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Forever
skating on thin ice Frank Stangel remembers skating with his parents on the frozen river Raba in western Hungary on Christmas day in 1926. He was three years old. Later, when he lived in Budapest, he raced beside his teenage friends on winter nights, through drifts of snowflakes turned golden by the boulevarde lamps. Budapest's outdoor ice rink was filled with gleeful families enjoying life in the final peaceful days of pre-war Europe. "It was like flying, but with your feet on the ground,'' Stangel recalls wistfully. Sustained by suchmemories in his 80th year, Stangel still skates every Saturday morning at Melbourne's Olympic Ice Skating Centre in South Oakleigh. He is Victoria's, and possibly Oceania's, oldest figure-skater. Remarkably for his age, he still executes aerial waltz-jumps for the many avid young skaters he inspires. Though his childhood memories continue to nourish his passion for skating, like many other Victorian skaters, he shakes his head ruefully at the standard of local ice-skating venues. "And not just compared to Europe,'' he says, "but also to everywhere else in Australia.'' Melbourne once boasted rinks in Moorabbin, Footscray and Dandenong, along with the venerable St Moritz on St Kilda Esplanade. The city's Glacierium, a recreational icon situated on the present Southbank site until the late 1950s, was popular with US servicemen during World War II and is still fondly remembered by older Victorians. Sadly, since those glory days, opportunities for recreational and competitive ice-sports in Victoria have literally melted away. The conversion of the Myer Music Bowl stage into a winter ice-rink during the 1990s provided the centre of the city with a small but delightful semi-outdoor skating venue, and a tourist drawcard. With its closure three years ago when the Bowl underwent renovation, Melbourne lost a recreational venue in a part of town otherwise depopulated during the cooler months. There were plans for another city rink. Crown Casino's original tender to the Victorian Government included a winter ice-rink on its Southbank forecourt. But Crown reneged on the project last year, and forfeited $2.3 million to the government as a result. Victoria has two regional ice-skating rinks in converted factories in Bendigo and Geelong, and a second suburban rink in Ringwood. This run-down centre, threatened by freeway expansion, does have the advantage of being large enough to stage ice hockey. But local ice-sports centres are a source of frustration, according to Victorian Ice Hockey Association President Rod Johns. "Their fairly average standard is the main reason the sport doesn't grow here,'' he says. The Ringwood venue's lack of spectator facilities discourages adequate sponsorship for amateur hockey. The problem is reversed at Melbourne's only alternative ice-sports venue, Oakleigh's "Olympic'' rink, where 500 spectators are able to view ice-sports competition, but on an arena of less than Olympic dimensions. Despite this, the VIHA's seven ice hockey clubs have 700 active members, including a women's team ranked 28th in the world - higher than our national men's team, which next month will travel to South Africa for second-division international competition. Meanwhile, Australia hasn't fielded an ice hockey team in any A-Grade Olympic event since Squaw Valley in 1960. Victorian figure and speed-skaters are equally discouraged, and regularly return from competition in Queensland and New South Wales in envy of the quality of those states' ice-sports venues. Australia's national peak body for ice sports, Brisbane-based Ice Skating Australia, has publicly said that Victoria will not attract national competitive events until adequate local centres exist here. It's no coincidence that gold medal winning speed-skater Steven Bradbury, along with figure-skaters Anthony Liu and Stephanie Zhang - who represented Australia at the Olympic Winter Games in Utah, are all based in Queensland. Brisbane boasts four state-of-the-art Olympic-standard ice-rinks. Queensland hosted two world junior figure skating championships and ice-sports events for last year's Goodwill Games. Sydney also has six high-quality suburban rinks. Its Macquarie Centre houses a purpose-built rink inside a major shopping complex. Opened in 1984, the centre provided a successful model for the rest of Australia's modern ice-sports arenas - architecturally attractive spaces flooded with natural light, that also have engineering and energy efficiencies that reduce overheads, resulting in public entry prices about half the cost of Victorian venues. Sydney's ice-rinks are in its high growth newer suburbs, and thus are hugely popular as well as commercially attractive. They offer vital recreational opportunities for an otherwise sedentary mall-mired youth sector, and attract visitors from Asia, where ice sports are currently booming. The recent construction of world class centres in Singapore, Jakarta, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur, ironically leaves temperate Melbourne an ice-sport backwater by comparison. Yet this city's two dilapidated rinks persistently teem with committed skaters who are forced to jostle for the ice-time necessary to emulate the athletic grace demonstrated in Olympic figure-skating coverage from Utah. Victoria's stalwart band of curling enthusiasts are based at the Oakleigh rink, despite its poor ice-surface (courtesy of a clapped-out ice-grooming machine). Time for ice sports in Victoria is so heavily rationed that during public sessions figure-skaters spin among darting hockey players while speed skaters dodge tottering beginners. This overcrowding has worsened since the Olympic Winter Games. It's a chaotic, galling and potentially hazardous scenario that wouldn't be tolerated in interstate or overseas venues, and it's a situation overdue for change. In its last months of office, the Kennett government commissioned a feasibility study into establishing an international-standard ice-sports venue in Victoria. The Labor Government released the report by recreational planner Kenneth Marriott in January 2001. The report cited joint proposals from Ballarat Council and the YMCA, and Maryibynong Council and Victoria University, as well as the conversion of the Glasshouse sports and aquatic centre in Batman Avenue into an ice arena. The most significant proposal detailed in the report, from Melbourne developer Andrew Sheldon, is an ice sports complex in the Docklands precinct between Colonial Stadium and the World Trade Centre. The $55 million complex would house the headquarters of the Australian Winter Sports Institute, off-season training facilities for athletes, a gymnasium, shops and restaurants, and two Olympic-standard ice arenas. Though the complex itself would be private-sector financed, Sheldon says the inner-city location is only financially viable as a sports-recreation venue if it attracts $5 to $10 million in support, in the form of crown land, from the Victorian Government. Despite acknowledgment by Sports Minister Simon Madden of Victoria's lack of ice-sports centres, the government will not commit to providing any support until after the Commonwealth Games, which are more than four years away." Steven Bradbury trains in Brisbane. That's a nonsense,'' Sheldon says. "We have to grab the opportunity (to build the complex) now.'' Another die-hard at Melbourne's Oakleigh rink, Ron Ames, was in Australia's 1960 Olympic ice hockey team. Ames is sceptical about talk of an internationalstandard rink in Melbourne. "We've been talking about it for 50 years,'' he says. "It will never happen.'' Such disillusionment is common among Victoria's ice-sports enthusiasts. Many are hoping that Australia's success at Salt Lake City will provide an impetus for positive change. Victoria's future Olympians deserve more than just talk and distant promises. As the snow settles in Utah, Victoria's ice-sports participants' will continue to grind their teeth in frustration - a sound curiously similar to that made by breaking ice. Andrew Herrick is a Melbourne writer and skating enthusiast. |
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