For the primary time in 24 years — and solely the fourth time ever — Copper Mountain will host World Cup ski racing this November, simply 9 weeks earlier than the Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, Italy.
4 days of racing will start on Thanksgiving Day. The ladies will race slalom and big slalom, which occur to be one of the best occasions for Colorado native Mikaela Shiffrin, the winningest World Cup racer in historical past. The boys will race big slalom and super-G.
Copper Mountain has hosted World Cup racing solely thrice. In 1976, the women and men raced slalom and big slalom three weeks after the Innsbruck Winter Olympics, the place Germany’s Rosi Mittermaier received three medals. Mittermaier then received each girls’s races at Copper, which subsequently named the slope the place she competed “Rosi’s Run,” a reputation it nonetheless holds.
On two different events, Copper Mountain stepped in to host November girls’s slalom and big slalom World Cup races after resorts that had been scheduled to host these races lacked appropriate snow situations for racing. In 1999, Copper took races that had been scheduled for Park Metropolis, Utah. Two years later, it stepped in for Aspen.
The week following the Copper Mountain races, the boys will race at Beaver Creek, which has been a daily cease for males’s downhill, super-G and big slalom since 1997.
It’s uncommon for the World Cup to schedule males’s and girls’s races over 4 days on the similar venue. Ladies’s big slalom and slalom races usually are held Thanksgiving weekend in Killington, Vt., however that resort is changing a raise that serves the race venue. The races are anticipated to return to Killington in 2026, a two-hour drive from Burke Mountain Academy, the place Shiffrin went to highschool.
“Though I’ll miss racing at Killington this Thanksgiving, I’m so excited that World Cup ski racing is coming to Copper Mountain for women and men,” Shiffrin stated in a information launch. “Athletes from throughout the globe come to Copper early within the season particularly, and in springtime, to get one of the best coaching on the earth and finest preparation for World Cup racing. It’s so thrilling to see Copper as a real World Cup race venue, and I’m significantly excited as a result of it’s so near house. I can sleep in my very own mattress, and my group can come and expertise it.”
Whereas World Cup racing is uncommon for Copper Mountain, many elite racers are very acquainted with the venue. Since 2011, Copper Mountain has partnered with the U.S. Ski Group to supply preseason race coaching on the U.S. Ski Group Pace Heart when most resorts all over the world don’t have temperatures and snowmaking gear able to offering full-on downhill tracks. Another nations additionally practice at that venue earlier than the downhill season begins.
Copper additionally hosts the U.S. Grand Prix for elite halfpipe rivals yearly.
“Internet hosting an alpine World Cup occasion at Copper is a pure match for us,” stated Dustin Lyman, Copper Mountain president and basic supervisor. “We’re acknowledged as ‘the athlete’s mountain,’ partly as a result of the world’s elite snow sports activities athletes practice and compete on our venues. Now, we’re excited to showcase our distinctive racing venue on the world stage.”
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