Cardiff International White Water - Canoe Slalom and White Water Rafting Centre
Cardiff International White Water (CIWW) is the very first on-demand white water rafting facility in the UK. The project was the design and construction of an olympic-standard canoe slalom and white water rafting centre built on an area of remediated land in Cardiff International Sports Village.
Costing a total of £13.3m, the new centre (opened to the public 27 March 2010) provides Wales with the UK’s first olympic-standard pumped water canoe slalom course, providing canoeing and white water rafting facilities ranging from recreational to full international and Olympic competition use.
Design was by French company HydroStadium, who designed similar courses used at the Sydney, Athens and Beijing Olympics.
Its completion allows the facility to be used as a centre of excellence well in advance of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and enable Cardiff to host international teams in need of suitable training facilities. Once fully established it is expected to attract as many as 50,000 users a year.
In terms of its construction, water for the course has been impounded from the River Ely by driving a 250 linear metre combination piled wall, using 20 metre long sheet and tubular piles.
Water is pumped from the impounded area via a reinforced concrete pumping station, constructed in a temporary cofferdam in the river, thus generating the required head for the water to flow into the pre-cast, piled reinforced concrete conveyor channel and reinforced concrete starting pool, before continuing its flow down the 14 metre wide reinforced concrete slalom course trough. Water flows down the 214 metre long articulated jointed channel at a gradient of 1:5 before discharging back into the impounded area.
Changing and control facilities are housed in a pre-cast, piled, two storey steel framed and clad building.
The project has been challenging for the diversity of the work, the small physical footprint of the scheme (which in turn lead to logistical issues), and the highly sensitive nature of the surrounding environment. It was registered with Constructing Excellence Wales as Demonstration Project in Best Practice; the first of the projects on the International Sports Village to have been registered with the scheme.