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By Liam Doran/Beaver Creek Resort
Headline RSS FeedPowder days, ski racing not necessarily mutually exclusive
December 3, 2007 —
The thing about ski racing is that I never did it as kid, and while I enjoy running the occasional Nastar course, for the most part I can’t entirely relate to achieving speeds in excess of 70 mph on a vertical ice rink.
For me, and most recreational skiers, the sport is about avoiding ice and hardpack. I admire racers and think they have mad skills and cojones the size of basketballs, but give me untracked powder any day.
Strangely, some of my best powder days often occur in and around World Cup ski races. In the early 1990s I was covering a men’s downhill in Aspen when American AJ Kitt was leading during a snowstorm only to have the race cancelled out from under him.
I felt bad for Kitt but elated for myself, since I then proceeded over Aspen Highlands and went nuts in 15 inches of fluff. Similarly, at the 2006 Olympics in Sestriere, Italy, I skied the GS course with a foot of fresh on it, weeks before the race.
Then Sunday evening I get the email that Beaver Creek’s Rose Bowl was opening for the season Monday at 9 a.m., just before the 10 a.m. start of the men’s super-G. This was the same super-G postponed Saturday due to too much snow falling on the Beav’ the past few days.
You see my dilemma. How was it solved?
Quite simply. I got on the first chair at 9 a.m. and made it down Ripsaw for my first glorious powder run of the young season. Then I hightailed it for the shuttle and made it for the first racer. It was my eighth day on skis so far this season, so that’s a bit longer than I prefer to wait for some soft stuff under boot.
But better late than never is definitely the rallying call for this season, and with more snow in the forecast for Wednesday, look for much more terrain to open up by next weekend at both Vail and Beaver Creek.
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www.skispace.com launch party at Rocks Modern Grill in the Beaver Creek Lodge." />Bode kicks off skispace.com, brings big snow to the Beav'
December 2, 2007 —
Bode Miller should launch a new website every night.
The Bodacious One held the party of the week so far at Rocks Modern Grill in the Beaver Creek Lodge Saturday night and all the heavy hitters of the ski industry turned out to fete America’s second most winning ski racer of all-time and get the beta on his new site, www.skispace.com – a social networking site for skiers.
With Bode and about 15 of his family members from the Franconia, N.H., area out in force, skispace execs rolled a video of Bode travelling in his RV, chasing would-be hubcap thieves down the streets of NYC naked, drinking with his masseuses from a mug that read “I hope you’re still hot when I’m sober,” and generally satirizing all the criticism lobbed his way in recent years.
It was a raucously funny kickoff to the evening and underscored skispace’s mission statement of bringing back fun, craziness and spontaneity to the ski industry. If the launch party is any indication, skispace is right on track.
And the best part of the evening is that while the drinks were flowing inside, with other Head ski luminaries such as the second most winning ski racer of all-time, Hermann Maier, out in support of Bode and his new Team America, the snow was piling up outside – a total of 15 inches in the last day or so.
That’s on top of the six inches that cancelled downhill training earlier in the week. Sure, it was more of a southern storm, dropping whopping amounts of three to four feet at areas like Silverton and Wolf Creek, but we did all right here in the Central Rockies, no doubt leading to some significant terrain openings in the coming days. Bode must have been doing a serious snow dance into the night.
I’ll get out into the goods Monday morning to give you a full report, but in the meantime the races are still in full swing Sunday and Monday. The giant slalom wraps up with a second run at 12:45 p.m., Sunday, and the super-G postponed due to excess snow on Saturday concludes the week of World Cup action Monday at 10 a.m.
Get out, ski the pow, and watch the world’s best racers rip it up on the Birds of Prey.
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Black Diamond Ball produces record auction item
December 1, 2007 —
December is a crazed whirlwind of social events in the Vail Valley, almost leaving residents a little too tired from nighttime activities to enjoy everything there is to do during the daytime – such as ski fresh powder. Almost.
