Everyone into pool, while it lasts
Marvel of technology turns Windsor’s hockey rink into world-class pool setup
WINDSOR, ONT.— The giant video scoreboard in the centre of the arena will look familiar to hockey fans, but little else says hockey here this week. The WFCU Centre, normally home to the Ontario Hockey League’s Windsor Spitfires, has been transformed into a world-class swimming pool where 1,000 athletes from 170 nations are vying for medals at the world short-course championships.
To those coming from countries that don’t even play ice hockey it looks like this 25-metre pool and surrounding deck, replete with lawn chairs, has always been there. Windsor mayor Drew Dilkens knows just how recently — and dramatically — that wasn’t the case.
He was watching the Spitfires’ last home game on Nov. 18 before the team embarked on an extended trip while their city welcomes the swimming world.
“They actually shut the chillers off for the ice 10 minutes before the end of the third period and then, of course, the game went into overtime. Everyone was getting worried they were going to melt right through,” Dilkens recalled. “Thankfully, it was a short overtime.”
As soon as the players were off the ice, , the hockey rink began disappearing — the ice, the boards and the glass — it was all taken out. Even the first five rows of seating are now hidden underneath the pool deck, making it look like a purpose-built swimming facility.
A world-class pool like this one — that costs $1.2 million and can be built just about anywhere in seven days and disappear again in four — is the innovation of Myrtha pools, A&T Europe, an Italian-based company.
This particular pool, all 20,000 pieces, came in shipping containers from Italy. It’s like the granddaddy of all do-it-yourself kits: there are nearly 25,000 nuts and bolts just to hold up the walls of the pool. But with tonnes of stainless steel to work with and complex filtration and electrical systems, it comes with an expert assembly team as well.
When Trevor Tiffany, who was Swimming Canada’s team leader at the time, saw the Myrtha pool at the 1987 European championships in Strasbourg, France, and heard that it was being moved to become a permanent pool in Cannes afterwards, he was intrigued.
But it was the 1995 edition of the world short-course championships in Rio de Janeiro, where they built two competition pools, that really made the company’s reputation for temporary pools take off, Tiffany said.
“Two pools on Copacabana Beach, 10,000 people watching, it was a show and FINA (the international swimming body) kind of went ‘Oh, this is neat, take the pools to the people,’ ” said Tiffany, who by then was working for Myrtha pools.
At first they had to convince athletes, officials and engineers that a temporary pool was as good as a permanent one.
“I love it. I’ve never competed in a hockey rink converted to a pool.”
CANADA’S TAYLOR RUCK ON TEMPORARY POOL IN WINDSOR
They did that, a little too well.
“We thought it’d be a great advertisement for Myrtha pools but, in fact, what happened is it rebounded on us and everyone said, ‘Oh they build temporary pools’ and it’s taken us easily 10, 15 years to go ‘No that’s not our business, we do a permanent pool every day of the year somewhere in the world, that’s our business.’ We do one or two of these a year,” Tiffany said.
There’s actually a permanent Myrtha pool built in the WFCU Centre, which acts as the warm-up pool during this week’s competition and stays for the community to use afterward. The Toronto Pan Am Sport Centre’s pools are permanent Myrtha pools, as are some of the pools built for this past summer’s Rio Olympic Games.
The Windsor competition pool was originally going to be made from parts of the pool from the U.S. Rio Olympic swimming trials in Omaha, but somebody bought that pool.
“You don’t refuse a sale,” Tiffany said, laughing.
“So we built this from scratch.” It’s already lined up to become part of a permanent 50-metre pool elsewhere in Canada.
The world championships runs through Sunday and already officials and workers are thinking about the tight timelines to hit the reset button to turn this back to a hockey facility, but the swimmers are enjoying it while they can.
“I love it,” said 16-year-old Taylor Ruck, Canada’s first medallist at these championships.
That giant scoreboard, repurposed to show lane assignments and times rather than hockey scores, showed her breaking a Canadian record and winning a bronze medal in 200-metre freestyle.
“I’ve never competed in a hockey rink converted to a pool.”
All in all, it seems like a very Canadian thing to do.