OlymPicks: Meet the Canadian Iceman Sent to Freeze Beijing's Water Cube

OlymPicks is an ongoing blog series wherein we highlight news, gossip, and developments regarding the buildup to Beijing's 2022 Winter Olympics.

When Olympic curlers glide across the ice at Beijing’s “Water Cube” National Aquatics Center during the 2022 Games, they’ll have one man in particular to thank: Hans Wuthrich.

The 62-year-old Canadian ice consultant has overseen freezing such surfaces at every Winter Olympics since the 2010 Vancouver Games. Despite that extensive experience, Wuthrich says his work for 2022 stands out for a number of reasons.

“Beijing is way different. They’re trying to save a lot of money in many ways, like turning the existing summer venue to a winter one,” he says of the Water Cube, which he’s turning into a proverbial ice cube. That restraint is a stark departure from what he saw at the 2012 Games. “In Sochi, there were billions spent, and in Beijing, they clearly don't want that.”

Another thing that sets Beijing apart from prior Olympic hosts, especially for Wuthrich and his team, is the fact that the Water Cube is “not like a regular arena, where you have a system in the concrete” for the ice. Instead, “we’re actually putting a floor on top of the [Water Cube’s] pool and adding a refrigerating system on top of that. And the refrigeration equipment is portable.”

It may seem like a pioneering endeavor, but Wuthrich and his team have used similar setups at a handful of smaller curling championships. It’s a method that has never been employed, however, on this Olympian scale.  

Wuthrich enjoys the pressure, however, and is more than prepared to take the task on. After all, he first began making ice in the late ‘70s at a rink in his Manitoba hometown of Gimli when he was still in his late 20s. Before he began prepping rinks for pros, Wuthrich was also a pretty good curler in his own right. “I was quite competitive then, though I just curl for beer money now,” he says with a chuckle.

After establishing himself as a local ice maker, Wuthrich was invited as a consultant for the 1993 World Curling Championship in Geneva. He was so adept at rink prep that his profile has steadily grown ever since.

Wuthrich is excited to partake in the Olympics once again in Beijing, and sees plenty of potential for winter sports in such burgeoning Asian locales. “The Chinese teams are getting pretty good, and they have really good facilities in Beijing,” he says, adding that there is also a palpable beginners enthusiasm for such sports in Asia. “At the Games in Korea last year, I have never seen people take to the sport and work as hard as they did. And just look at how well the women’s team did there!” he adds about the Korean team’s silver medal win.

And while Wuthrich still enjoys being involved in the Olympics, he admits that Beijing will be one of his last. That’s because making ice is far more laborious than one might expect. “You’re scraping, you’re flooding the water in so it’ll freeze, you’re painting the ice white, just going up and down the rink again and again throughout the night, you’ll cover 20km easily,” he says of the work that he and his team of 16 put into rink prep. He adds: “I’m getting up there in age, but as long as I’m healthy and feel good, I’ll keep doing it. And when I can’t, I’ll watch it on TV!”

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Photos: Winnipeg Free Press, John Woods, Michael Burns