We all manage pretty well to burn the candle at both ends and still get out on pow days like Sunday will be. Even though there’s not a lot of terrain open due to our unusually dry November, December is starting out like gangbusters with nine inches of new snow Saturday at both Vail and Beaver Creek.
So get up here, or out here as the case may be, and check out the Birds of Prey giant slalom beginning at 9:45 a.m., Sunday, at Beaver Creek or the postponed super-G on Monday at 10 a.m., and get in some fresh tracks while you’re at it.
As for the social circuit, I was moving a little slow Saturday after attending the Vail Valley Foundation’s Black Diamond Ball – their major annual fundraiser – and raising a toast or five to their Volunteer of the Year, Susan Frampton, and Citizens of the Year, Kathy and Erik Borgen.
It was an awesome evening at the Vail Cascade Resort & Spa, highlighted by the live auction that produced a new record for the Foundation, which, among many other things, organizes the annual Birds of Prey World Cup races.
A club membership donated by Vail Resorts brought in a whopping $102,000, and a trip to Las Vegas netted another $25,000. Needless to say, I was in the bidding till the bitter end.
And speaking of bitter ends, it was brutally cold up in Lake Louise, Canada, but nothing can cool off red-hot speedster Lindsey Vonn, formerly Kildow, a Ski Club Vail product who won a World Cup downhill up there Saturday – her seventh career victory on the circuit. Check her out in person next weekend at Aspen, where the women will race a downhill for the first time.
Now I’m off to a party at Rocks Modern Grill to announce Bode Miller’s new website, www.skispace.com, which hopefully won’t compete too much with realvail.com. Check out the O. Report on Sunday for more details.
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Austrian Walchhofer breaks U.S. stranglehold on Birds of Prey
November 30, 2007 —
If you need a snowstorm – and unquestionably Colorado has been desperate for some flakes of late – all you need to do is wash your car … or schedule a downhill race.
Beaver Creek ran a World Cup downhill race Friday, and sure enough, the snow started falling just prior to the 11 a.m. start, prompting race officials to use the bad weather start, about 85 meters below the normal downhill start.
Austrian Michael Walchhofer, who earlier this week joked about ending America’s four-year win streak in the Birds of Prey downhill, got serious on Friday, edging American Steve Nyman by five-hundredths of a second.
Walchhofer, an 11-time World Cup winner and the silver medalist in downhill from the 2006 Winter Olympics, won in a steady snowstorm with a time of 1 minute, 13.74 seconds.
Nyman, of Provo, Utah, who got on his first-ever World Cup podium with a third-place finish in the downhill here last year, climbed up a step to second this year with a time of 1:13.79.
Starting 8th, Nyman had a wild ride - at one point skiing on one ski - but he held on to lead the race until Walchoffer came down with a nearly flawless run out of the 16th spot. Switzerland’s Didier Cuche was third with a time of 1:13.84.
American Bode Miller, who won the downhill here last year with Nyman in third, went down on one hip near the top of the course in the Talon Turn on Friday but recovered to finish sixth (1:14.10).
Andrew Weibrecht, a 21-year-old from Lake Placid, N.Y., started 53rd and nailed the downhill run of his life, jumping up to 10th and giving the U.S. three in the top 10. On Thursday, Weibrecht earned his first-ever World Cup points by finishing 14th in the super combined event.
With snow falling more heavily for the earlier racers, the lower start trimmed about 27 seconds off the running time.
“You’re always not happy because it’s not the full race,” Nyman said of the shortened course, “but I did well on it (Thursday in the downhill portion of the combined, finishing second), so either way I’m comfortable.”
Less comfortable for him was his brief balancing act on one ski in a section of the course called the Abyss that may have cost him the race.
Otherwise, though, Nyman said he was pleased with how he skied and didn’t think too much about his bobble.
“Miss that red gate, wherever that is,” Nyman said of his thoughts at that critical moment. “You don’t really think. It’s more just go and get over it, that’s it. I hit what I wanted to hit, I did what I wanted to do, and I made the turns where I wanted to.”
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