Tag: run

It’s good that we now have some more details and the rather speculative proposal for an indoor ski slope on the site of the Oasis. It’s less good that the reporting of those details is at best regurgitating the sales talk of the promoters and at worst just wrong.

THIS is the image that could represent Swindon to the rest of the country, and the world.

Actually, the image I have reproduced here is what the facility might look like — if you’re gullible enough to believe artist’s impressions that is. The image illustrating the Adver’s story is of the building with its lid off.

The multi-million pound snow dome would play host to the longest ski-run in the world.

Aah, spot the journalist who’s swallowed the promoter’s hype at face value. The actual length of the ski slope is just 980 ft: hardly world-record breaking. As explained on the promoter’s website, the design incorporates a moving circular slope that continuously rotates. The claimed length of the ‘ski-run’ is the distance that someone could ski in one hour — about 12 miles or 19 miles, depending on which page page of their site you believe — with the run rotating at maximum speed. That’s rather a lot of snow and hardware rotating at just under one revolution per minute.

THE SKI-TRAC DOME houses a huge 175-metre (570 ft) diameter rotating snowfield…. Using new “Mag-lev” technology, the snow deck, with its 200 mm (8 in) snow cover will “float” on an electro-magnetic field without the need for wheels, thus ensuring frictionless, vibrationless, silent, and maintenance-free rotation.

And that’s a maintenance-free flying pig I can see coming in to land. Nothing as big and complex as this bit of machinery is going to be maintenance free.

The whole contraption, including other attractions, climate control and snow production, would consume enough power that it would need its own gas-powered turbines to provide electricity.

Though such a venue might be a great asset for Swindon, in both planning terms and technology this proposal seems to have a very long way to go before getting vaguely close to reality.

Now a landmark sports facility to replace the Oasis Centre would be a great move, but I can’t help but feel a little sceptical about the proposal to build a giant indoor ski-slope there. Perhaps it’s in part because the reporter seems to have swallowed the promoter’s publicity material.

The slope would be kept at room temperature but would pass through refrigerated fake mountains to keep the snow from melting.

Fake mountains? This is a building similar in size to the DMJ Tower, not to Ben Nevis. The technology (electro-magnets in place of a ski-lift) also seems rather fanciful.

As the council have said, the proposal is at an early stage and, in the current economic climate, is likely to be a long time coming, if at all. But if done well, it could be a great asset for the town.

A success of Swindon Borough Council that goes relatively uncelebrated is the carrying forward of elements of the corporate games held in Swindon in 2006, so that there has, since then, been an annual sporting event, the Challenge Swindon Festival of Sport. The most visible, and fun, of the sports within the festival has to be the dragon boat racing on Coate Water which took place today. If nothing else, the frantic paddling of some teams, apparently oblivious to the beat from their drummer, provides some amusement for spectators. Hopefully the Festival of Sport will outlive the two-year funding for Challenge Swindon.

As noted elsewhere, today seems to have been a slow news day in the centre of the universe (Swindon to you). So, what is there to report? Well… a local footballer has opened a field and concrete pitch (‘sports facility’ to you), and Highworth Lido is to have a roof put on it (thereby seizing to be a Lido), with the great claim to fame of being ‘the only three metre diving facility within a 35 mile radius’. Wow!