THE FRONT ROW WITH BRUCE BOURQUIN: Friday, Aug. 12, 2016

Last month, I enjoyed one cool trip to Calgary, Alberta. Cool as ice.

It took me nearly 10 hours to get there — it’s a seven-hour drive nonstop. Awesome scenery with the Canadian Rockies that was worth half the trip, by the way.

First off was one Thursday in mid-July at the Calgary Stampede, dubbed the world’s richest tournament-style rodeo. Compared to last year’s North Idaho Fair and Rodeo — this year it’s called the North Idaho State Fair — more bull riders and saddle bronc riders stayed on for the full eight seconds more often than our rough n’ tough regional riders. But in Calgary there were some of the best riders in North America. The rodeo clown shouting some banter with the rodeo announcer, the crowd wearin’ their cowboy boots and cool cowboy hats, those things I’ll remember more than which cowboy or cowgirl won which event.

OK, SO the morning after I went to try to zipline at the Canada Olympic Park. More on that later. But after trying to zipline, I meandered on over to Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame, which was next door to the park. I talked to a nice guy, named Zack Anderson, who is the manager of education and public relations at the Hall of Fame. He talked about Calgary being one of the cities who are trying to land the 2026 Winter Olympics. They put in a bid to host the Games on June 21. Some of the other cities include Innsbruck, Austria, Salt Lake City (which hosted the Winter Olympics in 2002), Almaty, Kazakhstan (runner-up for the 2022 Games) and Sapporo, Japan. PyeongChang, South Korea will host the next Winter Olympics, set for Feb. 9-25.

“We would be using a lot of existing infrastucture (like the Calgary Saddledome), but we need to use what we have and bring it up to current standards,” Anderson said. “That’s what Calgary is looking at. We needed to see if it was feasible, if it was worth it to put in a bid. They are doing a multi-step thing to see where we go from there. We use the University of Calgary for world championship races, that’s where the Olympic oval is. The issue now (in mid-July) is whether we’d be able to build the venues and support all the venues (for example, building a new ski jump instead of using an existing one).

By the way, one of many qualifications to qualify for Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame, one must be retired for four years. There were the clear inductees, such as former Detroit Red Wings legend Gordie Howe, who died on June 10.

There was also the Markin MacPhail Center pratically, built in the mid-2000s, in which quite a few Canadian Olympic hopefuls and Olympians train. One of many includes a woman named Kallie Humphries, who has won Olympic gold twice in the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games and the 2014 Games in Sochi, Japan. It has three NHL-sized skating rinks, a practice area for bobsledding and a short track for sprinting. Already full of adrenaline, I almost wanted to jump in a practice bobsled and train myself, but resisted the urge.

AFTER A fun concert watching the Zac Brown Band on Thursday night in the Calgary Saddledome, the next day WOULD have been likely an awesome zipline down the former Olympic ski jump, at the Canada Olympic Park, on top of a small hill where the 1988 Winter Olympics was held.

But a Stage 2 thunderstorm just happened to rear its ugly head almost directly above the ski jump, run by a company called WinSport, which by the way have great people, despite the fact they had to close the park. So I couldn’t even go ziplining, bobsled or even simulate at least the feeling of luge. Guess the staff at WinSport did not want to use the zipline as a conduit to electrocuting me. Oh well, what would’ve been ...anyone who saw the movie “Eddie the Eagle” in late February may remember that there was a bespectacled lad called Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards, from Great Britain. He wanted to become an Olympian since he was 10 years old.

Back in 1988, he was a British ski jumper who finished dead last in the Winter Olympics. But that was not the real story. It was the journey, of course. Edwards was counted out by his own country, by his own Olympic officials, who changed the rules somehow, despite the fact he completed a jump from a 70-meter hill (or 229.6 feet). He successfully completed that, landing a jump of 38 meters (124.6 feet).

However, the British officials demanded he had to land a jump of 61 meters (200.1 feet). Despite later on completing a jump of exactly 61 meters, but falling and becoming disqualified, Edwards received a letter that let him know his qualifying jump was somehow valid. Only in Great Britain, right?

Plus, his unofficial coach and and former U.S. Olympic skier Bronson Peary, who was played in the movie by Hugh Jackman. At first, Peary tried to convince Edwards to just give his dreams up. So I got to see the jump where Edwards broke the British record by jumping 71 meters off of the big hill (232.9 feet), set in 1929. Just so you know, Matti “The Flying Finn” Nykänen eventually won the gold medal. In Calgary, Nykänen, who was 24 in ‘88, became the first ski jumper to score three gold medals in a single Olympic competition, plus he won five Olympic medals in his career.

There was a scene in which in an elevator to both Olympians’ jump, Nykänen held a brief conversation with Edwards. It was something about the spirit of the Olympics, striving to do one’s best.

So that’s what I did, doing my best to see Calgary’s sights.

Bruce Bourquin is a sports writer at The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2013, via e-mail at bbourquin@cdapress.com or via Twitter @bourq25