The Winter Games are a period always awaited by the ice rinks. They see an increase in attendance. “Seeing events on TV makes some people want to put on their skates”, explains Rémi Dedelot, operations manager of the Lille European Metropolis ice rink, in Wasquehal. But this ice rink, Serges Charles, has a special link with the Games. She is born in 1994, two years after the Albertville Games. Three municipalities, Wasquehal, Mouvaux and Marcq-en-Baroeul, had bought together the structure built at the time to accommodate the training of athletes in Savoie.
At that time, there was no longer an ice rink in the Lille metropolis, after the closures of those of Lille and Croix. The chosen ones had therefore seen it as a way of obtaining equipment without spending too much. And the mayor of Marcq-en Baroeul at the time, Serge Charles, had applied.
The structure, and this wooden frame, had therefore been dismantled, transported and then reinstalled. “It was quite an exceptional convoy”, says Rémi Dedelot. “Since then, it has been modernized. This is proof that the Games can have positive effects, while in some countries we see sports arenas abandoned once the Games are over.”
The history of this modernization has, however, been chaotic at times. Expensive, its management was taken over by the urban community of Lille, the ancestor of the MEL, which invested nearly 4 million euros.
Today, it is in the top five of the busiest ice rinks in France. Its 56 by 26 meter track welcomes professional clubs such as the Lions of Wasquehal, a historic hockey club that plays in Division 2. It also sees up to 2,000 people skate through it a day.