Olympic Dreams Realized by Driving Zamboni

A week after giving birth, Sonya Hansen found herself standing in the middle of an ice rink with a video camera, watching her husband fulfill his Olympic dream.

To drive a Zamboni.

Forget about the speed and raw excitement of bobsledding, speed skating or ski jumping. Some people just want to drive around an ice rink at 9 mph.

For the uninitiated, the Zamboni ice resurfacing machine is that large, blocky thing that cleans up the ice between periods at a hockey games or during breaks at figure skating competitions. And it seems to have just as many fans as the sports it cleans up after.

So when Olympic organizers in Salt Lake City created “wannabe camps” for adults with gold medal aspirations but 9-to-5 lives and talents, they included the incredibly popular Zamboni Camp along with bobsledding and the skeleton, a type of head-first luge.

After all, Charlie Brown himself once remarked in a Peanuts comic strip: “There are three things in life that are fun to watch: A rippling stream, a fire in the fireplace, and a Zamboni going around and around.”

For Blake Hansen of Alpine, the camp was the chance of a lifetime. Wrapped in a Colorado Avalanche jersey, Hansen and an instructor drove around the Seven Peaks Ice Arena as his wife--also in hockey garb--videotaped the event.

“He’s like a little boy at Christmas,” Sonya Hansen said as she watched her husband steer the Zamboni around the rink.

“I’ve finally fulfilled a dream,” Blake Hansen exclaimed as he jumped down from the machine.

Hansen’s love of hockey is closely tied with the Zamboni. When asked about his fascination with the machine, he answered in basic terms. “Well, it clears the ice,” he said.

Yes, but why the fascination?

“It clears the ice, for hockey,” he said, clarifying his initial statement.

Just a week before the camp, Sonya Hansen gave birth to a daughter. When Blake Hansen was asked what he would have done if Sonya had gone into labor on Zamboni Camp day, Hansen jokingly hemmed and hawed. Then he got serious and said “No, I probably would have stayed with her.”

Some people think the Zamboni is merely the machine that scrapes ice off the rink and applies a coat of hot water in its place.

Then there are others who know it’s so much more, people such as Dan Corsbie. He flew to Utah from Urbandale, Iowa, to attend the camp. His son paid for a spot at the camp as a Christmas present.

The retired juvenile court intake officer smiled wildly as he guided the machine past where his son watched and waved.

Corsbie became a Zamboni fan when his 12-year-old grandson started playing in a pee-wee hockey league seven years ago.

“I walk down to the glass to get a closer look at the Zamboni,” Corsbie said. “It’s the size of the machine. It’s the gears. It just fascinated me.”

He wasn’t disappointed at his turn behind the wheel.

“Oh, it’s more than I thought it would be. You must try it. You absolutely must try it,” he said.

It’s these people who flocked to The Salt Lake Organizing Committee’s Zamboni Camps. Each participant paid $75 to learn the details of getting the ice just right for Olympic events and then, as a grand finale, climbed aboard and took the helm of the 10-foot tall, 9,000-pound ice-melting machine.

Bob Bills, director of SLOC’s Wannabe Camps, said he got the idea for the Zamboni Camp from his days as a speed skating rink manager.

“People were constantly wanting to drive the Zamboni. I don’t know. It’s mesmerizing,” Bills said.

But unlike some of the more athletic wannabe camps, the Zamboni Camp attracted a more sedate crowd, Bills said.

Case in point: retired Indiana school teacher Martha Hoffa. The only woman to sign up for a recent Zamboni Camp, she said she wanted bragging rights to impress her nieces.