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Rope drop junkshow @ Mary Jane Dec 19 2012 from Jason Blevins on Vimeo.
With 15 inches out of the latest storm cycle, Winter Park ski patrollers started dropping ropes. The feeding frenzy Wednesday morning at Mary Jane saw a couple hundred powder pirates working hard to beat down the fresh.
Shaun White left Breckenridge and went straight to the salon to have his red locks removed.
White, whose trademark long red hair has long promoted “The Flying Tomato” nickname he picked up early in his career, posted video Tuesday morning of getting his long ponytail cut off.
He said he has been thinking about it for a “long while” and wanted to donate it to Locks of Love.
Winter Park’s Trestle Bike Park will host the only U.S. stop of the first-ever Enduro World Series next summer, buttressing its position as the nation’s top bike park.
With enduro riding exploding, the Enduro Mountain Bike Association in October announced the creation of its own, UCI-free World Series, a seven-stop international tour tying together the largest events in enduro racing – France’s Enduro Series, Italy’s Superenduro races and the Whistler-born Crankworx contests. The group released the series’ race stops and dates last week.
Winter Park’s Colorado Freeride Festival – July 27-28 – will be the fourth stop of the international tour. This year’s festival featured a five-stage contest that drew dozens of enduro racers. They raced long downhill courses traversing Trestle’s biggest features and singletrack in contests that required some uphill. Enduro – while popular in Europe – is surging stateside and especially in Colorado, where the Mountain States Cup launched its inaugural enduro races last summer.
2013 Enduro World Series
May 18-19: Superenduro PRO – Punta Ala, Italy
June 29-30: Enduro Series – Val d’Allos, France
July 6-7: Crankworx Les 2 Alpes – Les 2 Alpes, France
July 27-28: Colorado Freeride Festival – Winter Park, United States
August 10-11: Crankworx Whistler – Whistler, Canada
August 24-25: Enduro Des Nations – Val d’Isere, France
October 19-20: Superenduro PRO – Finale Ligure, Italy
European media outlets have reported rumors that Lindsey Vonn is dating Tiger Woods, but Vonn says there’s nothing to it
“We are just friends,” Vonn told me Saturday after winning her second World Cup downhill in two days at Lake Louise, Alberta. “My brother was the ski instructor for his kids this November in Vail. Guessing that’s where it came from.”
Last year there were rumors in the European media that Vonn was dating Tim Tebow. That was untrue as well.
Beaver Creek — Marco Sullivan’s third-place finish in a downhill at Lake Louise last weekend got a lot of attention going into downhill training this week at Beaver Creek, but one of the team’s young racers has been creating a buzz as well.
Travis Ganong, 24, won Wednesday’s downhill training run and was fourth Thursday. So how does he approach Friday’s race?
“I’m going to do the same exact things I did in the training runs,” said Ganong, who is from Squaw Valley, Calif. “I’ve been fast all summer long in training, and it’s really cool to see on a World Cup hill I can be fast training here, too. The skiing is there, the speed is there, so I’ll just stick with the plan, have fun and enjoy it.”
If Ganong needs any advice, he can turn to Daron Rahlves, the man who was his idol growing up. Rahlves, also from the Squaw Valley area, was one of the team’s most successful downhillers before retiring in 2006. Rahlves won here twice and was on the podium three other times.
“He actually called me (Thursday) morning when I was on the chairlift, going up for inspection,” Ganong said. “We talked a bit about a couple sections on the course. It’s good to have that as a resource.”
But there was a full moon. And when I cover the Beaver Creek World Cup, I like to spend one night at Jay’s Cabin, a backcountry hut three miles west of Vail Pass.
I knew my overnight backcountry ski trip Wednesday might well be a backcountry hiking trip, but I was undeterred. And I’m glad I was.
