Richmond Olympic Oval
The rink where Olympic speed skaters raced in 2010 is now a public arena where you can climb a wall, row a tank, or lace up hockey skates — all under one roof.
Coming soon on iOS — be first to walk Vancouver offline.
Few Olympic venues make this leap. The $178 million CAD arena that hosted the 2009 World Single Distance Speed Skating Championships now runs as a community multi-sport park, with two ice hockey rinks, a rowing tank, a climbing wall, and space for basketball, volleyball, and table tennis. CannonDesign shaped the entire building to echo the heron.
What to look for
- Heron-inspired architectural elements — the designers at CannonDesign referenced the bird in the oval's curves and structural forms
- The indoor rowing tank, an unusual feature that repurposed the original speed skating footprint for a very different sport
- Two full ice hockey rinks occupying the same building that once held a single Olympic-spec speed skating circuit
The oval is in Richmond, BC — a separate city from Vancouver, so allow time for the trip out.
Richmond Olympic Oval is one of 13 sights worth the detour in Vancouver, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Vancouver pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Vancouver
- BC PlaceA stadium that broke the same world record twice — first with the largest air-supported roof ever built, then with the largest cable-supported retractable roof.
- Rogers ArenaBuilt for C$160 million and opened in 1995, this is the rink where Vancouver's hockey soul lives — and where the city briefly renamed it Canada Hockey Place for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
- Stanley ParkA thousand acres of old-growth forest on a downtown peninsula — bigger than Central Park, as old as Vancouver itself.
- Pacific ColiseumThe rink where Vancouver first played NHL hockey — and where 2010 Olympic skaters competed on the same ice.
- Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports CentreCanada's first national hockey team was born on this ice in 1963 — and the Vancouver Canucks still practice here.
- Vancouver Art GalleryWestern Canada's largest art museum, housed in a Francis Rattenbury courthouse since 1983 — the gallery's original home even survived a 1938 sit-down strike with its paintings untouched.