Beaver Creek – When Bode Miller says the “capitalism of sport” and commercialism of ski racing is sapping his motivation, he overlooks a reality so obvious I believe he just doesn’t want to acknowledge it.
Miller got into the sport to test his limits, but without the money that flows into the World Cup through sponsorship, rights fees and subsidies, he wouldn’t have the opportunity to do it with the world’s best racers on a painstakingly prepared course in excess of 70 mph.
When all the costs are added up – preparing the race course, transporting, housing and feeding a dozen ski teams, televising the races here and in Europe – last week’s races at Beaver Creek cost about $3 million to put on. Snowmaking alone on the 1.7-mile Birds of Prey downhill cost in excess of $100,000.
Nearly 700 volunteers worked tens of thousands of hours, some with headlamps on their heads and crampons on their feet, to clear snow that fell in prodigious amounts. Meanwhile the U.S. Ski Team, Vail Resorts and the Vail Valley Foundation subsidized the races, because they don’t attract enough revenue to cover costs.
“Everybody involved wants to be as pure as they can be to the sport – the organizers, the ski team, the FIS, the athletes, the sponsors,” said Ceil Folz, president of the Vail Valley Foundation. “At the same time, there is a reality to everything. You have to figure out how to make it true to the sport, fair, and still make a value to all of those components, and to make it successful for every single one of those.”
The ski team hopes somewhere a young athlete as talented as Miller will see him flying downhill on television and decide to follow in his tracks.
“It is not a net financial gain proposition to run a World Cup ski race in the United States,” said Tom Kelly, spokesman for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association. “That’s OK. We don’t look at it as losing money; we look at it as an investment in the sport.”
When bad weather bore down on the Vail Valley, a lot of people got very nervous about their investments. When a race is canceled, it wipes out the telecast in the U.S. and Europe. The dollars from rights fees and sponsorships are reduced. Everybody involved takes a significant hit.
“In order for us to get the races on television and to do the things necessary to raise the money to produce the race, and raise the profile of the sport, everybody involved has to take some risks,” Kelly said. “When there is a weather problem and we lose a race, there’s a financial downside.”
Sometimes that means the racers have to take extra risks. Thursday’s super-G was held in a vicious storm that threatened to cause a cancellation at any moment. World Cup officials want to avoid cancellations if at all possible, so they pressed on, but some coaches complained the race should have been stopped for safety reasons. An indignant Guenther Hujara, the race director for the men’s tour, pointed out no one was injured, although 30 percent of the field failed to finish.
“There was not one fall,” Hujara said. “Safety was on a level we could take responsibility for.”
At that point, with another massive storm taking dead aim on the valley, almost everyone thought it would take a miracle to pull off Friday’s downhill. But thanks to incredible efforts by Beaver Creek slope maintenance crews and the army of volunteers who worked hard in miserable conditions, all were rewarded by one of the great days in U.S. ski racing: Daron Rahlves won and Miller finished second.
Add great performances by Miller, Rahlves and Erik Schlopy on Saturday in giant slalom and Ted Ligety’s stunning third place in slalom Sunday, and it was an unforgettable four days of racing.
It was “a consummate team effort on the part of our athletes, our coaches, their tech guys, our sponsors, the Vail Valley Foundation and Vail/Beaver Creek,” said Bill Marolt, chief executive of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association. “Without the support of the Vail Valley Foundation and Beaver Creek, particularly the volunteers who (worked so hard) for four days, these races couldn’t have come off.”
Staff writer John Meyer can be reached at 303-820-1616 or jmeyer@denverpost.com.