It wound up being two miles of hiking and a mile of cross country skiing, but the moon was beautiful. I had the hut to myself, made myself some hot apple cider, went out on the deck and admired the moonlit landscape, made a nice fire in the fireplace and watched it flicker until I fell asleep. I got to see a nice sunrise Thursday morning and then headed back to Beaver Creek.
It certainly wasn’t like last year when I had plenty of snow to ski upon, and the surrounding hills shone white in the moonlight. But it was a rewarding mountaineering experience, and I’m glad I did it.
Even with limited snow, we need to count our blessings. Our mountains are always beautiful, even when they’re not as white as they’re supposed to be.
Beaver Creek — Even as Beaver Creek hosts men’s World Cup racing this week, many are thinking about the world alpine ski championships coming here Feb. 3-15, 2015.
The trail for a new women’s downhill — visible to the left of the men’s course in the attached photo — was cleared last summer. It figures to be tough and demanding, as it should be. The men’s course is considered one of the most technical tracks in the world.
“Thank God Beaver Creek wanted to do that and develop the hill,” former Canadian downhill great Todd Brooker said. “This will be the premier downhill for women. Like Cortina (Italy) is premier because it’s beautiful, but not because it’s particularly testing. This one will be testing. It will be amazing.”
Vail previously hosted world championships in 1989 and 1999. The world championships have been held in the U.S. only one other time, at Aspen in 1950.
I will have more on Vail 2015 in Thursday’s Denver Post.
Mikaela Shiffrin, 17, of Eagle-Vail, races during the first women's slalom run at the Nature Valley Aspen Winternational Audi FIS Ski World Cup at Aspen Mountain in Aspen on Sunday, Nov. 25, 2012. Shiffrin was the 10th qualifier to make it to Sunday's second run.
ASPEN — Eagle-Vail racer Mikaela Shiffrin sits in 10th place after the first run of Sunday’s World Cup slalom on Aspen Mountain but may be too far back to challenge for the podium in the second run.
Shiffrin is 1.98 seconds behind the morning pacesetter, Kathrin Zettel of Austria.
Shiffrin, 17, was the only American to qualify for the second run. Resi Stiegler was 36th and Julia Mancuso, a three-time Olympic medalist, was 44th. Only 45 racers finished the run.
Aspen — Eagle-Vail phenom Mikaela Shiffrin pulled off another eye-opening breakthrough Saturday, cracking the top 10 for the first time in a World Cup giant slalom.
Shiffrin, 17, finished ninth for the top U.S. finish in a race won by Tina Maze of Slovenia. Shiffrin has been on the podium twice in slalom races, but Saturday’s race was her seventh World Cup giant slalom start, the second time she qualified for a second run.
“Very exciting,” Shiffrin said. “In GS, man, that’s a big breakthrough.”
Four-time World Cup overall champion Lindsey Vonn finished 21st, an excellent result given severe fatigue in the aftermath of an intestinal illness that put her in the hospital for two days this month.
Vonn crumpled in the finish area after finishing her second run, looking like a cross country skier at the end of a 50-kilometer race.
“I feel like I did a 100-mile marathon and I’d never run more than five miles in my life,” Vonn said. “It was a struggle. I tried so hard to get energy back up for second run, but I just didn’t have it.”
Julia Mancuso of Squaw Valley, Calif., was 15th.
The Aspen event continues Sunday with a slalom.
Mikaela Shiffrin reacts after qualifying for the second run in giant slalom on Lower Ruthie's Run at the Nature Valley Aspen Winternational Audi FIS Ski World Cup at Aspen Mountain in Aspen on Saturday, Nov. 24, 2012. Shiffrin, 17, lives and trains in Vail.
ASPEN — Vail’s Lindsey Vonn and Eagle-Vail’s Mikaela Shiffrin did very well in the first run of Saturday’s World Cup giant slalom here.
Having lost some cardiovascular fitness this month because of an intestinal illness that put her in the hospital for two nights, Vonn still finished 10th in the first run. Shiffrin was 18th in just her seventh World Cup GS start, qualifying her for the second run for the second time in that discipline.
