Star celebrates Olympic curling success

UK: Star Refrigeration is celebrating the success of the British curling teams at the Winter Olympics, having provided its expertise for the construction of the UK’s first curling academy.

Completed in 2017 at a cost of a cool £3.15m, Stirling’s National Curling Academy was the centre of preparations for this winter’s Olympics. With its world-class ice and provision for full time training, the academy is widely recognised as one of the reasons behind GB Curling’s success, which saw the women’s team winning Team GB’s only gold medal and the men’s team winning silver.

During the construction of the academy, Star provided one of its low charge Azanechiller 2.0 ammonia air-cooled chillers and the floor for the facility, which keeps the ice at -80ºC to -100ºC.
 
Adam Strachan, technical sales engineer at Star Refrigeration, said: “The National Curling Academy opened its doors in 2017 as the UK’s first dedicated training facility for curling. We’ve installed 80% of the nation’s ice rinks and indoor ski facilities, so with our expertise, we were privileged to give our elite curling athletes a home to train at here in Scotland. The world-class facility offers the perfect training conditions, matching the championship quality of the ice at the Olympics’ playing surface. We are now seeing the benefits of the academy, as both the men’s and women’s curling teams are at the top of their game.”
  
GB curling’s performance director Nigel Holl has attributed the teams’ Beijing success to the national training centre in Stirling, and has called on more ice rinks across the UK to invest in their facilities.
  
Following the victory for Team GB’s curling teams, the spotlight will now be on the wheelchair curling team heading for the Paralympic Winter Games also held in Beijing. Bronze Medallist, Aileen Neilson, who captained the Paralympic curling team at the 2018 games was an advocate for The National Curling Academy when it opened shortly before the 2018 Winter Paralympics.
 
Star’s history with curling goes back many years. In 1985 the company was approached to build a brand new specialist curling rink for the World Championships in just four days.

Related stories:

Star role in curling success – 4 March 2018
UK: Star Refrigeration’s expertise in helping to create the ideal playing surface for Scotland’s recently opened National Curling Academy has been called on again for a planned £1.1m refurbishment of Edinburgh’s Murrayfield curling rink. Read more…