Rink of Dreams for Short Track Speed Skaters ...

Pretty cool news out of Montreal today that Maurice Richard Arena is going to be dedicated exclusively to Canada’s short track speed skaters leading up to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

What a great gesture. What a great idea to try to give those athletes everything they need to succeed on the toughest sporting stage around.

It’d never happen in Toronto, where the only hope right now of turning around the mostly pathetic attitude towards Olympic sport is to win the bid for 2015 Pan Am Games.

But the Quebec government and the City of Montreal are getting together with Speed Skating Canada and a number of other organizations to make things happen for the Canadian short track team, which includes such medal hopefuls as Kalyna Roberge and Charles Hamelin (pictured above).

Turns out that the short trackers won’t have much chance to train or compete at the Olympic venue in Vancouver, the Pacific Coliseum. So, starting next March, they’re going to do their best to turn the Maurice-Richard Arena into the Pacific Coliseum, particularly attempting to make the ice conditions just like they’ll be at the Games.

Hey, when your chief competition are the ever tough Koreans, you can use every edge you can get.

Not sure that old Maurice would approve of what’s being done to the arena named after him – there’ll be no hockey played in it for at least a year.