“I thought I skied really well,” Vonn said. “I came out attacking, especially the top and the flats. There was a compression delay on the bottom and I just stumped out — my legs just gave out on me. I used pretty much every last ounce of energy to pull out of that mistake, and the last 10 gates or so I just struggled to make it down and lost quite a bit of time.
My column in Tuesday’s Denver Post about the new Flaming Foliage Relay and bad feelings in Colorado about the Ragnar Relay Colorado drew some good reaction. I wanted to pass along this e-mail regarding Ragnar and how they do business.
Mr. Meyer,
Thanks for your article in today’s paper about the Colorado Relay. My name is Roxane Geisler and I direct the Highlands Ranch Running Club.
We have sent teams to the Colorado Relay for 3 consecutive years since 2010. This year we decided to put a competitive team together and try to average around 7-7:30 pace for all 188 miles. We did it and we won first overall. We were extremely happy to have accomplished this, but found out that Ragnar would not be holding ANY awards ceremony at all after the event. The website even stated that there would be an awards ceremony in an attempt to get people to stay over on Saturday night. That night, I texted back and forth with their question and answer department which I assume was somewhere in Utah, and they finally told me the awards would be mailed (complete with a texted smiley face
. We were very disappointed by this and a little upset with Ragnar for tearing down their finish line expo (without) any word about awards.
At the very least, we expected the mailed awards would be a little exciting. Instead, we were mailed relay batons and nothing else!!! We trained very hard for this race all summer long. We were partially motivated by the fact that we won only our division the year before and received really nice jackets and back packs. The overall winning team from 2011 got free entries to another relay.
Thanks for writing your interesting article about the upcoming new relay. The relays have been an important part of our running club, but as of now we are looking at taking a year off after a somewhat disappointing experience.
I would certainly love to discuss the matter further, so please do not hesitate to contact me.
Sincerely,
Roxane Geisler
www.highlandranchrunningclub.com
The lower 48 scenes from Warren Miller’s “Flow State” are telling. The Canyons segment could have been filmed in July. The Northstar footy – all terrain park – works to avoid shots showing swaths of dirt flanking the snow.
While the Alaska and Japan shots are exceptionally snowy, the U.S. shots in WME’s 63rd annual ski film reflect what was one of the driest ski seasons ever recorded. So it makes sense that Boulder’s Warren Miller Entertainment recently joined forces with Al Gore’s The Climate Reality Project.
With “Flow State” footage from Svaldbard, Norway showing shrinking glaciers and receding sea ice, the partnership will harness Warren Miller’s captivating videos and athlete power to grow awareness of climate change.
At Saturday’s showing at Denver’s Paramount Theatre, professional ski racer Ted Ligety spoke of his recent trip to Soelden, Austria for World Cup racing. He noted that he used to ride a T-bar to reach the top of the mountain there, but that chairlift is now dormant, dangling over dirt.
“It’s crazy to see how much that glacier has receded,” said Ligety, whose Flow State footy includes a spectacular, rag-dolling crash down a steep line in Alaska’s Chugachs.
The idea is that the athlete involvement in the “I Am Pro Snow” campaign and a soon-to-launch Warren Miller – Climate Reality Project effort will help galvanize skiers and snowboarders toward thwarting the effects of climate change as they see images of their beloved snow melting away.
Al Gore took the stage Saturday night at the “Flow State” 6 p.m. showing, saying his group was first drawn to Warren Miller’s team as the film crews and athletes began reporting alarming loss of snowpack in mountain ranges around the globe. Gore said the dwindling snowpacks can be connected to rampant wildfires in the West, the country’s lingering drought and Superstorm Sandy’s ravaging of the East Coast.
“It’s happening everywhere and we’ve got to do something about it. A lot of politicians are scared of Big Oil and Big Coal. I would like to think all the skiers and snowboarders together can make up Big Snow and put some counter pressure on this and say we really have to do something,” Gore said.
