The City and the County of Grande Prairie saw record rainfall amounts during the Alberta Summer Games, but that didn’t stop nearly 3,000 athletes from taking part in competitions across the region Friday through Sunday.
With a rainfall warning in place, the forecast for the weekend called for thunderstorms and up to 100 millimetres of rain spanning the whole weekend. Chair Lionel Robins says that could have potentially destroyed the games had the weather been that bad.
“We had rain, we had showers and we had intermittent this and that but it wasn’t 100 percent downpour the whole weekend as was originally forecast,” Robins says. “I’m happy to say all 13 sports were able to get all their competitions in and everybody got to play their sports; we just had to get creative.”
In the end, the City of Grande Prairie received just under 80 millimetres of rain from Thursday to Sunday, setting three rainfall records in the process.
Schedules were changed and games were shortened to make sure that organizers fit as many events in as possible before the storms hit. Overall, Robins says he’s pleased with the results.
“The bottom line is that the kids got to play, the games went off and I’m pretty happy with the way that it all went.”
Despite the rain, Robins believes that the attendance for the games was better then they could have hoped for when they made the original bid to host the games in 2015.
“I think our attendance records were right out of this world compared to what we were expecting and I think people came from all over and hopefully we gave them a good show.”
Robins estimates that between participants and spectators, more than 5,000 people attended the games.
