Premier launches free zip line

Downtown location offers free rides, events and shows

Talk about the ultimate swing riding.

Premier Gordon Campbell rode the zip line at Vancouver's Robson Square Friday and said he survived without splitting his majority.

"The harness was quite comfortable," he said later. "The biggest thing you have to get over up here is in your head."

Campbell whooped and tried to raise his legs over his head as he sped off the four-storey-high tower and whipped along the 170-metre wire.

"That was great," he yelled afterwards to reporters waiting below. "I was trying to do a somersault backwards and I didn't quite make it."

Campbell and former Olympian Charmaine Crooks, were the first people to use the zip line, which will offer free rides during the Games starting Feb. 12.

The line runs from the corner of Robson Square near the B.C. Supreme Court building on Hornby Street diagonally across to the corner of Vancouver Art Gallery on Howe Street.

The line cost about $250,000, including staffing, contingency and construction and is paid for out of the Robson Square Olympic budget.

"The worst part was stepping off that ledge," Campbell said.

"I've just had a cast taken off my right foot and I was a little concerned, as I had to step on it. I can tell you it was great fun."

He said he took the ride to promote Robson Square as a place offering free public events and concerts during the Games.

"This is going to be a fun place for people to come," he said.

"I want everyone to know it's there for them, it's free for them, it's their Olympics, so come down and have a good time."

He said he'd made no practice runs before Friday's ride.

"The only practice I've had is stepping off the ledge of other proverbial cliffs," he joked.

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Damian Inwood. "Premier launches free zip line" The Province.
Available http://www.theprovince.com/news/todays-paper/Premier+launches+free+line/2533637/story.html