Converting sometimes abstract climate science into first-hand evidence is easier for mountain lovers, Gore said.
“When you experience is personally in a visceral way and you go back to the mountains and see the change in the snowpack, that’s a way to make a personal connection with it,” Gore said.
Gore said skiers and snowboarders are well equipped to tackle the thorny, divisive issues surrounding climate change.
We look at this challenge that’s ahead of us and a lot of folks say, ‘Can we do this?’” Gore said. “Hell yes we can do this. Let’s do it! I am pro snow!”
Vail — Mikaela Shiffrin is the youngest star of the U.S. Ski Team, but she was a crowd favorite Thursday evening when the team made a public appearance here that attracted about 300 fans to celebrate the start of a new season.
Shiffrin, 17, calls Eagle-Vail home, and last Saturday she captured her second podium appearance in just 12 World Cup slalom starts, finishing third in Levi, Finland. Shiffrin also finished third last season — her first on the World Cup — in a slalom at Lienz, Austria.
Julia Mancuso and Bode Miller also spoke to the crowd, but Shiffrin lit up the stage.
“I was born in Vail,” Shiffrin told the crowd. “I remember going up Chair 6 when I was 5 years old and I couldn’t reach the (safety) bar, but going up Chair 12 was like a two-person chair, it was tiny, you could put the bar down. That was great.”
Shiffrin beamed, and the crowd loved her.
The event also celebrated Vail’s 50th anniversary season. A few members of the 1962 U.S. Ski Team, who had a training camp in Vail that first season, were in attendance. One of them was Bill Marolt, now the team’s chief executive.
“I think the thing that’s really cool about Vail, and the reason it has such tremendous racing heritage and history is because of the guys who founded it –- Peter Seibert, Morrie Shepard -– all of those guys who came here in the early days and believed in ski racing, and believed that ski racing could make a difference in a resort. It’s clear that it has.”
I am writing a feature on Shiffrin that will appear soon in The Denver Post. The women’s World Cup comes to Aspen Nov. 24-25 for giant slalom and slalom races.
Shaun White is on the initial invitee list for X Games Aspen 2013. (AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post)
The schedule for X Games Aspen 2013 has been set, and the first list of invites has gone out, ESPN announced Thursday.
The X Games hit Buttermilk Mountain Jan. 24-27, and of course tops on initial invite list is master of the superpipe Shaun White.
As well, Denver freeskier Bobby Brown is one of the first invitees as are snowboarder Kelly Clark, snocross racer Tucker Hibbert and snowboarder Mark McMorris, who won gold last year in slopestyle and big air.
This will be the first season without the skiercross event, which was put on hold for a season but could return for 2014. But coming back this season is the snowmobile snocross race.
A look at the complete schedule:
There isn’t much snow in the high country, as the peaks around Loveland ski area show, but the limited skiing on man-made trails there is excellent. (John Meyer, The Denver Post)
I skied Loveland, Arapahoe Basin, Keystone and Copper Mountain on Thursday to get a feel for what kind of ski experience those areas are offering. And I must say, while the terrain they offer is extremely limited, the snow quality is excellent at all four areas.
The surrounding mountains are mostly brown, Loveland Pass is mostly barren and the only trails open are covered with manmade snow. But if you’re itching to make some turns, I think it’s worth going.
Loveland and A-Basin each have one lift open with two fairly short trails and a terrain park. Keystone has one trail open, from top to bottom, and a terrain park. Copper Mountain has one trail open from mid-mountain.
I had a great time at all four areas, especially Keystone and Copper.
And when I was done at Copper, I headed for Vail Pass on my road bike — in light-shirt temperature.
Breckenridge opens Friday, and ski areas are hoping to benefit from a promising storm this weekend.
Copper Mountain — U.S. Ski Team downhillers have checked into Copper Mountain for training at the U.S. Ski Team Speed Center, and they fired up about it.
