Possible new World Cup Downhill/Super-G venue

[4ster]

Proposed early-season Matterhorn World Cup speed races gain momentum

Imagine downhill racers launching themselves from a 3,899-meter start altitude, racing in the shadow of […]

skiracing.com

 

[Jwrags]

Sounds very cool!

 

[ski otter 2]

On the face of it, wonderful. Zermatt. The Matterhorn. A two country event at once.

But the first comment at the bottom of that article sounds very real also: that this will harm the early season downhill/SG course program at Copper Mountain, and possibly weaken or end the Lake Louise Downhill also, thus lessening North American involvement. Again.

As that comment suggests, is FIS Europe dealing with the early season Copper Mountain Program and course training as a competitor to weaken, and compete with? And ditto with the North American early season Lake Louise race, which maybe only makes sense as an "easier" break in race with so many international racers already in North America training at Copper?

 

[Rudi Riet]

The European teams definitely would favor a new early season speed event on their side of the Atlantic - anything to save money and time. Given the critical mass of the Euro squads vis-a-vis the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, Japan, et al, they'll likely throw considerable support behind the Zermatt-Cervinia idea.

It costs a lot to locate a team and their support crew on another continent. Copper's venue is great in that it can handle multiple teams at a time (and overflow can go to Breckenridge, Keystone, Loveland, and Aspen without much hassle). But it's a big logistical undertaking, and many athletes prefer to sleep in their own beds and not travel to extremes. USST and CAST have adjusted to things by renting apartments in Europe to create a "home base" setup for the majority of the season, but it's still not the same as being at home with all the creature comforts.

So if this means that teams from France, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Liechtenstein, Belgium, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Andorra, Poland, and the like can shorten (or even eliminate) travel to North America they'd likely jump at the chance. The FIS has already done a de facto elimination of the formerly traditional spring swing through North America, and has mostly disqualified new World Cup venues outside of Europe by wanting to cluster multiple disciplines per venue - i.e. you won't see single day/single discipline stops in North America like you see in Europe (e.g. Schladming and Flachau night slaloms). They make a decent business argument for it in terms of projected attendance (tho Killington's events attract huge crowds, and Park City's "America's Opening" events always drew big crowds due to their accessible venue).

Nyman has a somewhat salient point about having a challenging speed block at the beginning of the season, but not every early DH has been a "cakewalk" style event. He also sells Birds of Prey a bit short (sure, it's not the hardest DH on the circuit, but it's technically demanding). Lake Louise is certainly an easy entry into speed in the early winter.

It's most telling that the Zermatt-Cervinia venue touts its high elevation as being resistant to climate change. High altitudes will help - and will add challenge given the lower oxygen content. But this also points out the low elevations of many legacy venues, most of which have challenges making or retaining snow. The North American venues currently on the circuit are more climate change resistant due to a combination of elevation (Beaver Creek), latitude (Lake Louise), or state-of-the-art snowmaking (Killington). They also handle multiple races in one stop, and all can be up and running early in the season.

This early season requirement has basically quashed any possibility of many former venues holding World Cups again unless things change within FIS. Looking at some of the old guard venues:
- Whistler's snowpack is more reliable in February, March, or April than in November or December (read: not likely to host World Cups again).
- Park City isn't likely to host World Cups again until SLC lands another Olympic bid (and they also have a competing venue being built at Utah Olympic Park next to the bob/luge track and the jumps for nordic and freestyle - these SL, GS, freeride, and mogul trails will be competition use only).
- Snowbasin is in the same boat as Park City and would also need some infrastructure reinstalled (e.g. A nets) and their tracks re-homologated.
- Canmore/Nakiska is a great CAST training venue but is unlikely to hold World Cups unless Calgary lands the Olympics again.
- Lake Placid's speed tracks are woefully outdated (if you think Lake Louise's track is a glider's paradise...), and all of their racing trails are located above the base area and hard to access for spectators (also, snow issues early season).
- (Soon-to-be-renamed) Squaw Valley is better as springtime venue.
- Mont Tremblant hasn't held a World Cup in decades and has shown no inclination to do so.

