Olympic venues still great sites for chilling out

Hard as it is to fathom, it's been three years now since the Olympic Winter Games were held on Utah snow and ice. Time flies when you're over the hill. Chronologically speaking, we're a lot closer to the Torino Games of 2006 than the Salt Lake Games of 2002.

But our Olympic stage still remains, and not just the magnificent snow-covered Rocky Mountains

Every man-made facility that was used for competition is also still standing.

I know this because I visited each of the Olympic venues yesterday afternoon.

I hadn't seen most of the venues since the Games were held and was curious to see how they're holding up as Olympic has-beens. Have they managed to let go of the past? Are there any pin-traders still standing on the corners? Any Russians still filing protests? Any volunteers still standing out front, smiling?

Our Olympics were quite compact. Even back during the actual 16 days of glory when competitions were running nonstop and Mitt Romney was yelling at traffic cops, getting from place to place was relatively painless.

But now that the Olympics of '02 are nothing but a gradual fading memory, getting from venue to venue is as smooth as a German bobsled run. It's like you inherited Juan Antonio Samaranch's car, driver and all-venue access pass.

I drove to all the late great venues in a single afternoon. From the Utah Olympic Park I traveled to Soldier Hollow in Midway, The Peaks Ice Arena in Provo, the Utah Olympic Oval in Kearns, the E Center in West Valley City, the Delta Center and Rice-Eccles (Olympic) Stadium in Salt Lake City and, finally, The Ice Sheet in Ogden.

What I found in abundance was plenty of ice.

That's the cold part of our Olympic legacy. We are now surrounded by indoor ice.

All up and down the old Olympic Corridor I saw figure skaters, speedskaters, hockey players and bobsledders cutting, sliding, ripping, slap-shotting and falling.

There's so much ice out there that at the Olympic Oval — where you can purchase "The Fastest Ice on Earth" posters and T-shirts in the souvenir shop — they've turned some of their ice into a running track and an indoor soccer field.

The only ice activity I did not witness was curling, although at the Ogden Ice Sheet — home of the 2002 curling competition — they told me there's a weekly curling league on Tuesday nights.

They also offer yoga classes at The Ice Sheet. You can get serene under the sign of the five rings. Although not on the same nights as hockey.