SLEIGHED TO REST
Inside eerie abandoned winter Olympics venue transformed into war base that now lays rotting & riddled with bullet holes
AN old Olympic venue used at the 1984 Winter Games was left abandoned for 19 years after it was used as a key base in the Bosnian War and ruined.
The huge track began construction in Sarajevo in 1981 when Bosnia and Herzegovina was still a part of Yugoslavia, with the 1983 European Bobsleigh Championships holding its first event.
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The track, used for both bobsleigh and luge was called “safe, quick and technically interesting,” and required “extreme concentration and technical knowledge.”
At the time, it was the fastest and steepest in the world at 1,300 meters and held 30,000 spectators.
When the 1991 Yugoslavian War broke out the Olympic track became a concrete trench and an artillery stronghold, as holes were drilled in to use in the war.
The Bosnian War, which ran from 1992 to 1995, continued to use the trench in warfare as it was in a prime location, looking down on the city of Sarajevo from the mountain top.
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During the war, the Siege of Sarajevo took place killing tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers in the single longest siege of a capital city in modern warfare.
On average, the city was shelled 329 times a day including the track which once had the world’s best athletes on it.
The course was abandoned and left riddled with bullet holes and laid rotting, overgrown by plants and graffiti until a restoration project in 2014 began.
With the help of volunteers, the national bobsleigh federation, and an International Luge Federation grant the track is back in use with the Slovakian, Polish, Turkish, Slovenian, Croatian and Serbian national teams all practicing summer luge on it.
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Still covered in colourful, weird and wonderful graffiti the once eerie track is now one of the best hiking routes in Europe from the city centre to the old war base.
The once-great Winter Olympic track has since become known due to viral videos online showing people walking inside the giant tunnels.
This isn’t the first major sporting venue left abandoned as the forgotten Stadio Flamino which hosted superstars like Michael Jackson, David Bowie and Bruce Springsteen as well as Olympic Games has faced calls to be demolished after being unused since 2011.
Another eerie stadium is North Korea’s Rungrado 1st of May Stadium which despite being the world's biggest stadium just collects dust as it’s barely used.
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