Скачать или смотреть Restoring Winter Olympic sites to their former glory

(29 Oct 2016) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4062957

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A number of sports enthusiasts are working to restore the war-ravaged 1984 Winter Olympic facilities in Bosnia.
The initial plan was to fix the bob and luge track for summer training, but now it's being used as an international training ground, providing hope that other former Olympic sites can be restored.

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Not quite up to its former glory - but back in use.
This scarred and pitted track is a reminder of the bitter 1992-95 Bosnian war in which thousands lost their lives.
The conflict also destroyed the Olympic facilities that found themselves on the front lines on mountains around Sarajevo.
The bobsled track on Mount Trebevic, overlooking Sarajevo, was a concrete skeleton.
But a team, led by Senad Omanovic from the Bosnian Bob and Luge Federation, was determined to restore it.
After a huge clear up operation it's now being used for training by teams from many different countries.
Jacob Simonek from the national luge team of Slovakia practices in Sarajevo regularly.
"So we are travelling here almost two times a year, every year. I think it's a pretty good track for practice and training, but it's bit old and bit destroyed after war. So, it's a bit bumpy, but pretty good for training," he says.
Omanovic and his team mates could only approach the Trebevic track after mine removal experts cleared its entire length of unexploded ordnance.
"This track was destroyed during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and what we are trying to do here is to fix it up the best we can. The track is somewhat refurbished, and now it's being used for summer training. Our goal is to make it ready for winter training, so we can organise world class competitions. We want to make it into calendar of world's competitions," says luge enthusiast, Amar Plasto.
Omanovic adds "We have collected all our personal money and we bought the tools, equipment and then we went to the track and started cleaning. We had to clean up the debris around the track, we weren't able to even approach the track. There was trash, debris, mud and even trees were growing from the inside of the track. We managed to fix that up, clean it up. Our wish was to make the track ready for our Bosnian national team, to practice there."
Initially the team hoped to clean up the facilities in order to have somewhere to train.
But after investing their own time and money their efforts are paying off in ways they would never have imagined - other teams are now keen to use the facilities too.
Omanovic was first approached by colleagues from Slovakia. He told them the facility lacked locker rooms, timing sensors and even toilets. However, the Slovaks insisted that the Sarajevo track was among the best of the nine tracks available around the world for summer training. Training on wheels the teams can achieve a speed of 130 kilometres per hour.
"Some time later, we had the Polish team come, then the Turkish national team, Slovenian, Croatian and Serbian, so it became a regional centre. All these teams want to make their competitors ready for the season. It's easier for them to go to Germany and train there, because Germans have their tracks always ready, but the thing is that only this Sarajevo track provides full speed even in the summer days. The whole point of training in the summer is that competitors are made ready for winter speed on pure ice." says Omanovic.
On the other end of town the Mount Igman ski-jump facilities are just shadows of what they used to be.
He wants to enable the 15 children from his club to practice here.


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