What began as a gang of paddling pals racing down the Eagle River has become Colorado’s mountain Olympics, an X-styled extravaganza of paddling, biking, running and climbing.
The Teva Mountain Games descend on the Vail Valley this week. With the surge of spring runoff comes the top names in mountain sports and the biggest party on the sunny side of X. With humble roots still anchored in the everydude’s “race you to the bar” ethos, the Teva Mountain Games have managed to deliver the thrills of a major made-for-prime time production while not just maintaining but elevating its local athletic heritage.
“Vail is such a natural place to be able to preserve that grassroots appeal and still have that iconic appeal,” said Joel Heath, whose firm Untraditional Marketing founded the Teva Mountain Games six years ago. “We sometimes forget that so many of our local athletes, who we see all the time, are internationally recognized stars. It’s easy to preserve the grassroots side with them around.”
This year the competition and festival will be smoking hot. The kayak race down the silly-steep Class V Homestake Creek will thump with an added 100 cfs, delivering a truly daunting showdown in what traditionally has been a manky, shallow-water plummet. The Dowd Chute race arrives in perfect time for the peak of spring runoff.
Tour de France champion Floyd Landis is racing the Games’ hill climb up Vail Pass and the cross country mountain bike race. There’s a new freestyle-slopestyle mountain bike event that will leave jaws dragging the dirt. A new downriver race on Gore Creek from East Vail to the Vail Village taps one of the greatest features of the valley. The dogs will be hucking 30-plus feet. A 5K sprint has spun out of the nationally recognized 10K trail race.
The Oscars-for-the-outdoors Everest Awards, a much deserved coronation for the most influential athletes in outdoor sports, is open for the public this year, pulling back the curtain on what ranks as the most righteous night in the outdoors world.
The Everest Awards’ most talked about award this year is the expedition of the year. Aspen’s Chris Davenport, who skied all 54 of Colorado’s fourteeners in a year, is up against ultrarunner Dean Karnazes, who ran 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 consecutive days, as well as Charlie Engle, who ran 4,500 miles in 111 days across the Sahara Desert, and Kit DesLauriers, who last October skied from the summit of Everest and became the first person to ski from the summit of the highest peaks on all seven continents.
Don’t envy those judges. Every one of those monumental efforts represents the furthest extremes of outdoor athleticism. And the fact all those athletes will be on hand for the awards ceremony reveals the global reach of the Everest Awards and the Teva Games.
“We’ve got so many highlights this year with Floyd Landis and more mountain biking energy and kayaking energy. All these different elements are coming together and it’s really exciting to see,” said Adam Druckman, Teva’s global sports marketing manager and an organizing force behind the Games. “It’s a tribute to growing the event slowly and taking baby steps and not getting ahead of ourselves too quickly.
“I think our slow and organic growth has really paid off with this year’s Games.”
Generating the biggest buzz is the ultimate mountain challenge, a team or solo event tying the Gore Creek downriver sprint, the XC Mountain Bike Championship, the 10K Trail Running Championship and the Trek Hill Climb up Vail Pass into a single contest.
Durango cycling legend Ned “Deadly Nedly” Overend has joined paddling phenom and last year’s Homestake Creek champion Pat Keller and the world’s most acclaimed trail runner, Manitou Springs’ Matt “The Lung” Carpenter, winner of last year’s 10K race. The team aiming to topple that top-flight trio is led by Landis on the bike, Washington state paddler Tao Berman and Alamosa runner Simon Gutierrez.
“The Floyd team has incredible talent, but so does the team with Pat, Ned and Matt Carpenter,” Druckman said. “I think it’s a toss-up. Or there could be a darkhorse team we are not even aware of that could step up and do something really amazing.”
Local paddle pro Brad Ludden thinks he has the dark-horse team. The superlatively skilled kayaker’s Local Discount Team is all Vail locals and includes road racing’s Mike Friedberg, mountain biking and former “Bachelor” Ryan Sutter and running master Josiah Middaugh.
“We are going to show pretty well. This is our home turf,” Ludden said. “I feel an obligation to do well here. When it’s your own backyard and the people watching are people you know and the rivers you are running are your home rivers, you have no excuses. I can’t blame the altitude.”
Staff writer Jason Blevins can be reached at 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com.
TEVA MOUNTAIN GAMES | VAIL VALLEY
TODAY
The East vs. West amateur kayak freestyle qualifier goes down at 5 p.m. in the new Avon Whitewater playpark under Bob’s Bridge. Finals are Sunday in Vail Village. The 970 crew pounded the 303s last year, and this year the Front Range kayak flippers will be hankering for a comeback.
Where to watch: From the north bank, under the bridge, with a fresh Starbucks Americano.
WEDNESDAY
The paddlecross down Dowd Chute is the storied event that spawned the Teva Games. Formerly a locals-only race with valley bragging rights on the line, the race today is a bloody-knuckler with the world’s top paddlers. If the heat keeps up, the Eagle will be thumping through Dowd on Wednesday. Time trials for both disciplines run from about 9:30 a.m. to noon, and the four-at-a-time finals begin at 2 p.m. Last year the men’s kayak final featured a bloody race with paddling patriarch Eric Jackson getting past teammate Jay Kincaid, bullish competitor Tao Berman and local hero Brad Ludden. Tanya Faux, the awesome Aussie, took her fourth title of the season by winning the Dowd race last year, and defending world champion raft team Behind the Eight Ball easily won the raft race.