The TL;DR: this is a big shot across the bow to Copper and other North American training and racing venues in terms of early season viability. Will the U.S. and Canadian ski associations react in kind?

 

[4ster]

Nice synopsis @Rudi Riet , thanks.

 

[ski otter 2]

The thing is, this is supposed to be an international sport, not just a local European one, some would hope.

 

[ZionPow]

Park City isn't likely to host World Cups again until SLC lands another Olympic bid (and they also have a competing venue being built at Utah Olympic Park next to the bob/luge track and the jumps for nordic and freestyle - these SL, GS, freeride, and mogul trails will be competition use only)

I have not heard about a competing venue at UOP. Any links?

 

[Rudi Riet]

A couple links for you:

The official skinny:

Mountain Expansion | Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation

The Utah Olympic park is just as exciting in the summer, with a countless number of camps, activities, and summer training.

utaholympiclegacy.org

And the local media reaction

Utah Olympic Park expansion seen as path to industry standard for ski racers

Park City has hundreds of skiable acres, but very few of them mean much to up-and-coming Alpine and moguls athletes. Park City Ski and Snowboard, the University of Utah

www.parkrecord.com

Rowmark, Park City Winter Sports Team, and the U of Utah Ski Team are fundraising like mad for this thing. These teams already train slalom at UOP.

 

[4ster]

I have a friend who is a coach for Rowmark. They were training at the UOP venue this year AFAIK.

 

[Average Joe]

There is no doubt that this plan is to the detriment of the US and Canadian speed teams.
It's not just "one race," it's the full early season Copper---->Birds of Prey----->Lake Louise training and racing sequence, so beneficial to our domestic teams, that is at risk.
The Copper sessions will likely be truncated and lose much of their value to our developing speed skiers (depending on the snowmaking schedule of course).

 

[Primoz]

It is international sport, but nowadays it's not so much about sport but about money. With that, there are 3 things to look for. One, slightly (or a lot) less important are spectators on site. I guess we can all agree that especially LL, it's on pair with kid races on local hill. They had less spectators in their whole history together, then single race with no spectators (by European standards) have in single race. Second thing, way more important are sponsors. Most, well honestly every single one, sponsors of FIS and World cup comes from Europe. Big majority of them have no or very low presence on markets outside of Europe, so they don't care about US/Canada market and races in that area.
And then there's third thing and that's TV ratings. I guess we can all agree that skiing is non-existing sport in US, when it comes to tv ratings (not talking about Olympics now). Like it or not, it's so. So when you add all these 3 together, you can actually see why noone cares all that much about oversea venues.
There's also another thing, but as I wrote earlier, it's not so much about sports and athletes but about money, so this one is more or less irrelevant issue. Noone of European teams is too happy to move overseas for those 2 or 3 weeks. It's just so much logistics, money and traveling involved, that they would be happy to skip all that. But that's more or less irrelevant as noone really cares what athletes, coaches, and other team members think or wish.

 

[Rudi Riet]

I have a friend who is a coach for Rowmark. They were training at the UOP venue this year AFAIK.

Yup - they train slalom there most of the time. The current alpine setup at UOP allows for 2 or 3 lanes of SL gates to be set. And as they have for years, they train how to handle jumps and air at speed at UOP. GS and other disciplines are still practiced at Park City.

The new trails at UOP should be cut this summer if they stick to plans.

 

[James]

So is the sense that if this becomes a thing, eventually Lake Louise and Birds of Prey would be cancelled?
That wouldn’t leave much reason to have Killington or Aspen.
Not sure if Killington could have pulled it off this season. Early weather was terrible and warm. One of the worst Novembers in a while. We had no early season.

 

[Primoz]

Not sure if Killington could have pulled it off this season. Early weather was terrible and warm. One of the worst Novembers in a while. We had no early season.

That doesn't really matter. There's at least few good points with Killington, so bad winter doesn't really matter all that much. Look at for example Maribor. In last 10 years, there were maybe 2 or 3 years that whole program went through normally (moving races to Kranjska Gora doesn't count as went through normally), yet noone even thinks on not having this stop. So bad winter (or 3) in Killington wouldn't matter at all, unless they would matter for Killington themself and they wouldn't want to host another race.