START HOUSE
A Season to Remember
It can’t be mid-April already. How can the season be over? It has been too, too good of a winter!
Let’s start with the nordic combined performance. Coming off a spectacular world championship last season,
the guys ripped up the Olympic hill to set further records and put nordic combined on the country’s sports map.
In freestyle and snowboard, the U.S. athletes cranked out Olympic medals with inspiring performances. For
the alpine team, Vancouver was historic thanks to Julia Mancuso’s stunning medal run, Bode Miller’s brilliance
and Andrew Weibrecht’s bronze. The nation, led astray by in-the-dark media types who emerge from ball-sport
caverns every four years to cover the Winter Games, half expected Lindsey Vonn haul in five medals. But Winter
Olympic races are often very inequitable — just a blip in racing day-in, day-out for four straight years of competition — so to see Vonn capture downhill gold was a perfect example of an athlete executing to her utmost ability
despite the pressure, weather and media hype.
In earning gold and bronze in Vancouver and adding three more globes — including her third big one, the
overall title — to her already enormous haul, Vonn made one Ski Racing award pretty easy. You can find this
and other awards starting on page 18. As always, there are the fine-line choices. It was particularly true with the
men’s alpine Junior of the Year award, which came down to two athletes who shadowed each other all season.
Not so, however, with the women’s junior title, where
the winner is the youngest since Julia Mancuso took
her first of four junior titles, a record that many said
would never be equaled. We will see.
Despite the fact that most of us at Ski Racing would
like to see this year never end, it has, and you will be
able to find many of the spring races in this issue, including the FIS Spring Series at Mission Ridge and an
inside look at Whistler Cup. Furthermore it will not
be long before camps and spring testing get underway. If you are traveling to camp this summer make
sure to read Jack Moore’s column on how to have your
skis get to their destination in top shape.
Don’t forget: If you want to keep up with what is going on all spring and summer, keep turning to the Ski
Racing website. Eric Williams and Hank McKee will
be putting readers in touch with what’s happening
locally and around the world. Of immediate importance is the bid by Beaver Creek (and Vail) bid for the
2015 Alpine World Championships. Not only would
a win be huge for ski sport in North America, but it
also could mean a restructuring of World Cup alpine
racing in the United States. The organizers have indicated they will build a new women’s downhill course near the
Birds of Prey track. With a victorious bid, the FIS would likely award a test World Cup event, bringing women’s
downhill stateside for the first time since Aspen hosted women’s downhill in 2007. And if the FIS follows current
form it should also mean that the Colorado resort would host the World Cup Finals event in the spring of 2014,
bringing most, if not all, the Sochi Olympic medalists to the Rockies. World Cup racing in the spring; how sweet
it would be! Follow the lead-up to the all-important FIS council vote on the Ski Racing website.
For Ski Racing it has been an extraordinary year. Sarah Tuff and the editors — Hank McKee, Eric Williams and
Shauna Farnell — along with art director Rand Paul took on digital production. Bill McCollom made us smile all
season with his pithy ski racing insights. Peter Graves found time from his Vancouver-announcing duties to bring
us the season’s nordic heroics. Bryce Hubner covered the colleges, introducing the popular “power rankings.”
Publishing digitally was an all-new learning experience for us, our advertising partners and USSA. Not everyone
was thrilled to lose the print version but the economy gave us little choice. Fortunately most of you went with the
change, and the more the staff experiments and learns, the more we feel we can bring dynamic ski sport coverage
to you.
At Mount Hood and in the Wasatch they are still skiing powder, which will change to corn soon and then to the
salted hardness racers love to hate. It won’t be long, however, before we will be reporting results from south of
the equator. In the meantime, keep watching the web for the latest in all ski disciplines and enjoy your summer.
We will see you in the fall. — G.B. Jr.
ART
ART DIRECTOR
RAND PAUL
PHOTOGRAPHERS
JONATHAN SELKOWITZ
JULIE SHIPMAN
EDITORIAL
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
SARAH TUFF
SENIOR EDITOR
HANK MCKEE
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
SHAUNA FARNELL
ERIC WILLIAMS
CONTRIBUTING
WRITERS
PETER Q. GRAVES
BRYCE HUBNER
BILL MCCOLLOM
JACK MOORE
SALES/MARKETING
ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE
NANCY MERRILL
SALES AND MARKETING
COORDINATOR
AMY DOXEY
SKI RACING
INTERNATIONAL, LLC
CHAIRMAN/CEO
GARY BLACK JR.
CONTROLLER
KRISTIN FARRELL
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SR UPDATES
That’s not all, folks. Keep up with ski sport
news all summer long at SkiRacing.com. From
equipment changes and coaching moves to
training camps, we’ll have the news you need.
So you bought an iPad? Read this magazine
on your new device. We’re also working on a new
mobile phone app. Stay tuned!