Where to watch: The real action is down low at the final rapid, aptly named Tyson. The north side of the long-defunct train tracks provides awesome viewing despite the questionable legality of access. Avoid the hassle by walking up from downstream. The postrace party at The Saloon in Minturn starts at 3:30 p.m. and runs late.
THURSDAY
The famous Homestake Creek race, another formerly locals-only grassroots race, gets a big boost this year thanks to Vail Resorts, which has donated 100 cfs of water during race time from its stash in the upstream reservoir. The extra flow will make for some dramatic paddling. Last year, 19-year-old Pat Keller regained his 2003 title by
besting the best, including Eric Jackson and Ludden. Word is waterfall maestro Berman has been training hard this spring and is gunning for the title in this year’s Dagger Steep Creek Championship.
Where to watch: Practice starts early and the racing kicks off at 10 a.m. Come early to get a good perch. If you want to watch from the banks, you will need a helmet and P.F.D. Don’t miss the postrace party or the fish tacos at the all-new Mangos in Redcliff.
In Vail Village, the freestyle kayak practice starts at 4 p.m. And at 7:30 p.m., do not miss the new Flix and Pix at Donovan Pavilion, with screenings from the Telluride Mountainfilm Tour as well as the winners of the Zest for Adventure photography contest and submissions for the DeLavergne Filmmaker’s Shootout.
FRIDAY
The Bouldering qualifier starts at 9 a.m. and the Gear and Adventure Village in Vail Village opens at 11 a.m. Freestyle kayaking qualifiers begin at 1 p.m. along with bouldering practice on the massive fake rock mushroom in the Crossroads parking lot. The Everest Awards start at 7 p.m. at the Ford Amphitheater and this year are free and open to the public. Get there early, bring a blanket and get ready for the coolest awards ceremony ever. Dance late at night at the Teva Mountain Ball – sandals and tuxes required – at the village’s Samana.
SATURDAY
The big one. Pace yourself for the long haul. The Bouldering comp gets underway with the first session at 9 a.m. Watch for Alex Puccio to defend her title while Daniel Woods pulls hard to defend his. Downriver paddlers should be racing through the village shortly after 9 a.m., breathing hard after their nonstop sprint from East Vail on Gore Creek. (Beat the crowds by watching this race from an upstream perch east of the village. The racers will need your cheers for the final push, which should be tight.) The Nature Valley Mountain Bike Championship starts at 1 p.m. at Gold Peak. Pros will bag three laps of the winding 7-mile course, which finishes at Gold Peak. Watch the three-way battle between singletrack sultan and last year’s champion Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski, mountain biking legend Ned Overend and Tour de France champion Floyd Landis for what likely will be the most illustrious battle of Teva.
Freeride mountain biking challenge finals are at 1:30 p.m. with Colorado’s Dan Drain hoping to best his second-place finish last year. Freestyle paddlers will be throwing loops and blunts in the 5 p.m. finals on Gore Creek. This will be a hot showdown as last year’s winner, Jackson, the captain of the paddling family living in the van down by the river, seeks to defend the world championship crown he donned last month for the fourth time in a row. But fellow Jackson Kayaks teammate Jay Kincaid, fresh off his win over Jackson at the Reno Whitewater Festival, will be eager to beat his pal and boss again while a slew of up-and-comers are nipping at the heels of the freestyle veterans who have dominated the playhole for years. Vail could be the tipping point for the younger generation to take the reins from the fabled kings.
At 7 p.m., watch the pups huck in the Diving Dog Challenge, with local parents proudly posting up their pooches against some of the nation’s best canine leapers. At 7:30 p.m., the new slopestyle event goes down at Gold Peak with airborne cycling maniacs flying to the beat of thundering DJs.
SUNDAY
The final leg of Teva starts at 8 a.m. with master casters flipping tiny flies through small portals in the One-Fly finals in the village near the Gore Creek playhole. The Cytomax 10K Trail Running Championship starts at 9 a.m. in the village, and there’s little question Matt “The Lung” Carpenter of Manitou Springs will dominate this race. The question is whether he will be named the winner. Last year he won decisively but because he declined to pay the mandatory $15 short-term membership fee to the race’s host, USA Track & Field, he gave up the $1,000 prize.
The infamous Trek Hill Climb up Vail Pass, formerly the Coors Classic, starts at 11:30 a.m. with Landis likely to set a Teva and Coors Classic record. The always-tight speed bouldering finals are at 3 p.m. with lithe, spider-like climbers literally leaping up the overhanging wall in a feat of amazing athleticism. At 3:30, the champions of the multisport ultimate mountain challenge will be crowned in Vail Village and The Samples rock Checkpoint Charlie in Vail Village right after.
