’s fittest city, home to more Olympians per capita than any other spot in the land. And now PISE is the only place in the country where you could find yourself rowing a machine next to Victoria’s Malcolm Howard, gold medalist at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, or lining up with the Canadian Olympic ski-cross team (the sport makes its Olympic debut at the 2010 Winter Games) for blood analysis.

Blood analysis? How about a floor plate that measures an athlete's power and force in three directions; an environmental chamber; bio-chem areas; a regeneration/recovery room; a sport physio, rehab and medical clinic, or a 930-sq-m (10,000-sq-ft) strength and conditioning area?

Who knew? And here I’d been thinking sports was just about having the right running shoes and a you-don’t-win-silver-you-lose-gold competitive spirit…

Links:

http://www.piseworld.com/

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Usage guidelines

We welcome you to use these story ideas as inspiration for your own stories about Canada. The CTC owns all rights worldwide. (Our images are also royalty-free and available for editorial print, broadcast and electronic use.) If you choose to reproduce these texts for editorial use only, please include the author's byline and "courtesy of the Canadian Tourism Commission." If you cut, edit or modify the text in any way, please include this note: "The text has been modified from the original." Thank you.

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Photo credit : Victoria Island, Northwest Territories © NWTT/Terry Parker - Background Image