They should be. Nowhere else in the world right now can racers train full-on downhill. Speeds on the team’s exclusive training track, now in its second season, can reach 80 mph, and there are jumps of 50-70 meters. Racers free-skied the hill Wednesday and will begin training Thursday.
The men have their first World Cup downhill/super-G races Nov. 24-25 at Lake Louise, Alberta. The following weekend they will race at Beaver Creek.
With the Eastern Seaboard reeling from the effects of Hurricane Sandy and airline schedules disrupted in much of the country because of the storm, New York City Marathon organizers have not decided whether Sunday’s race will be run.
Here is a statement from Mary Wittenberg, CEO of the New York Road Runners and the marathon’s race director:
“This is a very challenging time for the people and City of New York. The City is rightfully focused on assessment, restoration and recovery. At NYRR, we stand with our City agency partners and support their efforts.
“The Marathon has always been a special day for New Yorkers as a symbol of the vitality and resiliency of this City. NYRR continues to move ahead with its planning and preparation. We will keep all options open with regard to making any accommodations and adjustments necessary to race day and race weekend events.
“We will provide an update and more detail as information becomes available.”
With Bob Beattie, the father of the US Ski Team and co-founder of the World Cup.
It was such a wonderful blessing to share my Colorado Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame induction with family and dear friends Friday night. There was a lot of love at my table, and that was my favorite part of the evening. Lindsey Vonn, Picabo Street, Billy Kidd and John Garnsey said some truly touching things in the video about me, and many of Colorado’s ski legends made me feel very special and appreciated. I’ve always tried to write about skiing, the most spiritual of all sports, with passion and heart and soul. It is deeply rewarding to see how my work has connected with others who share that passion.
Congratulations to my fellow inductees: Bill Bergman, Toby Dawson, Jerry Gart, Paul Testwuide, Ralph Walton and Tom Jankovsky.
Excerpts from my speech:
U.S. Women's alpine ski racer, Lindsey Vonn, left, talks with former World Cup skier, Brenda Buglinoe Kirwood.
Pleased to announce that Lindsey Vonn and Ted Ligety have agreed to another season of weekly World Cup diaries in The Denver Post with my collaboration. This will be Vonn’s ninth season of World Cup diaries in the Post. Over that time she has progressed from being America’s most talented young prospect to her status now as the best female ski racer in the world — and one on pace to become the greatest female ski racer of all time. She has won the women’s overall World Cup title four of the past five seasons and is the reigning Olympic downhill champion.
This will Ligety’s seventh season with the Post. He has won three World Cup giant slalom season titles and has been the top U.S. male racer the past four seasons.
Overall winner U.S. Lance Armstrong standing on the winners' podium after the 21st stage of the 92nd Tour de France cycling race in Paris, July 24, 2005.
While I’m sure Lance Armstrong’s sympathizers will continue to defend him because of his work with cancer victims, the rest of us can call him what he is — one of the worst cheaters in the history of sport.
If you aren’t persuaded by the news reports that have come out since USADA made its case against him public, I encourage you to read it for yourself. Read the USADA statement, then the Reasoned Decision. Here are two points I believe are crucial:
– From the Reasoned Decision: “Had Mr. Armstrong not refused to confront the evidence against him in a hearing, the witnesses in the case of The United States Anti-Doping Agency v. Lance Armstrong would have testified under oath with a legal duty to testify truthfully or face potential civil and/or criminal consequences.”
– From the USADA statement: “The riders who participated in the USPS Team doping conspiracy and truthfully assisted have been courageous in making the choice to stop perpetuating the sporting fraud, and they have suffered greatly. In addition to the public revelations, the active riders have been suspended and disqualified appropriately in line with the rules. In some part…it would have been easier for them if it all would just go away; however, they love the sport, and they want to help young athletes have hope that they are not put in the position they were — to face the reality that in order to climb to the heights of their sport they had to sink to the depths of dangerous cheating.
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