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He calls it the best natural ice in North America, and at first you think he's just biased.
But when he begins to rattle off the names of all the Olympians this humble little track has produced, well, you can't really argue.
"Where do we start?" Lorry Whincup began. "Shannon Rempel, Brittany Schussler, Sean Ireland and Mike Ireland, Cindy Klassen, Susan Auch, Clara Hughes..."
So what is it about the oval at Sargent Park, named after Auch, a two-time Olympic silver medalist?
Start with a tradition of ice making that was passed down to Whincup a dozen years ago.
For some reason, nobody else at the time wanted a job that forces you outdoors to play in the water as soon as it gets really cold every year.
When the mercury plummets, Whincup's internal alarm goes off.
This week, at 7:30 every morning, you'll find him out behind the Cindy Klassen Recreation Complex lugging some 750 feet of fire hose, with the help of a few equally committed city workers, trying to build the perfect race track.
"I have no clue what time it is," Whincup was saying around noon, yesterday. "We usually don't like to stop for coffee or anything. You don't want to go in and thaw, come back out and get frozen again. You don't want to get the chill in your bone, 'cause you'll never get it out when you're out here doing this."
Whincup will stand for hours at a time, pouring thousands of gallons of water onto a gravel track that's so far from level the ice would naturally be six inches thicker in some places.
Wind chill? What wind chill?
"You can dress for the cold," Whincup said. "It's the summers I hate, because you can't dress for that."
With "nice weather" like this, Whincup can fill "the tub," as he calls it, in about 10 days. Then it's time for the leveling and fine-tuning: thousands more gallons of water from the "hot barrel," followed by the Zamboni, more hot-barreling and more Zamboni -- until it's race time.
Among the obstacles, aside from the cold, are those darn squirrels that inhabit the trees lining the west end of the track.
"They chew the bark... and little branches fall in and it gets frozen into where you just flooded," Whincup said. "You're always on the watch for the squirrels."
And the calendar.
Whincup's deadline this year, Dec. 20 -- the first day of skating for the sport's next generation.
Watching the kids cut up his creation, his numb fingers and toes are soon forgotten.
"You get to see the smiles on their faces, the times they do," Whincup said. "And if you get lucky, you get to see them skate internationally, skate for Canada, and know you had a little hand in helping them make it there."
Often, they'll return after making it big, medals in tow, thanking the man for his ice.
"It's consistent, it's fast, it's smooth," Whincup said, not sounding the least bit boastful. "We've had people from all over Canada... they always want to go through the garage and find out the secrets and how we do it."
The secrets aren't really secret. You need cold, lots of patience and the know-how gained by experience.
"But it's also the skaters themselves," Whincup said. "For them to come out at 25-below every night, knowing the ice is gonna be ready... the ice is always ready."
The rest is up to them.
Which brings us to Vancouver, 2010.
If this Olympics produces yet another frozen-in-time, made-in-Manitoba moment next February, don't be surprised.
Because the foundation was put down years ago, through a few hundred feet of fire hose, in the breaking daylight of another frigid morning.
"I'm proud of the job the boys here do," Whincup said. "And we get to see the results whenever they announce they're from Winnipeg, Manitoba."
Contact Paul at paul.friesen@sunmedia.ca or 632-2788.