As I write this latest post, I am flying over the Rocky Mountains. It’s Halloween and already there is significant snowfall visible from here at our comfortable cruising altitude. Makes me wish the neighbors would be handing out lift tickets instead of candy corn later tonight. If that were the case, I’d drag my kids door to door until they keeled over.
That’s where my head is at right now. Easy to drift a little since this is always a strange time on the World Cup schedule. Call it the November lull. After the traditional GS openers in Austria, the circuit takes a few weeks off, resumes with a slalom in Finland then takes another sabbatical before revving into weekly competition mode on Thanksgiving weekend. Of course, it’s not like the racers themselves shut it down by any means during the break. It is actually one of the most vital training blocks of the whole year. Many of the U.S. skiers are gathering in Colorado this weekend for an extended camp on North American snow for the first time in many months. They will be joined by select individuals from other nations for training sessions in what typically are the best conditions anywhere on the planet at this time of the calendar year. Since the southern Hemisphere is phasing into their spring and Europe is always unpredictable in early November, often times the higher elevations of the Rockies prove most reliable. They also provide a more conducive environment for longer gate running such as downhill and Super G.
It just seems odd for any major sport to take breaks from competition like this right off the bat. Can you imagine NASCAR opening its season with the Daytona 500 as it always does, but then going away for a month and a half before they start their engines again? It’s true that in skiing, not every discipline competes on every weekend, even during the middle of the season. But I’m thinking from the fan’s perspective on this one. For those of us who follow the racers and the action, it’s hard to get excited about that first event when you know it’s only short lived. It’s like, “hey, great, the season is here…but…now it’s not.” Hard to get invested when there is no rhythm to the beat. Gotta be somewhat tough on the skiers themselves too. We see some of the techies in Solden, a few new and different faces in Levi three weeks later and then an entirely new list of names two more weeks down the road when the speed folks finally click in. If you ski GS but not slalom, you’re going to get some six weeks between races. Training is all fine and good, but after you start running gates for real, don’t you want to immediately build on your result? Whatever the outcome, good or bad, there is a benefit to getting right back out there because no matter how hard you try, it’s always difficult to duplicate the intensity of a competitive, racing environment in training.
Problem is, there may be no good answer to the dilemma. As I said earlier, snow conditions can be sketchy in most places in the fall and even where they are most reliable like North America, both the U.S. and Canada already hold early season races in Lake Louise, Beaver Creek and Aspen. Given the economic situation in the sport and the logistical challenges of staging races at this level, the continent may not be able to offer much more. Perhaps the skiers could stay on the glaciers in Europe for another week or two? Maybe we start the season in North America and then move on to Europe instead of going back and forth? That might also allow for an earlier finish in March when conditions also can take a turn toward the unfavorable and you never like to see the Finals hampered by weather the way they were last year. However, many stops on the tour are comfortable with their existing dates on the calendar and may not be receptive to change. Crafting the schedule is already enough of a headache for the FIS and the national federations because even when the dates are set, inevitably some get altered if not altogether cancelled as weather develops in-season. Money, logistics and politics…they all play a role. And anytime you combine these three ingredients in any elixir, it’s impossible to please everybody.
But then again, what do I know? I’m stuck in a middle seat at 36,000 feet, paying $2.00 for coffee and trying to avoid a bad Kevin Costner movie. (come to think of it, when was his last good one?) All the while looking out and wondering how I can get to that white stuff that is haunting me below.
Happy Halloween.
