If you think ski racing is boring, I’m guessing you’ve only seen it on a TV screen during the Olympics. And there’s a good chance you can’t name a ski racer not named Mikaela Shiffrin or Lindsey Vonn.
But here’s a suggestion: Consider spending a morning at Beaver Creek next month when the men’s World Cup tour holds downhill and super-G races there. The annual Birds of Prey races, always held the first weekend in December, is by far my favorite event of ski season.
The course is widely considered one of the best and most challenging in the world. There are bleachers and a large video screen at the finish area, so you can watch what’s happening above you before the racers come into view (the start line is almost half a mile away). There is race commentary over loudspeakers, and there is no admission charge. It’s just a great place to hang out for an hour or two, be exhilarated by the high-energy vibe, experience the thrill of watching racers risking all sorts of orthopedic trauma for glory in a sport with loads of history, and enjoy being in the mountains.
I have covered about 70 World Cup races at Beaver Creek, plus world ski championships held there in 1989, 1999 and 2015. I’ve also seen downhill drama play out at seven Winter Olympics and dozens of other World Cup races in Aspen, Switzerland, Austria, Italy and France. Those years left me with huge admiration for the athletic ability, strength, balance, technique and courage that downhill racers possess.
Now, I will concede that slalom and giant slalom, the slower and more technical disciplines of ski racing, can be difficult to appreciate if you’re not a skier. But you don’t need to know anything about downhill and super-G to be thrilled watching racers hurtling down the mountain at speeds that could get you pulled over for speeding if you went that fast on the drive up from Denver.
Yet it’s amazing how close the races are. Aleksander Aamodt Kilde of Norway (who happens to be Shiffrin’s boyfriend), won last year’s downhill at Beaver Creek by averaging 58 mph on a course that drops an ear-popping 2,470 feet in 1.65 miles. His top speed hit 75 mph, and there have been years when the top speed reached well into the 80s. Yet Kilde’s winning margin over Swiss racer Marco Odermatt was just six-hundredths of a second on a course with multiple high-speed turns, bumps and jumps.
Incredibly close margins are common in ski racing. At the 1999 Beaver Creek world championships, the top two racers tied for the gold medal in super-G while the bronze medalist finished a mere one-hundredth of a second behind them. The top six racers finished within 0.28 of a second that day.
Keep in mind, it’s not like you’d be killing a whole day just to watch a ski race two hours from Denver. You can ski Beaver Creek before the race, getting in few runs of your own before the races start at 10:45 a.m. You don’t even have to watch the whole race, because the winner almost always comes from the first 30 racers. and when you’ve had enough, you can ski some more. When you’re done, there will be all sorts of events in Beaver Creek Village including live music, daily giveaways and racer autograph signings.
Three days of races will be on tap. Downhills are scheduled on Dec. 1-2. On Dec. 3, there will be a super-G, a race discipline with more turns and slower speeds than downhill, but still generates speeds of up to 60 mph. They will be the only World Cup downhill and super-G races in North America this winter. The women race giant slalom and slalom on Thanksgiving weekend at Killington, Vt., and all the other World Cup races this winter will take place in Europe.
