Olympic Training Center (Colorado Springs, Colorado)

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1750 East Boulder Street
Colorado Springs, CO 80909
(719)866-4618
www.teamusa.org/about-the-usoc/training-centers-and-sit...

The United States Olympic Committee Colorado Springs Training Center. The USOC's flagship training center (out of three total).

History:

Ent Air Force Base (named for Major General Uzal Girard Ent, commander of the Ninth Air Force during World War II) was a United States Air Force facility opened in 1951 on the site of a closed sanatorium in conjunction with the move of the United States Air Force's Air Defense Command, later Aerospace Defense Command (ADC), to Colorado Springs, Colorado. Ent AFB was located near downtown Colorado Springs and did not have a runway, relying on nearby Peterson Field, now Peterson AFB.

Ent AFB was home to NORAD from 1957 until 1963 when the command center moved to a highly secure facility within Cheyenne Mountain due to concerns about the vulnerability of Ent to nuclear attack. Ent Air Force Base then became the Ent Annex to the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in 1975 and was subsequently closed in 1976.

The facility is now the home of the Colorado Springs Olympic Training Center. Colorado Springs OTC was the first of the three to be built, and has been the home of the U.S. Olympic Committee since 1978. Its location on the former Ent Air Force Base was selected for its relatively high elevation, which is often thought to improve training effectiveness. Its facilities include an Olympic-size swimming pool, an indoor shooting range, a velodrome, two sports centers housing numerous gymnasiums and weight rooms, and a sports science laboratory, in addition to an athlete center and dining hall, several dormitories, a visitors' center, and the offices of both the USOC and U.S. Paralympics.