Team Nike, led by Vail’s Mike Kloser, was 90 minutes behind the leader Monday afternoon, while Team Salomon Crested Butte was about 4 1/2 hours off the leaders’ pace as both teams transitioned from a 10-hour trek into a mountain bike leg on the second day of the 310-mile Adventure Racing World Championships in Scotland.
Team Nike, with Idaho racer Michael Tobin, Breckenridge’s Mona Merrill and Kiwi Chris Forne, is the defending champion of the elite adventure race, which began Sunday with a 12-hour sea kayak race. By Monday afternoon, the Colorado racers had passed through eight of 35 checkpoints. Once the racers finished Monday’s seven-checkpoint mountain bike leg, they were scheduled to swim across a bay on Scotland’s Loch Ness.
ADVENTURE RACING: Primal Quest back in 2008
Officials for Primal Quest, the Super Bowl of adventure racing, announced last week it will return to an undetermined U.S. location in the spring of 2008. In 2006, Primal Quest Utah lured 360 adventure racers from around the globe to the wilds surrounding Moab.
The 10-day event ranked as one of the most demanding, with brutal terrain and record heat forcing racers to dig deeper than ever. This spring, race organizers announced the race’s future was in jeopardy and there would be no 2007 race. Utah race director Don Mann, who has staged more multisport, multiday races than any other race organizer in the world, will take over as Primal Quest’s CEO. His wife, Dawn Taylor-Mann, who has run more than 100 adventure races, will be the operations manager.
Registrations will be accepted beginning July 1. Go to www.ecoprimalquest.com.
SNOWBOARDING: Vail teen selected for U.S. rookie squad
Broc Waring, a 14-year-old Vail snowboarder who has been wowing coaches and competitors in the halfpipe since he was 11, last week was named to the U.S. Snowboarding Freestyle Team’s rookie squad.
Waring, a longtime rider with the Ski & Snowboard Club Vail and an eighth-grader at Vail Mountain School, joins Minturn’s Dylan Bidez on the rookie team. With Dylan’s sister Clair on the women’s halfpipe team, the potential for a Vail Valley Olympic snowboarding medal triples.
SKIING: Crested Butte reviving free riding program
Free Ski at Crested Butte rises from a seven-year hibernation this fall with no- strings-attached free riding at the Gunnison County hill from Nov. 25 to Dec. 15. From 1991 to 2000, the free skiing program at Crested Butte filled the town’s lodges, bars and restaurants in the early-season weeks when ski areas struggle for business. As the area’s financial struggles worsened, the free ski program quietly was nixed. This year’s revival follows the same path forged by the previous free skiing program: no registration, no purchases necessary, no gimmicks. Just walk up and get your ticket and find out why locals don’t leave C.B. in the winter.
SKI AREAS: Senators told global warming bad for business
Michael Berry, president of the 326-member National Ski Areas Association, told a panel of U.S. senators last week the ski business stands to suffer tremendously if global warming continues unchecked.
Berry told the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Environmental and Public Works that the ski industry’s 2002 cutting-edge climate change policy spurred the ski resort industry to action. Today, Berry told the committee, 59 ski resorts purchase renewable energy credits and 28 percent of those hills are totally green-powered. The first wind turbine will begin providing power at a ski area in August at Massachusetts’ Jiminy Peak, and green building techniques are sweeping the industry, Berry said.
Berry cited 16 years of research showing a decline in the number of days U.S. ski areas are open, and the trend toward shorter seasons will continue as the world’s climate warms. That means more expensive snowmaking and more economic impacts trickling beyond the $5 billion resort industry.
“We know that solutions exist to address this problem, and trust that policy makers will act quickly and decisively in putting solutions in place,” Berry said.
CYCLING: Boulder’s Powers in worlds
Boulder cyclist Alison Powers, a former downhiller on the U.S. Ski Team from Winter Park, qualified for the world cycling championships Friday by winning a time trial at the Pan American championships in Valencia, Venezuela. Powers covered the 20-kilometer course in 27 minutes, 3 seconds, to beat runner-up Guiseppi Grassi of Mexico by 28 seconds.
The UCI Road World Championships will be held in September in Germany.
