Track and trails: Sudbury reloads its sports tourism strategy.

• Author: Young, Laura E.
• Position: CONFERENCE & CONVENTION

The Ontario Summer Games, to be held August 10-13, are supposed to put Sudbury back on the map of hosting major sporting events.

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But what will happen once the games are over and the thousands of people have gone home?

For Rob St. Marseille, the Games are only the beginning for boosting the profile of mountain biking in the province.

The president of the Walden Mountain Biking Club looks through the bush and rocky mountain bike trails in Naughton to the day when the club will become a destination on the Ontario Cup circuit.

One Ontario Cup race could bring upwards of 500 riders and their entourage to the region. And when they do, they'll find a challenging course that will test their fitness and technical riding skills, St. Marseille says.

"We have a course that will represent what riding is like up here in the North."

That unique northern experience features into the City of Greater Sudbury's approach to sport tourism marketing which is being developed as a piece of the overall community tourism strategy.

Kristina Lang, a tourism marketing officer for the city, lists the lakes, a thriving artistic community, major destination attractions and natural abundance as key features of the area.

"All these things are attractive to those who want to stay a day longer. I think it's an all-around experience," she says.

In 2009, Sudbury Tourism and its partners helped bring over 30 different sporting events to the city. That includes over 45,000 participants and athletes, utilizing roughly 12,000 room nights in Greater Sudbury hotels, says Lang,

Sudbury will be a sports tourism destination in 2011 when it will host provincial high school wrestling and track and field meets, the Little NHL tournament, the Swim Ontario Division I team championships, and les Jeux de la Francophonie

Still, at this point, the city can only attract so many events based on the number of available rooms.

With roughly 1,400 rooms, it might be too much for the city to host a sporting event like the Canadian or even-Ontario firefighter games because of the number of hotel rooms, says Lang.

Even the local convention and meeting spaces may not be up to the same level as rooms in the Golden Horseshoe area of southern Ontario, Lang says.

"But Sudbury definitely has the opportunity to market itself to some of the sporting clubs and some that may be regionally attractive, (events) around water, running, those sorts of things."

Sports are not the main thrust of...