Where can you eat a burger hot off the grill and sing karaoke and pick up your dry cleaning and get an MRI and lounge in a giant Muskoka chair and go for a swim and play ping-pong and eat ice cream?
The Pan Am/Parapan Am Athletes’ Village.
Sportsnet got a chance to tour the Village recently. We ate the food (the brownies are aces). We saw the sites (it’s full of Canadiana). We even sat on a bed (they’re small, but bouncy).
First, the view:
That’s taken from the penthouse balcony of one of five apartment buildings in the Athletes’ Village, which is at Front and Cherry streets, in Toronto’s East end. The Village is an 80-acre site next to the Don River that’ll house more than 10,000 elite athletes from the Americas for about three weeks in July and eight days in August.
The organizing committee, TORONTO 2015, has made sure this is as close to an Olympic Games experience as possible. The rooms are similar to what you’d see in an Olympic Village: They’re small, with single beds, and each athlete has a roommate or two. The on-site facilities are similar, too: There’s a bank, grocery store, dry cleaner, hair/nail salon and florist. And here at the Pan Am/Parapan Am Athlete’s Village, there’s a massive brand new YMCA and a full service medical clinic.
The Village also feels like Canada, and like Toronto. That’s Julia Wilkinson’s favourite part. She’s a former national team swimmer who’s now coordinator of athlete engagement for TORONTO 2014. “As Canadians, I find we don’t push our identity,” Wilkinson says. “I feel like we’re showcasing Toronto and Canada so well here. It’s amazing.”
An ongoing street hockey tournament will break out here in a couple weeks. There are dozens of Adirondack chairs scattered on a large swath of land. A restaurant stop is decorated like a streetcar. In a room called The Cabin, you’ll find indoor cottage country: fake grass, hammocks, trees painted on walls, and more Muskoka chairs. And if you stand in the plaza—where family members can visit athletes, where there’ll be nightly entertainment—you have a clear view of the CN Tower.
Canada gets its own apartment building—the only country here with that perk—and apparently the building will be full of surprises. “I can’t tell you what’s planned,” says a smiling Curt Harnett, the three-time Olympic medallist in cycling with the flowing blond locks who’s Canada’s Chef de Mission for these Games.
But even if Canada gets a little special treatment, every athlete here has plenty to enjoy. Here are some other activities and facilities and nourishment and excitement on offer in the Village:
· The games room includes ping-pong, foosball, air hockey, video games and a few big screen TVs.
· At the outdoor BBQ pit, you can pick up burgers and hot dogs off the grill.
· The YMCA has two pools and basketball courts and new equipment and an indoor track. One of the pools even has a floor that raises and lowers.
· There is an 18-acre park on site.
· If athletes need treatment, there’s a clinic with on-site paramedics and emergency doctors, and even a mobile MRI and XRay unit.
· There is nightly entertainment in the plaza, and in The Cabin, where they’ll have charades, karaoke, acoustic concerts and more.
· New art in the area includes these guys, and their eyes light up:
· The giant restaurant tent is full of food representative of different spots in Toronto; the St. Lawrence Grill, Spadina, Kensington Power Market, Niagara Farmer’s Market, Little Italy. And even the salad bar looks good.
What this all amounts to is the Athletes’ Village is a giant, fun adult camp. There are 900 bunk beds here, and the organizing committee estimates they’ll go through 75,000 litres of ice cream.
All the action begins on July 7, with water polo. The Opening Ceremony is Fri., July 10.
