The Whistler Sliding Centre is one of the key physical legacies of the 2010 Olympics, and there’s plenty of people power ready to back its future development, courtesy of involved and enthusiastic local volunteers.

Take the example of Whistler’s Diana Rochon and fellow members of the start crews for the Olympic sliding races. Rochon served as the chief of start for the exciting skeleton events, with a committed crew of 11 people, and she also assisted at the start in the rip-roaring bobsleigh races.

With eight Whistler-based volunteers part of that start crew, Rochon said track organizers and officials “strove really hard to get as many people as possible from Whistler. It’s our legacy potential.”

The volunteers had already worked their way through last year’s World Cup races and international training week runs, and they now have the Games go-time under their belts. They’ll help chart the way forward as the legacy becomes a reality.

Rochon said having her do what she’s been doing, as with other locals in similar roles, means they’ll be able to help manage future races, everything from World Cup to club-level events. Other people could move on to contribute in ways such as serving as jury members for the international bobsleigh and skeleton federation.

As a chief of start, Rochon’s job is “all about flow,” she said. She makes sure everything is running the way it should and tries to act as a calm eye of the storm of activity at the start.

“The start crew’s been doing great, and everything’s been running pretty smoothly,” Rochon said at the sliding centre last week, just a few days after Canadian skeleton racer Jon Montgomery sped to his golden finish and became the Olympic champion embraced by hordes of cheering fans in Whistler.

Each member of the start crew has essential tasks to perform to make sure the races run swiftly and safely, including checks of ice and air temperatures and even something called iceboxing, which involves cooling sled runners to ensure they’re all the same temperature.

The volunteers knew their roles fully by the time of the Olympics, Rochon said. Still, the Games added an extra tinge of tension to the intense atmosphere at the starts.

“It’s a little bit more ramped up,” Rochon said of the Olympic vibes. “You can see it in the coaches, and you see it in the athletes, and then everyone in the whole dock gets that kind of feeling, jury members as well… until the first couple of sleds get going, and then the groove starts to go, and everyone’s in flow.”

Rochon is the coordinator of athlete and coach services at the Canadian Sport Centre Pacific in Whistler, which serves many of the high-performance athletes in and passing through the town.

She experienced deep happiness for Montgomery, and her own “Olympic moment,” while soaking up the feeling of watching him in a full-circle sort of way — from working with him in his training in the CSC Pacific gym with the national team members, to serving at the start line while he won, and later getting to see him leap onto the top step of the podium at the Whistler Medals Plaza to claim his prize.

There, she looked on from the audience with her husband, who has gotten into skeleton racing at the Whistler track himself. Rochon then got to speak with Montgomery briefly at celebrations afterward.

“It was a really nice sort of full-circle thing,” she said.